If you look at your link report in Google Webmaster Tools you may notice that Google is telling you have more links than you had the last time you looked. In fact, some are reporting they are seeing millions of additional links.

At first, I thought that this may be some reporting bug. But today, I found that Google is now showing more and more links due to having a larger and fresher index. Yes, since Caffeine went live, Google is now able to index more and more content, at a quicker pace, which leads to them being able to report more data in Google Webmaster Tools.

JohnMu said in a Google Webmaster Help thread, when questioned about the increase in links:

Yes, we revamped the data behind the backlinks feature in Webmaster Tools — it has started using more data from “Caffeine” for some sites and is planned to continue with a bit more data in the next week or so. The goal is to have more fresher & up-to-date data there :-).

If you see new links in the report, don’t worry – it should just grow even more and become more accurate over time.

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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