Google Search Console Links Report Now Displaying Extra Links

A couple of weeks ago we reported that there was a bug with the Google Search Console link report. Google’s John Mueller eventually confirmed the issue and said a fix will come out soon. This morning (I checked several times per day since then) I am seeing a small increase in the number of links being reported by the link report.

So maybe, just maybe, a fix is rolling out for the Google Search Console links report…

Here is what I see this morning, about 250,000 links, which is up from 214,000 links from before:

In June 2023 I showed 214,000 links:

Here is a screenshot from July 2022 showing 550,000 links:

October 2019 at 1.2 million links:

August 2018 at 2.5 million links:

Here is where John Mueller of Google confirmed the issue:

To update here, we did find something; your links haven’t been given the disallow treatment, fed to a panda, 410’ed, hit by premature link rot, or gotten ghosted by Googlebot. Hopefully it’ll be resolved this week. Thanks for your patience & sorry for the back & forth.

— John Mueller (official) · Not #30D (@JohnMu) July 24, 2023

We’re aware of an issue in the links report for some sites, I’m hopeful that things will be back soon (might be next week though).

— John Mueller (official) · Not #30D (@JohnMu) July 28, 2023

Are you all seeing an improvement in the links being reported in the Google Search Console link report?

Update: John Mueller confirmed it on Twitter:

Yeah, I think it should be ok now. This is just a reporting thing, FWIW, it doesn’t have anything to do with how search results work (I don’t think you mentioned it as such – thanks! but I could imagine folks assuming it’s a ranking update, etc — which it isn’t).

— John Mueller (official) · Not #30D (@JohnMu) August 4, 2023

Forum discussion at Twitter.