Discovering new links and efficiently managing them constitutes as an important aspect of SEO services, and SEOs use Google’s special search operators to find these links.

Over a period of time, SEOs and webmasters have minimized the use of the link operators. Since long, Webmasters have been advised by Google to use its Search Console link report in their search for new links, as these link operators show only a “sample” of a site’s links.

In the past week, Bill Hartzer pointed out that these so-called special link operators weren’t working on many large websites, which includes [www.google.com]. However, they seem to work efficiently on other large websites such as [www.yahoo.com].

This brings us to the conclusion that Google may have completely removed the link operators from its search engine. But, Google’s Gary Illyes denied the same through his twitter handle.

@webrankinfo the short answer is “no”. For the long answer please email press@google.com @Missiz_Z @JohnMu @bhartzer

— Gary Illyes (@methode) February 12, 2016

Contrary to that, the image below depicts that the link operator google.com is not searchable.

Whereas the operator yahoo.com is easily searchable on Google.

This issue was addressed to Google through an email, but they replied with the same message that Google’s Gary Illyes shared through his twitter handle.

Interestingly, the link operator was found missing from Google’s search operators page a few weeks ago.

Google again addressed the issue by stating that instead of using link operators, webmasters should use Google Search Console services. Well, the matter is still up for review at Google’s end and hopefully, Google’s webmaster will clear the air in his future communications.

For more info on this topic, write to our experts at sales@ebrandz.com and we’ll get back to you right away.