I know that the amount of backlinks will fluctuate over time, but from one day to the next, my challenge website went down from ~290 to ~165 according to MS. I checked yahoo site explorer, and it says there's 135 backlinks.
What is causing this? What's the reason for this? Is it possible that some of the forum backlinks get archived or similar after x days and they get de-indexed?
There can be lots of reasons that backlinks come and go. For example, let's say you post a backlink on a site that has a sidebar category menu (very common) and lets say that site has 100 pages/posts. Because the sidebar menu appears on every page and post, it can look to search engines as if every post and page on that site has a pathway that leads to your link and so you could, temporarily, get 100 backlinks from one post on one site. But eventually the search engines figure it out and your backlink count goes from 100 to 1 overnight. If you look carefully at all your backlinks over time, you will often see this multiple pathway business creating "false" backlinks. In fact, the more backlinks you have, the more they will fluctuate.
Here's an article about it actually: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/023126.html
There's many threads about it around the web.
In fact Hashimoto, have a search around here too. Dean himself has written some outstanding posts here on this very topic. I would suggest you put in his username with the keyword backlinks (maybe even try with the keyword disappearing). Honestly it is worth the search - as they are pure gold re information!
Best
Caro
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