Missing links in google webmaster tools

There is a certain forum that I have a few hundred post on, and have a link to my site in my signature.

The links used to show up in my google webmaster tools. But starting about a year ago, the links were slowly removed. And now, not a single link from that forum shows up. That other forum is at least 4 years old, and the links have been there for 2 - 3 years.

What do you think the issue could be?

 

Has the site been de-indexed also during this time?

 

Could they have added nofollow to their signature links?

 

No, its one of my competition that I keep an eye on. Every few months I will check my main competition to see what they are doing. I'll will check the number of backlinks, total indexed pages, key words they may be ranking well with,,,,,,,.

Every time I checked this certain forum, they have always been online.

Its a good medium sized forum with 563,430 Posts in 47,185 Topics and 8,978 Members. But, and here is the kicker - they only have 3,430 pages listed with google.

So, maybe my post are on the thousands of pages that are not indexed?

 

very possible.

Go find a few of the pages that your sig link is on. Then go do a google search for that page or use the site:Address Search - Find Email and Addresses @ Address.com to see if its indexed

 

I have checked the source code several times over the past 2 years. And no, nofollow is not there.

That is one of the first things I looked at when the links were being removed from google webmaster tools.