Hi ... always get the best, most sane advice on WMT, and am back for more.

Over the past 10-12 weeks, google systematically dropped 99.99% the back links to my site.

About 1 February 2008, I had developed, progressively, over 18 months, more than 11,300 links to 131 site pages.

About every two weeks, since 1 February, google dropped a bunch of back links. Now site has 5 back links to 4 pages.

Propeller and Stumble links are gone, along with other book marking sites, forum sigs and general site links. Some of these links were 22+ months old -- as old as the site. SERPs and PR are holding, for now.

Obviously, I have no idea what's what, with google, or why the links were dropped. Some back link checkers indicate the links are still in place, but who knows about the reliability of these tools.

My questions are: should I continue developing back links? Should I hold off, waiting to see? if google returns links, hoping it's a glitch, not some of penalization? Traffic is so-so from the back links, and seemingly random: up some days, non-existent other days.

Any and all input is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

It means absolutely nothing other than the link: search has become a bit more unreliable and useless -> http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...howtopic=28392

Counting the number of backlinks your site has is on a par with the equally useless metrics of "rank checking", toolbar PR, Alexa rank and "SEO scores" from silly "tools".

Knowing how many links the Google search returns is just a waste of time because;

It doesn't tell you which links send traffic.
It doesn't tell you which links send visitors that convert.
It doesn't tell you which links are "valued" by Google.

All it does is tell you about, is some links that Google want to tell you about. They may or may not be of any use, they may or may not be "quality links" (whatever that means). They are just some links.

Check your site logs, see if the traffic is the same, check whatever it is that makes a conversion or sale for your site and forget about "link number checking".