Export backlinks from Search Console

What do you need link data for?

Links from other websites, often called backlinks, are still among the signals Google uses to understand pages. According to Google, PageRank is still part of its core ranking systems. In day-to-day work, though, link data is above all a to-do list.

• In a website migration, the list shows which linked URLs need a redirect after the switch. If a backlink then points to an error page, visitors and crawlers hit a dead end.
• In everyday operation, you find linked URLs that now return an error.
• For suspicious links, you check whether they are spam and whether you need to act.

No single source knows every backlink to a website. Search Console provides its selection for free, more data comes from backlink databases or from referral traffic in GA4. For a reliable list, you combine several sources.

How do you export the links from Search Console?

1. Open your property in Search Console and choose “Links” in the menu on the left.
2. Click the button at the top right that exports the external links.
3. Choose “More sample links” or “Latest links”. For the broadest possible list, export both.
4. Choose the format, a CSV file or a Google Sheet.

You can also download each individual table in the report, such as “Top linked pages” or “Top linking sites”. The exports differ mainly in size.

Where does the export reach its limits?

Google itself describes the report as a sample. It is meant to give you an idea of your link profile and is no complete list. Keep these points in mind before you work with the data.

• Not every link is included. Links to pages that are not indexed and merged duplicates can be missing.
• The tables in the report show at most 1,000 rows, the two link exports at most 100,000.
• The report does not say whether a link is nofollow.
• It contains links Google has found over time. Some have since been removed, or the linking page no longer exists.
• Google groups linking sites by root domain. www.example.com becomes example.com, while the top-level domain is kept.
• Values shown as “~” or “-” in the report appear as 0 in the file.

How do you get more than the sample?

The list will never be complete. A few steps still get you more than a single export.

1. Export “Latest links” and “More sample links” and merge the two files, removing duplicate linking URLs.
2. For important pages, go to the individual URL via “Top linked pages” and download the linking sites there.
3. Repeat the export regularly, for example monthly, and keep the files. That way you see which links are new.
4. Add data from GA4. According to Google, the “Page referrer” dimension contains the full referring URL. It shows you links that actually bring visitors.
5. Check the linking pages with a crawler in list mode. Only then do you know whether the link is still there.

The following Python script merges the two exports. It takes the first column with the linking URL from each file, removes duplicates and counts URLs and domains.

Is there an API for Search Console backlinks?

No. The Search Console API covers four areas, namely Search Analytics, Sitemaps, Sites and URL Inspection. Link data is not one of them. The bulk data export to BigQuery also writes only performance data, into the tables searchdata_site_impression and searchdata_url_impression, plus the ExportLog. How that export works is explained in the guide Search Console BigQuery export.

If you need the link data regularly, you therefore export it by hand from the interface. Browser extensions that read the report are no official Google interface.

What do you do with the link data in a migration?

Before a migration, you need the URLs that other sites link to. These target URLs are in the “Top linked pages” table. After go-live, each of them must return status 200 or redirect with a 301 to a fitting new page.

The simplest way is to add the target URLs to your redirect mapping and test them on the staging environment. The guide Testing redirects shows how. After go-live, check the same list on the live website and keep an eye on it. How to find linked error pages afterwards is covered in the guide 404 errors.

Common mistakes

• Using only one of the two link exports.
• Treating the export as the complete list of all backlinks.
• Inferring from the report whether links are nofollow. The report does not contain that information.
• Redirecting only the homepage and categories in a migration and forgetting linked individual pages.
• Disavowing unknown links straight away. According to Google, links from spam sites are usually ignored, and the disavow tool is the last step.

Frequently asked questions