Directory Listings no longer counted in Backlinks?

[Excal]

Interesting situation when I looked at Google Search Console this morning, I found that back-links from directories had dropped off and am wondering if anyone else is seeing this?

Specifically, I am in Australia and had links from Yellowpages.com.au and Truelocal.com.au to my primary domain.

Interestingly, Yellow Pages had gone a bit crazy recently in that the number of links to my site seemed to balloon exponentially from about 50 when I first listed to 700+ to 1500+ to 1800+ and then the balloon popped. Truelocal in contrast was only ever showing the 1 link.

There have not been any changes from my end, and I only ever had one listing in these directories so not sure what generated all these extra links in Yellow Pages.

Anyone else in Australia noticed a sudden drop off in Google Backlinks from Directories?  If not it may just be a temporary blip.

[TheSymmetran]

directory links are still a very much required part of the deal for major directories to say the least. Sure, a lot of them do not pass any link juice or Google may discount a lot of those links in its ranking factors, but you just want to be present where people actually check and where data aggregators grab their source data from.There has to be a reason why Moz local still is as service that charges people for exactly these "directory" listings...

[Excal]

Thanks Bernadette.  True, I have noticed some movement in the past on other sites that I manage but these links have always been a constant on my site and it was just a bit of a heart-attack moment to see back-links drop from almost 1900 to 91.

Hopefully it settles over time and there is no impact to SERPS I guess we'll find out in due course

[becole]

Excal, I've always looked considered the links that are shown in Google Search Console to be a "snippet" of all of the links to your website. For example, there are links that I know are pointing to our website that are good links--but they come and go in Google Search Console. They don't show us all the links. So, just as  you have seen them go away, there's a good chance that they will come back and be listed again.

I do know that the more often you download the links the more often they will refresh the list of links.