Google Reorganizes Internal and External Backlinks in Webmaster Tools

Google has changed the way it looks at external and internal links in Google Webmaster Tools.

Just recently, Susan Moskwa, a Webmaster Trends Analyst, has recently revealed on her post on Google’s Webmaster central Blog that Google has changed the way it categorizes link data in Webmaster tools.

It is common knowledge to professional search engine optimisation experts and webmasters alike that there is a disparity between how webmasters perceived their internal and external backlinks and the way Google viewed these links as Webmaster Tools lists links pointing to a site in two separate categories namely links coming from other sites, and links from within your site.

Now, Google’s new algorithmic update now aims to portray these backlinks in a way that is closely aligned with how webmasters perceive their links. Google now intends to align closely with the SEO Service webmaster’s idea of what they consider to be 'links from their website' vs. 'links from other websites'.

The Recent Change

With the recent update, webmasters can now manage different sites through Webmaster tools --- from a plain domain name (example.com), a subdomain (www.example.com or cats.example.com), or a domain with a subfolder path (www.example.com/cats/ or www.example.com/users/catlover/). 

Previously, Google only categorized as internal links the links that started with your site’s exact URL: so if www.example.com/users/catlover/ is entered as your site, the links from www.example.com/users/catlover/profile.html would be categorized by Google as internal; however, the links from www.example.com/users/ or www.example.com would be categorized as external links. Moreover, if your site’s URL is www.example.com, then links from example.com would be categorized as external because they don’t start with the same URL as your site --- they don’t contain the letters www.

Now, with this new update, links from both, example.com or www.example.com will now be categorized as internal links.

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