How to Check Backlinks in Google Search Console, and When to Disavow

What the Links report can and cannot tell you

The Links report is the backlink view built into Search Console. It shows which sites link to yours, which of your pages they point to, the anchor text they use and how your own pages link to each other. It is free, and it comes from Google's own crawl rather than a third-party index. It is still a sample, not a full backlink index. This guide covers what each table means, how to export far more than the screen shows, and when, rarely, the disavow tool makes sense.

The short version is reassuring. Google typically ignores links from known spam sites, so the scary domains in your list are usually noise. The real value lies elsewhere: in your internal links, in the pages that earn links on their own, and in a monthly export that shows who started linking to you. Disavow is a repair tool for real link schemes and manual actions. It is not routine hygiene.

Reading the four tables

Open Search Console, choose your property and click Links in the left menu ^[1]. The landing page shows four tables: top linked pages, top linking sites, top linking text and top internally linked pages. Each has a MORE link that opens the full list. The first three describe links from other sites; the fourth looks inward, and it usually holds the more useful findings.

Top linked pages

This table lists your pages with the most external links, grouped by canonical URL, so anchors and some parameters are dropped. On most business sites the home page holds the majority of links. The next rows are the interesting ones, because they reveal which content earns links on its own, such as a study, a calculator or a guide. That is the best hint about what to create more of. Click a page in the full list to see the sites that link to it, a view worth checking before you update or redirect a page.

Top linking sites

This table shows the root domains with the most links to you, sorted by link count. Subdomains fold into the root, so www.example.com appears as example.com. Click a site, then a page, to see which of your pages that site links to, which helps when you judge one partner or one suspicious domain. A single site with thousands of links usually means a sitewide footer or blogroll link, which Google normally handles without your help. A domain identical to your own stands for one of your subdomains, such as a blog. Those are not external votes.

Top linking text and internal links

Top linking text lists the anchor text other sites use. It covers only outside links, combines duplicates regardless of case, and shows image links as empty. A natural profile mixes brand names, URLs, generic words and descriptive phrases, and brand anchors dominating is normal. If a large share of anchors repeat one commercial keyword, that pattern deserves a closer look.

The fourth table counts links from your own site, and Google suggests using it to confirm that core pages like the home and contact pages are properly linked. It often shows a lopsided picture. The privacy policy and contact page lead because they sit in every footer, while the product that brings most revenue sits three clicks deep with a handful of links. That gap is the easiest win in the report.

Why the report shows less than exists

Google is explicit that the report shows a sample of internal and external links, not a complete list ^[1]. Some URLs are left out, such as non-indexed pages and deduplicated URLs. So a link missing from the report may still exist and count, and a link listed here may carry no weight at all. Data is also grouped by root domain, with the protocol, subdomains like m. and www, and subdirectories stripped and merged. Keep that in mind when you count linking sites.

Two more quirks catch people out. Tables are capped at 1,000 rows, so a site with links from 3,000 domains sees only a third of them in the table. The report also includes links Google has found over time, and some may have been removed since, or sat on pages that no longer exist. Old links linger. Before you email a site about a link, open the page and check that the link is still live.

Exporting the full picture: up to 100,000 rows

The answer to the row cap is the Export button on the report's landing page. It offers up to 100,000 rows as a CSV file or a Google Sheet, which is 100 times the table limit, while exports from a single table page stop at 1,000 rows. Values shown as ~ or - become zeros in the file. Any serious audit should start from the export, never from scrolling the report. Latest links gives the most recently discovered links, sorted by discovery date, and more sample links draws from the full set Google knows. Use the first for monitoring and the second for a broad audit.

One column needs explaining. A value under Target URL if different means the link points to a different URL than the page listed, for example because of a redirect or because Google chose the target as canonical. Links to redirected URLs still reach the final page, so a full column after a migration is expected.

The blind spots, and the tools that fill them

The report does not say whether a link is nofollow, so a list of linking sites can include many links that pass nothing. It shows no link dates in the tables, no quality score, no domain authority and no links to competitors. Above all, it does not tell you which links Google counts. Do not count raw links as votes. For sites that run sponsored posts or user forums, many links may be nofollow by design, and counting them would make the profile look far stronger than Google treats it.

Ahrefs Free uses Ahrefs' own index and shows up to 1,000 backlinks at once for verified sites. Its comparison table claims all known links against a top 1,000 in Search Console, a vendor's framing, since Google's landing page export reaches 100,000 rows. Use both. Bing Webmaster Tools shows referring domains and anchor text for both your own site and competitors ^[2], which makes it the only free first-party look at who links to rivals. Paid tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Mangools add dates, metrics, lost links and competitor data; Ahrefs Lite costs $129 a month. For simple monitoring, the free export is enough.

Spam links, manual actions and when to worry

For known spam sites, Google says it typically ignores the links ^[1], and its disavow page adds that in most cases Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance. Most spammy links are noise, and panic about them causes more harm than the links themselves. A sudden ranking drop alone is not proof either. Check manual actions first.

Worry in two situations. The clear one is a manual action for unnatural links, which means a human reviewer at Google decided that pages on the site break the spam policies ^[3]. You are notified in the report and the message center, and Google emails owners, so a daily check is unnecessary. The second is a history of links bought or built at scale: a past paid campaign, thousands of links with one commercial anchor, or link networks. Google's disavow page says to act only when there are many spammy or artificial links and they have caused, or likely will cause, a manual action.

Cleaning up after a link scheme

Audit by domain, not by link

Google suggests downloading links arranged by hostname, through the Top linking sites export, or in chronological order. Sort the file by domain and mark each domain as fine, unknown or bad, then check the unknown ones in a browser. If the list is large, start with the sites that link to you most or the links created recently. A site with 4,000 links from 200 domains needs 200 decisions, not 4,000. Most domains will be fine. One row per domain, with link count, first seen date, decision and contact attempt, is enough.

Remove first, then ask for review

Before disavowing, Google recommends removing as many spammy or low-quality links from the web as possible. Email site owners where contact exists and record each attempt and reply. Removal beats disavow on reach, because a removed link is gone for every search engine and reader, while a disavowed link only stops counting in Google. When the issues are fixed on all pages, select Request Review in the Manual actions report; fixing only some pages earns no partial return.

Google warns that "Blindly adding all backlinks to the disavow file is not considered a good-faith effort", and disavowing everything without removal attempts might lead to rejection. A good request explains the exact issue, the steps you took and the outcome. List removal attempts and results, summarize the disavow file, and say so if you bought the site. Reviews can take several days or weeks. Link-related ones may take longer.

Disavow: a repair tool with sharp edges

Disavow tells Google to ignore specific links or domains, through a text file you upload in the disavow links tool ^[4]. It does not remove links from the web, and disavowed links keep appearing in the Links report, which shows links Google found, not links it counts. Google calls it an advanced feature to use with caution that can harm your site's performance if used incorrectly. Many sites disavow out of fear and lose links that helped them.

Google says "most sites will not need to use this tool". Sites with no manual action and no history of artificial links should leave it alone. The real candidates are few: sites with a manual action for unnatural links or a known past of paid links likely to cause one, agencies cleaning up a client's old scheme, and buyers of a site with such a history.

Property type and file rules

The tool does not support Domain properties, so you need a URL-prefix property, and if you have both http and https properties, you upload a list for each. A list applies to its property and its child properties, so a list on example.com also covers m.example.com. With lists on both, the effective list is the combination. Keep one master file and upload it to each relevant property. The file follows strict rules:

• Plain text, encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII, with a name ending in .txt.
• One URL or domain per line; start a line with domain: to cover a whole domain or subdomain.
• No subpaths, such as example.com/en/.
• Lines that begin with # are ignored as comments, but they count toward the line limit.
• At most 2,048 characters per URL, 100,000 lines (blank and comment lines included) and 2MB.

Start from the Links report export, remove the links you want to keep, and save the rest as plain text. Domain lines beat URL lines for spam sites, because spam networks keep creating new URLs on the same domains and a URL list goes stale within weeks. Most files are short. A cleanup of a past link scheme might list 150 domains and a few dozen exact URLs, and a file growing toward the limit usually signals fear rather than evidence.

Uploading, replacing and waiting

You must be a property owner to upload, and each property holds one disavow list. If the file has errors, they show at once and the old list stays. Uploading a new list replaces the existing one, so always upload the full file, never only new lines. To remove all disavowals, click Cancel Disavowals. It can take a few weeks for Google to incorporate a list as it recrawls the web, and a rarely crawled domain may take months. Judging a disavow after two weeks is too early; after six months is usually fair. Judge it by manual action status and rankings, not by the Links report.

Turning link data into better rankings

The most useful part of the report has nothing to do with spam. Compare Top internally linked pages with your most important pages. Pages that earn money but have few internal links need links from strong, related pages. The report does not list pages with zero internal links, but you can compare your sitemap with the internal links export: sitemap pages that never appear there have few or no links. On the external side, top linked pages show what already attracts links, such as studies, tools and guides, so make more of that. Pages with many links but weak rankings may have content problems. Our Search Console SEO audit checklist puts these checks in context.

A routine that keeps links under control

Check monthly for most sites, and weekly during a cleanup or after a manual action. Once a month, export Latest links and compare it with last month's file using a lookup on the linking domain column. New domains appear at the top. Check the unusual ones. The job takes ten minutes and catches both press coverage and attacks, such as a sudden wave of links from one network. A jump from 20 new domains a month to 400 deserves a closer look either way. Every quarter, go one level deeper; two hours a quarter keeps the link profile under control without a paid tool:

• Export Latest links and sample links, and count new and lost domains.
• Review the top 50 linking sites and check the anchor patterns.
• Review the disavow file, if one exists.
• Check internal links to your ten most important pages.

After a domain move, links to the old domain flow through 301 redirects, and the Change of Address tool helps Google transfer signals. Keep the redirects at least 180 days. Then check the Target URL column in the new property's Links report to confirm that old links reach the new pages.

The bottom line

The Links report is a free sample of what Google found. It is good for internal linking, monitoring and manual action cleanups, and weak for competitive link research. Export from the landing page, count domains rather than links, and remember that nofollow and long-gone links sit in the same list as the ones that count. Disavow is a repair tool for real link schemes, not routine hygiene. When in doubt, remove what you can, monitor the rest and leave disavow alone. For tools that go further, see our Search Console alternatives guide.