Link Count Continues To Drop On Google Webmaster Tools

Jun 17, 2013 - 8:16 am 16 by

Google Webmaster Tools Link DropLast Wednesday we reported complaints in the forums of webmasters noticing their links are dropping within Google Webmaster Tools. In short, the links shown in Google Webmaster Tools today versus two weeks ago was a fraction of the number.

Well, the issue is still going on and now I see it also. More and more webmasters, site owners and SEOs are concerned about the link drop.

Personally, as you can see in the screen shot, I dropped from 3.8 million links to 2.1 million links in just a few days. That is a 45% drop in reported links by Google Webmaster Tools.

Others are reporting link drops as high as 80%.

This is not uncommon, we had a bug back in February with this as well.

So I would not worry, it seems like everyone is in the same boat.

Most likely, this is a bug and will be fixed. But it may be a change to how Google calculates links, but that seems less likely.

I'll try to get an answer on this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and (one of many) Google Webmaster Help.

Update: Google posted an update over here saying this is a known issue:

Some Webmaster Tools users have reported missing data in the "Links to your site" section. We are aware of this issue and are looking into it; you do not need to take any action. We hope to have the normal data shown again in the near future. The data shown there is informational and does not affect your site's crawling, indexing or ranking.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 17, 2025

Sep 17, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google

Google Discover Tests Showing X Posts From Just Your Followers?

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:51 am
Other Search Engines

OpenAI Updates Search In ChatGPT: Factuality, Shopping & Formatting

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google: Searchers Want AI Summaries Over Links

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google Business API Q&A Feature Going Away November 3 (Changes Coming?)

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google Ads

New Google Merchant Center Suspension Video Verification

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:11 am
 
Previous Story: Updated Google Knowledge Graph Carousel