google webmaster tools not showing all links to my site

kgpixels

I'm scratching my head over two issues below and would appreciate any input anyone may have.

1. In my dashboard in Google webmaster tools I was showing 51 links to my site a few days ago. But his morning its only showing two. Why might this be? Also it hasn't affected my position under a google search I use.

2. Also previous to this issue my dashboard wasn't showing all the links to my site. If I searched using my domain name in google some of what I got back wasn't listed in the links in the dashboard. That said some of these links are relatively new. Is it that google will crawl and find links to your site, but it takes a while to index/rank them?

zAbbo

The link operator in Google isn't accurate, what should be is your Webmaster Tool's figure. Which is odd based on what you describe.

It can take a while for it to recognise fresh incoming links though, and a discrepancy that large I'd expect to return to the original one over the next few days.

Any issues in the Diagnostic section?

kgpixels

zAbbo wrote: »

The link operator in Google isn't accurate, what should be is your Webmaster Tool's figure. Which is odd based on what you describe.

It can take a while for it to recognise fresh incoming links though, and a discrepancy that large I'd expect to return to the original one over the next few days.

Any issues in the Diagnostic section?

Unfortunately patients wouldn't be one of my strong points!

There were a few things in the Diagnostic section, but don't think they are too serious.

In the Crawl Errors there are two pages not found, these were ones I had renamed.

Also there are some html suggestions for duplicate title and meta tags, but I sorted these last wk and hopefully they should clear on the next crawl.

Maybe google is busy counting my links and will come back with many more than before

RedCardinal

kgpixels wrote: »

I'm scratching my head over two issues below and would appreciate any input anyone may have.

1. In my dashboard in Google webmaster tools I was showing 51 links to my site a few days ago. But his morning its only showing two. Why might this be? Also it hasn't affected my position under a google search I use.

2. Also previous to this issue my dashboard wasn't showing all the links to my site. If I searched using my domain name in google some of what I got back wasn't listed in the links in the dashboard. That said some of these links are relatively new. Is it that google will crawl and find links to your site, but it takes a while to index/rank them?

Few things that might help:
1. GWT is not real-time, nor is it something to be 100% relied upon;
2. Since moving to new interface they've had lots of problems. They actually moved to new infrastructure for GWT also, and it's been bumpy;
3. With new interface they also changed what they report. First they said it's more complete, and then they mentioned that they no longer show any links passing through redirects.

Personally I treat the links module as a toy. I do put some weight into diagnostics, but this is often hopelessly out-of-date.

I wouldn't worry at all unless you see a drastic drop in rankings.

kgpixels

My links are back! Where they were is anyones guess. I don't think there are any more than were there the last time, but they are more up to date.

RedMaxP

Hi
I have had the same problem with Google in the last six weeks or so. I had just over 800 inbound links to our site and this amount was visible in Webmaster Tools. Now the reported links have dropped to 258.

When I check the links using Site Explorer I still see the 800+.

Have no understanding as to why this is so other than an article I noticed at the Red Cardinal Blog about some testing Google may have been doing with Geo Targeting
http://www.redcardinal.ie/geotargeting/03-08-2009/major-changes-google-geotargeting/

Anyway if the testing is finished I have not seen any links returning to the webmaster list. If anyone can offer any advice it would be much appreciated, and yes there has been a drop in traffic but I can't say if the links issue is the only cause in this.

Thanks

RedMaxP