Google backlink update took place last night

When I logged into my webmaster tools this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my backlinks had been updated. Some of my sites are getting serious upticks in their backlink count, which as we all know is an indication of potential pagerank which leads to higher SERPs (with the proper SEO of course).

Google is becoming far better at updating the backlinks on a regular basis and keeping them fresh. Webmasters monitoring their sites' progress need timely information, and at one time, Google was only providing monthly backlink updates, and much of the information was already dated by the time it actually reached the tool. I still see some links that no longer exist listed in the webmaster tools, but the results are promising. Between this backlink update and the last update, a lot of dead backlinks have been removed, and some of my good backlinks are showing up.

The question still remains though: why are NOFOLLOW links being shown in the webmaster tools?