Search Console Links Report: 2026 Guide
Imagine a Chicago retail team opens the Search Console Links report on a Monday morning and counts 412 linking sites. Their agency's backlink tool says 3,900 for the same domain, and the weekly call turns into an argument about who is wrong. Nobody is wrong, because the Help article for the Links report says it shows a sample of internal and external links, not a full list.
This guide is for in-house teams and agencies in the United States, Europe and South Korea who own a Search Console property. It covers what every table answers, why the numbers never match a commercial tool, how the exports differ, and where the report stops. My view is simple: treat the Search Console Links report as Google's own sample of your link graph, and stop reading it as a scoreboard.
What is the Search Console Links report, and what is it not?
The Search Console Links report is Google's sample of the internal and external links it has found for your property. Its Help article indicates that pages are grouped by canonical URL, duplicate links are combined, and tables stop at 1,000 rows. It also retains links Google discovered over time, even ones since removed, and it never flags nofollow.
For a tour of the other reports, see our practitioner's guide to Google Search Console. For the audit method this sample feeds, see how to run a backlink audit and when to disavow.
Why does root-domain grouping merge some sites and split others?
The report groups link data by root domain. Its Help article explains that protocol, subdomains and subdirectories are stripped, so m.example.com, www.example.com and example.com/pet_store/ all fold into example.com. Top-level domains are retained, so example.com and example.com.de stay apart. Read every row as a family of hosts that share one name, not as one website.
Imagine a Chicago retailer earns links from the mobile and desktop hosts of one local newspaper, which appears as a single row. Now imagine a Hamburg publisher receives links from a partner on example.com and example.com.de, which stay as two rows. For example, a Seoul skincare brand with press links from m.example.co.kr and www.example.co.kr should expect one row, since both subdomains are stripped. Teams with country sites should read our guide to hreflang and choosing between country domains, subdomains and subfolders. Korean teams should also read our Naver SEO guide for Korean search.
What does the Top linked pages table tell you?
Top linked pages lists the pages on your website with the most backlinks from other sites. One use the Help article suggests is to confirm that your most linked pages are the ones you expect. Open the Links report, choose External links, then Top linked pages, and click MORE at the bottom for the full list.
Here is the test I would run: write down the pages that earn your revenue, then verify whether they sit near the top of this table. For example, a Shopify store might discover its outdated Black Friday gift guide at the top while the category pages that sell sit near the bottom. That gap tells you where to aim your next outreach.
Which sites link to you the most, and should you worry?
Top linking sites lists the root domains with the most links to your website, sorted by count of links. The Help article offers two uses, and the first is to confirm that you recognize the sites and to identify unknown and possibly spammy ones. The second is to verify whether sites that matter to you, such as food blogs for a restaurant, link to you at all.
To get there, open the Links report, choose External links, then Top linking sites, and click a site to see your most linked pages from it. If your own domain appears in this table, the Help article explains that it stands for an omitted subdomain, such as m.example.com. The same article notes that Google typically will ignore links from known spam sites, so I would rather spend that time chasing a missing trade publication in Munich.
What does Top linking text reveal about how others describe you?
Top linking text displays the words other sites use in links to you, sorted by count. The Help article indicates that duplicates are a case-insensitive exact match, so "Hello world" and "HELLO WORLD" merge into one row. Links with no text, such as image links, show as "(empty)" in the table, and the whole list helps you catch spammy or inaccurate descriptions.
To reach it, open the Links report, choose External links, then Top linking text, and note that it covers only links from outside your property. Google's link best practices documentation explains that Google uses the alt attribute as anchor text for image links. So when you send partners your logo, provide alt text too, and see our guide to optimizing images and writing alt text. If partners still describe you with an outdated product name, read our guide to earning brand mentions and fixing the ones that are wrong.
What does the Target URL column tell you when you drill down?
The Target URL (if different) column appears when you look at backlinks from one site to one page. A blank cell means the link points directly at your page. A value means the link URL differs, and the Help article offers two reasons: your website redirects the link URL to the target, or Google selected the target as the canonical.
The same article lists two paths in, one from the target page through Top linked pages and one from the linking site through Top linking sites. Imagine a London retailer moved its sale page and a major blog still links to the previous address, so the column displays a value. Click the link on the blog and track the hops, as the Help article suggests, then consult our playbook on redirects and site migrations. If there is no redirect, Google has likely selected a different canonical, which our guide to how Google picks your canonical URL explains.
How do the Internal links tables identify under-linked pages?
The Internal links side has two views. Top linked pages from within your own site lists the pages your website links to most, and selecting a URL reveals which pages link to it. The Help article suggests confirming that core pages, such as the home page and contact page, are properly linked within your website.
The Help article frames the second view as a navigation question: can users get from page A to page B with the fewest clicks? Imagine a Berlin fashion store on WordPress discovers its winter coats category below a pile of tag pages in that table. Our guide to ecommerce category page SEO explains where that page's missing links should come from. Google's link best practices documentation says "Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site" and sets no magic number. For the strategy behind those links, read our internal linking strategy guide, and for large catalogs see how crawl depth shapes site architecture.
How do you export Links report data, and which slice should you use?
Use the Export button on the Search Console Links report landing page to download up to 100,000 rows as a CSV file or a Google Sheet, the Help article explains. Latest links lists the most recently discovered links, sorted by discovery date. More sample links helps when many more than 100,000 pages link to you, the article adds, and single-table pages export up to 1,000 rows.
Values shown as a tilde or a hyphen in the report become zeros in the download, according to the Help article. The article also says the sort order you set on a single-table page does not change the exported file. My opinion is that Latest links is the export that matters, so download it on the same weekday every month and compare the files. If you followed our content refresh and pruning guide this quarter, a monthly export of Top linked pages can show whether refreshed pages earn new links. Those dated files make a cleaner input for SEO reporting on KPIs that prove ROI than any raw link total.
Why doesn't the Links report say which links are nofollow?
The Help article states that the report doesn't specify if a link is marked as nofollow, and it says nothing about sponsored or ugc either. So any row can mix links that may pass credit with links their owners flagged with a hint. The report cannot tell you which links count, so stop asking it to.
A Search Central Blog post from September 10, 2019, by Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes, explains that nofollow was introduced in 2005 to help fight comment spam. The post announced rel="sponsored" for ads and sponsorships and rel="ugc" for user generated content such as comments and forum posts. It made all three attributes hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search. For crawling and indexing, the same post said nofollow would become a hint as of March 1, 2020. My contrarian take is that a report blind to rel attributes cannot evaluate link value, so any deck that scores links from this export alone is guessing.
Why does the Search Console Links report never match Ahrefs or Semrush?
Because it answers a different question with different rules. The Help article describes a sample, not a count, with 1,000-row tables, combined duplicates, canonical and root-domain grouping, and old links that may since have been removed. Any other tool calculates its own count by its own method, so matching totals would be a coincidence, not a sign of accuracy.
Every row below is taken from the Search Console Help article, and the right column is my interpretation.
| Links report | What that means for your number |
|---|---|
| A sample of internal and external links | Treat the total as a sample, not a count. |
| Tables limited to 1,000 rows | Larger or well-linked sites can see truncated tables. |
| Duplicate links combined | Repeat links from one source URL to one target URL appear once. |
| Pages grouped by canonical URL | Links to URL variants consolidate into the canonical page. |
| Sites grouped by root domain, TLDs kept | Subdomains merge, but example.com and example.com.de stay apart. |
| Links found over time, some since removed | Removed links can still sit in the total. |
The report covers only your own property, so it cannot do the job of an SEO competitor analysis and link gap review. It displays no authority score either, and our explainer on what Domain Authority is covers that third-party metric.
Where does the Links report stop, and what does Google say about disavowing?
The Links report displays links, and it does not evaluate them. Google's Help article on disavowing links calls the tool an advanced feature that most sites will not need. It says to disavow only when you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links and they have caused, or likely will cause, a manual action.
That disavow Help article also indicates that the tool does not support Domain properties, so verify your property type first. The same article says disavowed links will continue to be shown in the Links report and that Google can take a few weeks to incorporate a new list. If you do have a manual action, start with our guide to Google manual actions and recovery, not with a spreadsheet of domains. The report is also a poor instrument for diagnosing traffic drops, since its own Help article indicates that it retains links that may have been removed, so work through our organic traffic drop decision tree first.
What monthly routine keeps the Links report useful?
Run one short routine in the Search Console Links report every month, which I think takes about 20 minutes once it becomes a habit. Work from the outside in, reviewing who links to you, which pages earn links and what words they use, then add internal links to one weak page and save a dated export of Latest links.
- Open Top linking sites and note any domain you do not recognize.
- Compare Top linked pages with the pages you want linked, and flag the gaps.
- Examine Top linking text for spammy phrases or stale descriptions of your brand.
- Review the Internal links table for one revenue page that sits too low, and link to it from related pages.
- Export Latest links, put the date in the file name, and compare it with last month.
The Chicago team from the opening never needed a winner, because the imagined 412 and 3,900 answer different questions. Your next step is modest: open Top linking sites this week, export Latest links, and write down the date so next month has a baseline. I expect the Search Console Links report to remain a sample, so the teams that win will be the ones who read its patterns, not its totals. Which table will you open first?
Frequently asked questions about the Search Console Links report
What counts as a backlink in Search Console?
The Help article for the Links report defines a backlink as "a link on a page from another site that links to a page on your site" and that is the whole test. The same article explains that external sites are anything outside of your current property. So a link from your blog subdomain may count as external if it sits outside the property you opened. Verify which property you are in before you read the Search Console Links report, or the tables will appear to shift.
Is link text the same as anchor text?
Yes, Google's link best practices documentation explains that anchor text, also known as link text, is the visible text of a link. The Links report calls it link text. Its Help article indicates that duplicates are combined when they match exactly, ignoring case, so a change in capitalization does not create a new row. The same best practices documentation says good anchor text is "descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant" and I think that is a sensible standard for the words other sites use about you.
Why do some rows in Top linking text say "(empty)"?
The Help article explains that links with no text, such as image links, show as "(empty)" in the report and as empty rows in exported data. For image links, Google's link best practices documentation notes that Google uses the alt attribute of the image as anchor text. So an image link with clear alt text gives Google words to read, while an empty alt can leave the link with none. If the row is large, ask partners to add alt text to the logo that links to you.
Does every link in the Links report help rankings?
No, and the report cannot tell you which ones do. Its Help article indicates that it does not specify if a link is marked as nofollow, and the same article notes that Google typically will ignore links from known spam sites. The Search Central Blog post from September 10, 2019, explains that nofollow, sponsored and ugc are all treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude. So a row in the table proves that Google discovered a link, not that the link carries weight.
Why are removed links still in the Links report?
The Help article explains that the report includes links that Google has found over time, and that these links may have since been removed or the page may no longer exist. The report is a record of what Google observed, not a live check of the web today. That is why I would never use it alone to explain a traffic drop. If a specific link matters, open the linking page yourself, confirm the link is still there, and note the date you checked.
Why is a link I know about missing from the report?
The Help article indicates that the report is a sample and that some URLs might be omitted for reasons such as non-indexed pages or deduped URLs. The link may also be built in a way Google cannot read. Google's link best practices documentation explains that Google can generally only crawl a link if it is an anchor element with an href attribute, and that most links in other formats won't be parsed. So verify how the link is built on the partner's page before you assume it was removed.
Can I see a competitor's backlinks in Search Console?
No, the Search Console Links report shows links to your own property, and its Help article treats anything outside that property as an external site. To analyze a rival's links, people turn to third-party tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz. Those tools follow their own methods, so do not expect their numbers to line up with Google's sample. My advice is to use Search Console for Google's view of your own website and a third-party tool for the view across rivals.
How many rows can I export from the Links report?
The Help article explains that the Export button on the landing page provides up to 100,000 rows in either of two slices, Latest links or More sample links. Latest links contains the most recently discovered links, sorted by discovery date, while More sample links is drawn from the complete set Google knows. Pages with a single table export that whole table, up to 1,000 rows, the same article says. You can save any of these as a CSV file or a Google Sheet.
When should I add nofollow to my own links?
Google's link best practices documentation advises using nofollow only when you do not trust the source. It also recommends marking paid links with sponsored or nofollow, and links that users add, such as in a forum, with ugc or nofollow. The Search Central Blog post from September 10, 2019, adds that a value such as rel="ugc sponsored" is valid, since one link can carry more than one value. None of this appears in the Links report, whose Help article indicates that it does not specify if a link is nofollow.
Does the Internal links table show how many links a page needs?
No, and Google's link best practices documentation explains that there is no magical ideal number of links a given page should contain. The same guidance sets a clearer floor: every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your website. Use the Internal links table to compare your revenue pages against that floor, then improve the weakest one every month. Keep your own list of those pages too, because a page with no internal links cannot appear in that table.