Google Webmaster Tools Link data – a case study
This has bugged me for awhile now when the jump in back links first happened I was overjoyed, most people were I guess :
But google didn’t show me what had doubled or why it had increased so much:
With a total link count of 134,741 to my blog homepage I felt kinda warm and fuzzy inside, but only letting me download 840 left me feeling cold and empty. so when we did soft launch on a re-branded site something jumped out at me, the new website was added to Google Webmaster tools mainly for error checking and crawl statistics I checked the IBL count it was zero after a few weeks we had pushed maybe 10 – 20 links into the site which where now showing in webmastertools , Happy that the site was performing the way it should be we 301ed the old url into the new domain.
I can still only download 20 back links form webmastertools but my link count is sitting at a sweet 639,640, so my guess is Google’s main IBL gap is your 301 back links which actually makes sense when I looked back at the www.davidnaylor.co.uk statistics I have 301ed the blog home page many times in the last few years.
BUT and this is a big but, recently I was looking at a website that had lost it’s rankings after many years sitting sweet in Google and I couldn’t really find anything wrong at first it looked like a link buying penalty but they hadn’t bought any links, the Google gap on the ranking pages showed me 4000 ibls that where not accounted for could this be a a competitor 301ing a bad site at the site, at present I’m still looking into what happened but it would have been a great help if Google said something like :
639,640
639,620 backlinks are from a 301 domain (to see these links added google362739624.txt to the old site)
20 are directly linking to homepage
at least I would have a heads up on a 301 attack and could have informed Google.
Samuel 641 days ago
http://blog.mycollegesandcareers.comI use webmaster tools all the time for all of my sites. Love it.
g1smd 641 days ago
The counts are fake.
A site with only ~8000 pages is reporting incoming links to the home page from 45000 internal pages; yet when you click to see a list of those pages, it only manages to return less than 300 URLs.
Additionally, most of those 300 URLs are not listed in a site:example.com search and most of the URLs seen in the site:example.com search are not listed in the WMT reports.
The data is seriously flawed.
Clizz Mckenzie 640 days ago
http://www.citytaratran.comHi
http://www.city tarntaran.com display clizz mckenzie profile cached i have it was differculties to remove with the wemaster tool i have contact the google webmaster to remove webpages display profile cached no longer needed at all, stiil not remove. comfirm with urgent request to remove webpage profile cached please investigate take this serious matter dealing to removeprofile cached immediatley repose thank you
Kate 640 days ago
I often think that Google stats are wrong (not just in wmt), but why would they give us wrong data? I mean, I don’t want to be naive, but what could be in it for them?
Julian Grainger 640 days ago
We have 55,000 back links to a client domain that is only 3 months old. A lot of people follow and talk to the brand in Facebook and Twitter all the time. I think this goes a long way to explaining the number.
algoholic 638 days ago
http://algoholic.comVery nice observation but I think this may be part of the answer, did some checks and this is what I see – huge gap in sites that got 1000+ links, I see results with many omitted links that are from indexed pages, that were never 301′d, and may be looked as low quality.
On new domains in the range of 20-200 links not all links count but cannot see a gap
james covert 637 days ago
http://www.covertcasino.co.ukAnything over a 10 000 boundary is considered an overhaul, google will only sample so much in a give cycle, i:e a main crawl.
Christopher West 636 days ago
http://www.seobychristopherwest.comHi David
Thanks for the indepth look at these links. I have and continually believe that Google does not show you the full picture.
As for the 301 ‘attack’ – that would be scary in deed if it was true…… how many unethical SEOs would do that.
I use linkdiagnosis at the moment as my link reporting tool
w00ter 635 days ago
David,
this article made me think there is a possibility to do harm to your competitor if you 301′ed a bad/penalized website you own. Could that work too?
Imagine you have a website which is penalized for doing some bad stuff, like buying lots of links. You realize the website is penalized and quickly do a complete 301 to your competitor’s site.
Would that make his site get penalized aswell?
Yurtdışı Eğitim 635 days ago
http://www.olc.com.trThanks for your tips. I’ll try this and i’ıı imlement my web site.
Lee Cole 610 days ago
http://atlantaseomarketing.comThanks for the in depth look at the Webmaster’s links. I’ve been wondering about the same issue. Also, I never really thought about using a 301 to actually attack someone’s site. I guess I just don’t have a criminal mind. You would think Google has (or should) figure some way to filter this out, because for the unscrupulous this would be a great way to damage a competitor.
100 Great Web Development Blog Posts From 2010 | Demons Lounge 518 days ago
[...] Missed in Web Development (SEO Blog) 28. 16 SEO Tips – My Onpage SEO Checklist (James SEO) 29. Google Webmaster Tools Link data – a case study (David Naylor) 30. 10 Best Link Building Practices (Link Building [...]