‘If I had a penny….’. Well if I did have a penny for every time someone has posted on the Google Webmaster Group asking “Why doesn’t Google see my links” I’d might be able to buy a drink or two at the Irish Blog Awards. But that’s another story.

Google publishes extensive link data

People have been complaining for years that the link: operator doesn’t work. It still doesn’t work, but you can now log into your Google Webmaster Console and get a very full and wholesome report on your backlink profile. This goes far beyond anything else that’s currently available, and it’s fascinating to see the number of links to some of my inner pages. I had seen some figures from Y! but I’m surprised to see over 4,500 links to inner pages of my site.

I won’t bother explaining this any further as Danny Sullivan has created what I imagine will become a reference piece on the subject over on Search Engine Land.

The only catch

The data is only available to site owners who validate their sites within the console. So you won’t be able to view backlink profiles to other sites unless you’ve validated those sites in your console.

But leaving that aside, this is a very welcome move by Google, and all the more reason to sign up for the Webmaster Console (previously Sitemaps) program.