Google Search Console can pick up external links to brand new web sites (if there are links pointing to them) within 7 to 10 days, according to Google's John Mueller. Guess what, I verified it and Google Search Console confirmed spotting the first link on day 10 for my new site.
I asked John Mueller of Google about this on a hangout a couple weeks ago and he said "it's more along the line, I'd say a week, 1 and 1/2 weeks" for the tool to show the new link. He said it is "not a matter of months" and "not a matter of hours like with the performance report" but more likely a week or so. And he is right.
I tested it on my new site, which I actually linked to in the Search Engine Land newsletter on March 23rd - I am surprised Google spotted it because it is not easy to find on the web (I guess Google is finding things on the web). And it showed up in the GSC link report on April 2nd, about 10 days later.
I also linked to it on March 29th over here but that link has not shown up yet. I will let you know when that link shows up in Google Search Console, so check this story a bit later on this week.
John explained this at the 9:19 mark where I asked how long it takes Google Search Console to spot new links. John said most reports in GSC are "recalculated every three to four days" and then there is the factor of Google finding the link during its crawling. So he estimated about a week or so.
Here is what he said:
I would have to ask the team. My understanding is that a lot of the reports in Search Console are recalculated every three to four days. So in terms of about a week you should probably see some data there. The tricky part, I guess, with the links report, is that we show a sample of the links to your site. So that doesn't mean we would immediately populate that one link that we found to your site. So that's something where I don't know. I'm kind of curious to see how long it takes to get that picked up.But it's not a matter of months. And then, it's not a matter of hours like with the performance report. It's more along the line, I'd say a week, 1 and 1/2 weeks, something like that should be a reasonable time.
Here is the video embed:
And if you are wondering what my new site is, it is named Lucid Insider - it is not on SEO, it is about the new Lucid Air EV car.
Here is a screenshot of the link showing up on April 2nd in GSC - note, the link is not in a real story on Search Engine Land, it was just noted in one of my newsletter introductions about the benefits of starting a new site from scratch and relearning some basics:
Forum discussion at YouTube Community.
Update: On April 8th, I see a heck of a lot more link data in Google Search Console's link report:
