Google’s John Mueller was asked on Twitter why the pipeline to get data into the link report within Google Search Console seems slower than most the other reports. In short, John said that links is not an area they think SEOs should focus too much on and thus the report is not an area where Google thinks there is “any need to spend lots of resources” on.
John was asked “A GSC property filled with data except for “Links” section, 6 days after the creation of the account, is it normal? For both Domain and Prefix URL accounts (for an old website).” So why is the link report so much slower than the other reports to fill in the data. John gave a few answers:
(1) “Different parts of the reports use different pipelines, which populate in different frequencies. That’s why when you add a new site, you see some data, but not a lot, and over the next days it starts filling up,” he said.
(2) “Sometimes one cycle breaks too, and it waits for the next run,” John added.
(3) “We don’t focus that much on links,” John said, he added “I don’t see any need to spend lots of resources on the links report – it’s not something we tell people to focus on.”
So Google isn’t dropping links but the company does not want you to focus too much on them. It does seem SEOs are focusing a lot less on links these days based on a recent poll we ran.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
