Google Search Console backlinks: how to find, export and track them

Where are backlinks in Google Search Console?

Backlinks are in the Links report: open your property in Search Console, choose Links in the left-hand menu, and look at the External links side of the page. Google defines a backlink in the Links report help as a link on a page from another site that points to a page on your site. The report is free, and it is the only place where Google itself shows you which sites link to you.

You need a verified property first. Once you are in, the steps are short:

1. Pick the property

   Use the property picker at the top left. Google counts anything outside the current property as an external site, so check you are in the property that covers the whole site you care about.

2. Open Links

   Choose Links in the left-hand menu. The landing page has two columns: External links on the left, Internal links on the right.

3. Read the External links tables

   Each table shows its top rows. Select More under a table to open the full list, then select a row to drill down.

4. Drill into one page or one site

   From Top linked pages, choose a page to see which sites link to it. From Top linking sites, choose a site to see which of your pages it links to. Go one level further to see the individual linking pages.

If you only need to know who links to you and which of your pages earn links, this is enough. If you are new to links, start with what backlinks are: how Google uses them, what nofollow, sponsored and ugc mean, and which links to avoid. The rest of this guide explains what the numbers mean, where they stop, and how to turn a one-off look into a record you can compare month to month.

What do Top linked pages, Top linking sites and Top linking text mean?

Top linked pages lists your pages that other sites link to most, Top linking sites lists the sites that link to you most, and Top linking text lists the most common words used in those links. Here is what each one counts, from Google's help page, and what to do with it.

Top linked pages

This is the most useful table for most site owners. It answers “which of my pages have earned links?” Your home page is usually first. After that, look for pages you did not expect: an old guide, a tool, a press page. Those are the topics other sites value. If a page you retired is high on this list, the links to it may be wasted, which the lost links section below deals with. When the linking URL differs from the page shown, Google fills a Target URL column, usually because the link goes through a redirect or because Google chose a different canonical URL.

Top linking sites

This answers “who links to me?” Sites are grouped by root domain: Google strips the protocol, subdomains such as www. and m., and subfolders, so m.example.com and https://example.com/shop/ both count under example.com. Top-level domains are kept apart, so example.com and example.com.de are two sites. Sorting is by number of links, so a single site with a link in its footer can sit above a respected site that linked to you once, in an article. Count is not quality.

Top linking text

This is the anchor text: the visible words of the link. Google's link best practices say anchor text tells people and Google what the linked page is about, and that Google uses links as a signal when it determines the relevancy of pages. Matching is exact and ignores case, so “Hello world” and “HELLO WORLD” combine but “Hello worlds” does not. Expect your brand name and your address near the top. A long list of exact commercial phrases you never asked for can be a sign of spam pointed at your site.

Internal links

The right-hand side of the report counts links inside your own site. It is not about backlinks, but it is the quickest way to see whether a page you want to rank is linked from anywhere else on your site. MrKeyword's internal linking feature goes further, using your own crawl.

How does Search Console count backlinks?

Search Console combines duplicate links, groups your pages by canonical URL, and groups linking sites by root domain, so its counts are smaller and tidier than raw link totals. The rules from Google's help page:

• Duplicates are combined. A duplicate is a link from the same source URL to the same target URL once parameters and other variations are normalised. In the text table, duplicates are judged by the link text instead.
• Your pages are grouped by canonical URL. Links to several versions of one page count toward the version Google chose as canonical.
• Nofollow is not shown. Google says the report doesn't specify whether a link is marked nofollow. Google's guide to qualifying outbound links explains sponsored, ugc and nofollow, but you cannot filter by them here.
• Old links can remain. The report includes links Google has found over time. Some may have been removed since, or the linking page may no longer exist.
• Disavowed links stay visible. Google's disavow help says disavowed links continue to be shown in the Links report.

None of this makes the report wrong. It means you should read it as “links Google knows about and grouped this way”, not as a live count of every link on the web.

What are the limits of the Search Console Links report?

The Links report is a sample, its tables stop at 1,000 rows, and it gives no authority score, no nofollow flag and no dates for when a link was lost. Google says plainly that the report isn't a comprehensive list of every link on your site, and that some URLs may be left out, for example pages that are not indexed or duplicates.

• 1,000 rows on screen. Tables are limited to 1,000 rows, so larger or heavily linked sites see a truncated list. Exporting a single table also stops at 1,000 rows, and sorting the table first does not change what is exported.
• Up to 100,000 rows from the main export. The export on the report's landing page goes further, as the next section explains.
• No API. The Search Console API offers Search Analytics, Sitemaps, Sites and URL Inspection. There is no links resource, so no tool can pull this report automatically for you; it has to be exported by hand.
• No history. There is no date range and no comparison. You see the current state only, so a trend needs your own saved exports.
• Only your verified sites. You cannot see a competitor's links here.
• No quality signal. Google publishes no authority score. A site's position on the list says how many links it gives you, not how much they are worth.

How do I export backlinks from Search Console?

Use the export at the top of the Links report's landing page to download up to 100,000 rows of either Latest links or More sample links, as a CSV file or a Google Sheet. For a single table, open it with More and use that table's export instead, which gives up to 1,000 rows.

1. Choose the slice

   Latest links are the most recently discovered links, sorted by date. More sample links is a sample drawn from all the links Google knows about, which matters when more than 100,000 pages link to you. Both list the individual linking pages.

2. Choose the format

   Download a CSV, or open it in Google Sheets. Google notes that values shown as “~” or “-” export as zeros.

3. Export the tables you need too

   For a domain view, open Top linking sites with More and export it: one row per linking site with its number of linking pages. Do the same for Top linked pages and Top linking text if you want them.

4. Name and date every file

   Use the date in the file name, for example example.com-latest-links-2026-10-31.csv. A folder of dated exports is the history Search Console does not keep for you.

Once a month is enough for most sites. Export straight after a campaign, a site migration or a launch too, so you can compare before and after.

How does Search Console compare with other free backlink sources?

Search Console is the only source that shows Google's own view of your links, but it is limited to your verified sites and gives no link quality data, so most site owners combine it with one or two other free sources. These were the free options we checked on the vendors' own pages. We have not stated prices for paid tiers.

Each source sees a different part of the web, so their totals will never match. The Bing guide on this blog covers how to set up Bing Webmaster Tools, which takes a few minutes if you already use Search Console.

How does MrKeyword combine Search Console links with Common Crawl data?

MrKeyword imports your Search Console export and merges it with links its own crawler has seen and with Common Crawl's domain-level web graph, labelling every row with where it came from. Search Console has no links API, so the import is a file you upload; MrKeyword never scrapes Google.

1. Export from Search Console

   In Search Console: Links → Top linking sites → More → Export → Download CSV. For individual linking pages, use the export at the top of the Links landing page and choose Latest links. The Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools exports work too, as does any CSV with a linking page or linking site column.

2. Import it into Backlink Audit

   In MrKeyword, open Backlink Audit for the website and choose the file under Import backlinks. MrKeyword recognises the Search Console layouts by their columns: Site and Linking pages for Top linking sites, Linking page and Last crawled for Latest links. Files can be up to 10 MB and 50,000 rows.

3. Keep both files

   A Top linking sites import replaces only the previous site list, and a Latest links import replaces only the previous page list, so both can sit side by side. Links from your own site and from infrastructure hosts such as CDNs are skipped.

The imported rows are private to your workspace and appear in three places: Backlink Audit, the in-app Backlink Checker for that website, and the referring domains count in Domain Overview. In Backlink Audit each linking domain is tagged by source: Your import, Bing (if Bing Webmaster Tools is connected), Our crawl, MrKeyword index or Web graph.

What each source adds

• Search Console adds Google's own list of linking pages and sites for your verified site.
• Common Crawl's web graph adds domains that link to you which Google's sample left out. Common Crawl, a public web archive, publishes host- and domain-level graphs; MrKeyword imports the domain level, so this source names linking domains only, never pages or anchor text.
• MrKeyword's own crawl adds page-level links with their anchor text and whether they are nofollow, which Search Console does not show.
• Bing adds the linking pages Bing reports for your most-linked pages, once you connect Bing Webmaster Tools.

Every linking domain then gets a toxicity score from plain-words warning signs, and you can mark it Keep, Remove or Disavow. Backlink Audit writes a disavow.txt in Google's format. Use it with care: Google says to disavow only when you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links that have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action, and its disavow tool does not support Domain properties. For context on link quality, see what domain authority is and the free domain authority checker.

How do I find lost backlinks with Search Console?

Search Console has no lost links report, so you find lost links by comparing dated exports, confirming each missing link on the linking page itself, and checking whether the page it pointed to still works. A link can be lost in two ways: the other site removed it, or your page moved or broke and the link now leads nowhere. The second kind is the one you can fix yourself.

1. Compare two exports

   Put last month's and this month's Latest links (or Top linking sites) exports side by side in a spreadsheet. A lookup on the linking page or site column shows which rows dropped out. Treat those as candidates, not as confirmed losses, because the report is a sample.

2. Check the linking pages

   Open each candidate page and look for the link. If you have many, MrKeyword's Your known links card in Link Building checks up to 200 linking pages per website when you add them and again every week, and marks each one live, missing (the page loads without the link), gone (the page answers an error) or blocked (its robots.txt disallows MrKeyword's crawler, so it is not fetched).

3. Check your own linked pages

   Take the Top linked pages export and check each URL still loads. A page that now returns 404 is wasting every link pointing at it. MrKeyword's Link Recovery lists your pages that answer 4xx while other sites still link to them, and suggests the closest live page to 301-redirect to, with ready-to-paste redirect rules. It uses Bing's link data, your site crawl and MrKeyword's link index; it does not yet read your Search Console import, so check that export's top linked pages by hand or in a site audit.

4. Watch referring domains over time

   The backlink checker lists referring domains gained and lost between Common Crawl web graph releases. That is a slow, domain-level signal, but it covers links outside Google's sample.

5. Ask, or redirect

   If a link was removed in a redesign of the other site, a short, polite note to its owner sometimes brings it back. If your page moved, a 301 redirect to the right page is faster and fully in your control.

For pages with outgoing broken links on your own site, the free broken link checker tests every link on a page. And if a drop in links coincides with a drop in clicks, work through the traffic drop checklist before assuming links are the cause.

What should I do with my Search Console backlink data?

Use it to protect the links you already have, to learn which pages earn links, and to spot spam, not to chase a bigger number. Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links primarily to manipulate rankings, and list buying links, excessive link exchanges and automated link building as examples. A few practical habits work better:

• Create more of what earns links. The pages at the top of Top linked pages show what other sites find worth citing. Update them, and publish more like them.
• Keep linked pages alive. Before you delete or move a page, check whether other sites link to it, and redirect it if they do.
• Review new linking sites monthly. Unknown sites are usually harmless; Google says it typically ignores links from known spam sites. Act only on a clear pattern.
• Link to your own key pages. Internal links from pages with strong backlinks pass visitors, and context, to the pages you want to rank.

For a wider plan, see how to increase domain authority. To check whether link work is moving your positions, Search Console's average position is the honest measure, and you can ask questions of the same data from Claude with the Search Console MCP guide.

What MrKeyword does not do

MrKeyword does not see every backlink on the web, and it cannot fetch your Search Console Links report on its own, because Google offers no API for it.

• It does not pull the Links report automatically; you export the CSV and import it.
• It does not get page-level links or anchor text from Common Crawl, whose web graph is domain-level in MrKeyword.
• It does not buy data from paid backlink indexes, and it never scrapes Google.
• It does not tell you which links Google counts or ignores. Nobody outside Google can.
• It does not submit a disavow file for you. It writes the file; uploading it to Google is your decision.

See pricing for what each plan includes, or start with the free backlink checker.

Questions and answers