Google Webmaster Tools Users to Benefit from Better Backlink Data
According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, they are now providing better backlink data for site owners.
Previously, by clicking the “download more sample links” button within Google’s Webmaster Tools, you would receive about 100,000 backlinks listed alphabetically. But because the link data skewed towards the beginning of the alphabet, you wouldn’t get as complete of an idea of some sites’ backlinks.
Yinnon Haviv, a software engineer at Google, said:
“Based on feedback from the webmaster community, we’re improving how we select these backlinks to give sites a fuller picture of their backlink profile. The most significant improvement you’ll see is that most links are now sampled uniformly from the full spectrum of backlinks rather than alphabetically.” (Source)
Although the new links will still be sorted alphabetically, the change will allow users to receive example links from different domain names and top-level domains.
This is an excellent move on Google as it will provide Webmaster Tools users with a much more broad and diverse cross-section of links. The change in how backlinks are listed will help site owners who are looking for who is recommending their content and save time and effort for those working on cleaning up any bad linking practices.
