Yesterday, we covered that Google's John Mueller said not to use the link operator. This comes a year or so after Google said the link operator is not dead yet. Well, now it is dead.
A Google spokesperson confirmed with me that the link operator no longer works. So doing a link:www.domain.com may return something but the results are completely wrong and off.
John Mueller of Google also said this on Twitter last night saying "things change over time," "AFAIK that's no longer live in search."
@bhartzer @methode @rustybrick Things change over time. AFAIK that's no longer live in search.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) January 11, 2017
So those of you holding on to using one of the oldest link tools for SEOs, well, stop using it if you haven't done so years and years ago - like many others have already done.
Forum discussion at Twitter.