On Thursday, the Google Search Console link report broke. For many it showed no links at all, and for others, it showed a drop of almost 90% of the links that Google reported they had a week prior.
Google confirmed the issue and decided to show old link data, while it works on fixing the issue.
What Google said. John Mueller from Google initially said:
- “Thanks for the heads-up, Barry. We’ll take a look to see if there’s anything unexpected happening (given the long weekends it might take a bit of time).”
Then on Saturday, the links appeared to return, but it was just a band-aid. John Mueller wrote:
- “They’re working on resolving the actual issue and in the meantime switched back to the data from the week before.”
Old data. So for now, if you go to your link report in Google Search Console, it should be showing old data. Please keep that in mind, if you are using this data for client or stakeholder reporting.
What the bug looked like. Like I said, many saw zero links in that report, while others saw huge drops of over 85% of their links going missing. Here is a screenshot of the report showing zero links:
Why we care. Again, if you are using this link report for client or stakeholder report, it is important to know that the data is not updated. If you pulled in data on Thursday, it might be wrong.
Google is working on fixing the issue, until then, the report will be showing data from weeks ago.
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