For over a year now, probably longer, the link operator, i.e. link:domain.com in Google, would not really provide the best results. Google’s Gary Illyes told us almost a year ago that the command is not gone but truth is, I don’t think any SEO felt comfortable with the results for about a year.

This morning on Twitter, in response to a complaint about the link operator results, Google’s John Mueller said he advises against using the link operator. He didn’t say why, he just said, don’t use it.

Of course, Google does have a link report for webmasters in the Google Search Console but that doesn’t give you competitive link data.

I am surprised so many SEOs still even bother looking at the link operator still.

Forum discussion at Twitter.