MS live have taken their advanced search queries for examining link data offline because of ‘mass automated usage for data mining’ according to their blog.

This is a shame because the Live Search advanced commands like link: and linkdomain: provided good accurate linkage information. It seems like a bit of a an over-reaction to prevent everyone from using it, can’t they just add a captcha or something?

The linkfromdomain: command is still available however. I guess this has not been ‘abused’ yet.

Anyway, until these commands are back, the MS Live backlinks bookmarklet made available in the SEO tools section a few weeks ago won’t work.