It is well known that Search Console doesn’t show all the links that are pointing to a site. We have heard a rumor in the SEO community that if you download all your links from Search Console, the link data will refresh and you get more links that Google is considering for your site’s rank. We put this myth to the test.
Test Downloads
Transcription Below
This took two weeks. There is this concept in SEO, this mythology that if you download your backlinks in Search Console, they will refresh and you will actually get more backlinks and you will see exactly what Google, or at least have a better picture of what Google is using when calculating your page rank, score, or maybe your strength. Which backlinks is it actually considering? Cause we know that Google is not showing all of your backlinks. What you see within Search Console is a very limited view of what is actually coming into your site. So, the idea is that Google is actually using that which its showing and other things but if you constantly refresh and download out of search console, you actually get more backlinks and you can actually get insight to what Google is using to rank your pages. That is the concept. I wanted to take a look.
What I did was, I downloaded the content several times from three different live account and then compared all that data. The thing to understand is that there are actually three things to download. It is actually not just one area in Search Console. There is the overview all domains and this is what it looks like in that. This kind of lists all the domains Google claims in search console, these are your top domains. I think Josh Bachynsky has the theory that some of these are the best ones and some of these are the worst ones. When you look at these, you think how are these the top domains, I have no idea. This is the screen of top domains and then you can see the download the table which has the “top domains”, the next section is the button that says “download more sample links”. It is important to know that on that first one, this domain one, you can’t actually see the links. Download sample links then is the idea is, does it give you some of the links that are not showing perhaps. And then the thirds section is download latest links so the most recent links they claim to have seen. That is also not domain specific.
Probably in theory, when people say you download from Search Console, you get more, I do not know what they are talking about. There are three things to download so that means I have to download all of them and evaluate all of them.
Dori: Is each one different or does each one provide a little more?
That is what I wanted to find out – are these things the same thing, are they different, is this what they are talking about – if you download from the latest things, or sample links, are these the ones that refresh and would do it. That is what I was looking at. I also compared with Ahref and Majestic which I thought would be easy but I did a lot of work. As it turns out, it is really hard to compare two data sets.
Client one is a small brewery, they have a brand new site, it is under a year old, there are 15 pages on the site. They have their data in Ahref, Majestic, and this is what they have in Search Console. The thing to point out, on the subsequent downloads on the different days, I did days that are very close to each other and did one that is far away to see if there is an impact if I did two back to backs. What you’ll notice is that they actually came down. The number of domains that they displayed dropped across the board. So 98, 97, 89 for the overview, the more sample links – 101, 192, 100, 193, out of the latest links. This is kind of standard as you go through these different clients. The amount of links that are displayed either rises or drops if the site is losing or gaining links. So two of these clients are losing links and they lose it across the board. The third client is gaining links and it is gaining across the board. Then I went through and compared these ones and the sample links in the different domains and you can see that the domains are actually just three. It gave you three domains, it didn’t give you a whole new data set and these are the same from the 101 to 100. What I found was it doesn’t change them. You stay with the same number of domains, they do not really change. We are talking the difference between one or two on these downloads. All these data are in here and I won’t bore you with it but you can go through it at your leisure.
The end result here was, does Search Console give you more backlinks or linking domains if you refresh or you download, the answer is no. The domains and links you see trend with how you are trending – if you are gaining, they gain, if you are losing, they lose. You get one or two more. Client one, we find three extra in the sample links, client two got one, client three got four. That is not a huge amount of insight that you are getting some special insight in those domains, is just not there. You do not get any extra bonus or extra insight.
Then I compared with Ahref and Majestic with what they are showing. Client 1, Ahref says 40, Majestic says 37. Ahrefs missed 71, Majestic missed 74, Ahrefs had 9 extra ones that were not displayed in search console, Majestic had 4. Now, on these extra ones, Google might be using these, we do not know. We are hoping to find out. Is Google just ignoring them and that is why there are extra ones. Are they counting them and just really not displaying it?
What really impressed me on this is that 3rd party data is really just having blindfolds on and throwing darts at a barn and maybe they are hitting the side of the barn, the roof of the barn, maybe they are just hitting the dirt, who knows?
Dori: They are really missing a lot.
Maybe. With the extra domains, maybe they need that extra data that Google is also considering so maybe that is good. I do not know. Keep in mind, three clients are a smalls sample set, of course. But it is pretty impressive how across the board these are. I honestly do not have an alternative. You cannot not use Ahrefs, you cannot not use Majestic, or Moz or whatever you prefer. We have to have measuring sticks so we could try to track data but do not put all your heart and soul into things because God only knows if they are measuring the right ones, putting out the right ones, if Google are looking at those or not, don’t know at all.
Dori: Pretty interesting. I use Majestic as my barometer. It has been my barometer since its inception but it seems like they have changed, too. They are not following no follow links when I believe that they used to and this is what we have discussed today. All of a sudden, trust flow totally went down on everything for sites. Hey, what happened to my barometer here and I had a good sense by using that system and now I have to move over.
That is kind of my thought. It you think about the big 3 or 4, counting Moz and SEMRush as those big 4. The goal is to pick 2 of those and use them and roll with it. Understand that they might not show everything and that they might miss a lot.