What does the External Links report tell me?
Links
It tells you which of your pages other sites link to, which sites link to you most, and the words they use in those links, drawn from Google's own record of links it has found. Read it as a sample for spotting patterns, not as a link count: it leaves some links out, keeps some that have gone, and says nothing about dates or whether a link is followed.
How to read each table
Top linked pages ranks your pages by links from other sites. Expect your homepage and your best resources at the top. Surprises are useful: an old URL near the top that now redirects means valuable links pass through a redirect, and the drill-down shows a Target URL (if different) column when a link points at a redirecting or non-canonical address.
Top linking sites ranks the domains that link to you. Search Console strips protocol, subdomain and folder before grouping, so news.example.com and example.com/blog/ count as one site, while a different suffix such as example.co.uk counts as another. Click a site to see which of your pages it links to.
Top linking text lists the anchor text others use, matched exactly but ignoring case: "Acme pricing" and "acme pricing" are one entry, "Acme price" another. Links with no text appear as (empty). It shows how the web describes you: mostly your brand name is healthy, while many unrelated sites using the same commercial phrase is worth a closer look.
What it leaves out
- Completeness. Google calls it a sample. Links to pages that are not indexed, or to duplicate URLs, can be missing.
- Time. No first-seen or lost dates, and no history, so you cannot see growth or losses inside the report.
- Freshness. Links found over time stay listed even after the linking page changed.
- Link attributes. No distinction between followed and
nofollowlinks. - Disavowals. Disavowed links stay listed.
- Depth. Each table shows at most 1,000 rows.
For exporting the full link list and the step-by-step route through the report, see checking backlinks in Search Console.
How it compares with other link sources
| Search Console | Third-party link databases | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose crawl | Google's | The vendor's own crawler |
| Competitors' links | No | Yes |
| First-seen and lost dates | No | Usually |
Follow or nofollow | No | Usually |
| API access | No | Yes |
Search Console is the only one that reflects links Google itself has found, which makes it the right place to confirm that an important link is known. Third-party databases are better for history, competitors and link attributes.
Turning it into decisions
- Pass authority inward. Your most linked pages are the best places to add internal links to pages you want to rank. See internal links.
- Rescue dead targets. A linked URL that now returns 404 should redirect to its closest live replacement.
- Make more of what earns links. The page types at the top of Top linked pages show what other sites find worth citing.
- Do not disavow by reflex. Odd domains in Top linking sites are normal; see the Disavow Tool for when it applies.
How AutoPSEO helps
With a Bing Webmaster Tools key connected, AutoPSEO shows Bing's inbound link counts for your top linked pages next to your Bing search data. See Bing Webmaster Tools. For dates, follow status and competitors, AutoPSEO's Backlinks research in the app reads DataForSEO's link index for any domain, URL or folder, drawing on your plan's research credits.
Sources: Google's Links report help and Disavow links help.
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