Why my good links disappeared from gWMT?
-
Hi
Last night some of my good links suddenly stopped from being display displayed at the WMT list of links
Any thoghts?
Thanks
-
Jason,
Thanks for the update.
Yeah it seems pretty clear that it's a bug at this point. Not fun while it lasts though
-
There's an updated response from Googles John Mueller:
"Thanks for the report, Anne (and thanks for escalating, Stevie!). This looks like an issue with how the data is displayed in Webmaster Tools, it shouldn't affect your site's crawling, indexing or ranking. I don't have any specifics at the moment, but the team is looking into the details to see what we can do here. Thanks for your patience & sorry for the confusion!"
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-homepage-bug-16322.html
-
It could be...I guess the only way to verify is to wait and see if those links reappear in GWT then measuring traffic/ranking data before and after
-
I was wondering if by error they are only showing the links that count, to be clear.
As for some reporting loss of ranking, this may be coincidental or imaginative.
Just a thought
-
Alan,
My only questions are, (if GWT reports links that "count")
What would account for some sites reporting loss of ranking and other sites reporting no loss of ranking?
If this were simply a cosmetic change within GWT than no one would see change in ranking b/c deleted links didn't count to begin with, right?
Unless Google has changed what links "count".
-
Could it be, that's these are the only links that Google actually counts?
-
Jason,
Thanks for the quick response and informative link. I hope you are right, it does seem like you are, but we will have to wait and see in the meantime. And I'll have to just keep on looking for other traffic sources. Best of luck
-
It looks like when this happened back in August of 2011 it took up to two weeks to fix.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-bug-13886.html
I have to imagine that it's just a temporary hiccup because my site lost links from major media institutions like Bloomberg and Forbes. I can't image those links would have been "devalued". Give it some time and watch your traffic. Mine is normal today and I imagine that it would have cratered if all my links had actually disappeared.
Good Luck,
Jason
-
My site has been affected by this issue (loss of links) as well, with pretty decent hits to rankings and traffic, in particular my main keywords. Generally speaking how long/what does it take to take reach some consensus as to whether it is an update or a just a temporary hiccup?
-
My corporate site went from 140K+ links on Webmasters tools to 133 overnight. I lost links from Forbes, Bloomberg, and some universities so they were good links. It has to be an error. My brand new site is down from several hundred links to showing no data at all.
I'll wait it out but traffic doesn't seem to be affected one way or the other.
-
From what I read here, it seems to be a error, https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/webmaster-tools/_r3YwCyJvB4%5B1-25-true%5D
I have sites that have lost most of their links, but rankings remain the same.
-
Lots of people are reporting this in the forums. Barry Schwartz writes a post about it on Search Engine Roundtable at http://www.seroundtable.com/google-webmaster-tools-link-count-16315.html.
-
Just saw on another post that they are having problems. Will wait another day or two...
-
Beytznet - I've had exactly the same problem, except ALL my links are gone - It's so frustrating!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How Many Links to Disavow at Once When Link Profile is Very Spammy?
We are using link detox (Link Research Tools) to evaluate our domain for bad links. We ran a Domain-wide Link Detox Risk report. The reports showed a "High Domain DETOX RISK" with the following results: -42% (292) of backlinks with a high or above average detox risk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-8% (52) of backlinks with an average of below above average detox risk
-12% (81) of backlinks with a low or very low detox risk
-38% (264) of backlinks were reported as disavowed. This look like a pretty bad link profile. Additionally, more than 500 of the 689 backlinks are "404 Not Found", "403 Forbidden", "410 Gone", "503 Service Unavailable". Is it safe to disavow these? Could Google be penalizing us for them> I would like to disavow the bad links, however my concern is that there are so few good links that removing bad links will kill link juice and really damage our ranking and traffic. The site still ranks for terms that are not very competitive. We receive about 230 organic visits a week. Assuming we need to disavow about 292 links, would it be safer to disavow 25 per month while we are building new links so we do not radically shift the link profile all at once? Also, many of the bad links are 404 errors or page not found errors. Would it be OK to run a disavow of these all at once? Any risk to that? Would we be better just to build links and leave the bad links ups? Alternatively, would disavowing the bad links potentially help our traffic? It just seems risky because the overwhelming majority of links are bad.0 -
Directory links with no follow
Hi I'm researching competitor backlinks & they have a lot of directory links which are no follow - but they rank very well. Is this type of link building even allowed by google? I know they they aren't allowed followed directory links, but will no following them help with rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Viewing search results for 'We possibly have internal links that link to 404 pages. What is the most efficient way to check our sites internal links?
We possibly have internal links on our site that point to 404 pages as well as links that point to old pages. I need to tidy this up as efficiently as possible and would like some advice on the best way to go about this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Link to homepage or brand page?
Hi, I have opportunity to get a link from a brands website to our website as we are official retailers. Should I give them our homepage URL or should I give them their brands page on our website? The brand page will have their brand name in the URL, meta details, images, content and products. What is more beneficial SEO wise? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Linking across categories
On a website when I link across in the same category should all the categories all pear on each page. Let's say I have 6 categories and 6 pages should I have the 6 links on all the pages ( such as A, B, C, D, E, on page 1 ( let's imagine this page is page F ), then on page A have link B, C D, E, F and so on for the 6 pages ( meaning all the links appear on all the pages across the category ) or should i just have let's say 3 links on page 1 ( link A, B, C ) , then link ( D, E, F ) on page 2, then A, E, F on page 3, link B, C F on page 4 and so on... ( which means that i vary the links that appear and that it is naturally ( at least I think ) going to boost the link that appears the most of the 6 pages ? I hope this is not too confusing, Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Suppliers linking to website - good or bad practice?
Hi, was just wondering about suppliers linking to website - copywriters, web developers, etc. - could these be seen as purchased links by Google. Is it best to specify that suppliers shouldn't link through?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Link Anchor Text
As I keep studing SEO I reach to the conclusion that the Anchor Text from other site is crucial to get more positive results for our website and for the link-building strategy. My question is - Is it better to have an Anchor Text to my main link our should I ask for a determine targeted keyword? Tks in advance! Pedro M Pereira
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Switching to masked affiliate links
Hi there, I run a content affiliate website where I introduce products in articles and then link to merchants where the user can buy the respective product. Currently I am using regular affiliate links here with the "nofollow" attribute. With growing size of the site, I would like to switch to masked affiliate links, so instead of a link like "jdoqocy.com/click-123" I want to use "mydomain.com/recommend/123". My question here is: When switching to masked affiliate links, does it makes sense to also convert all the older unmasked affiliate links? If yes, what would be the best way to do that - Convert all old links at once or convert them over time (e.g. over a few month)? Currently about 2/3 of my site's outbound links are unmasked, external affiliate links. So I am afraid that changing this relatively large share of links from unmasked external affiliate links to masked links doenst look natural at all... Thank you for your advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FabRag0