Google Search Console link report may be broken today

Many are noticing huge declines in the number of links reported in the link report within the Google tool.

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Google Search Console link report may be broken or maybe Google decided to report on fewer links in that tool. Many are seeing huge declines in the number of links the tool is showing them when compared to last week.

More details. Starting Monday, May 27th, many SEOs began to notice a decline in the number of links being reported and then as of this morning, many are noticing massive declines, some even showing zero links being reported in the tool.

I am seeing a 40% reduction in the links reported today when compared to just a few days ago.

Here is my link report from today:

Google Links Report May30

Here is a screenshot from the same report from May 27th:

Google Links Report May27

Bug or feature. Google has not yet commented on this issue, so either this is some sort of reporting glitch – like we saw yesterday with product snippets report – or it is a feature, where Google is just showing fewer links.

Either way, you are not alone, everyone is seeing a huge decline in the number of links reported in the Google Search Console reports.

Why we care. Truth is, I don’t think you need to care about this. Everyone is seeing the decline in link counts. This is just a report and it does not directly influence your rankings in Google Search.

So continue working on your website and making content that matters, and maybe focus less on these buggy reports?

Postscript. Google is investigating the issue said Daniel Waisberg from the Google Search team:


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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