How to See Which Sites Link to You in Google Search Console: The Links Report, Exports and Press Checks

What Is a Backlink in Search Console?

A backlink is, in Google's words, “a link on a page from another site that links to a page on your site.”

Search Console reports backlinks in its Links report, which Google describes as a way to “see who links to you the most, your top-linked pages, and more” (Google Search Console Help, Links report). The same report also lists internal links, meaning links from your own pages to your own pages. “External” in the report means anything outside the current property. The report is free and available to anyone with access to a verified property; if you have not set one up yet, start with how to verify your site in Google Search Console.

How to See Your Backlinks in Search Console at a Glance

Time: about 15 to 30 minutes for a first review (our estimate). Tools: a Google account with access to a Search Console property, a spreadsheet, a web browser; optionally a Bing Webmaster Tools account. Cost: none. Skill level: beginner; Step 7 needs basic comfort with a browser's page inspector.

What You Need Before Starting

• A verified Search Console property, or a user role on one granted by an owner.
• Ideally a Domain property. Google says the Links report groups data by root domain anyway, stripping protocol, subdomain and subdirectory, so m.example.com and https://example.com are counted together.
• A list of the press placements you want to confirm: publication, article URL, date published, and the page on your site it was meant to link to.
• A spreadsheet to hold exports. Google says values shown as ~ or - in the report become zeros in downloaded data.
• For the second view: a Bing Webmaster Tools account. Sites verified in Search Console can be imported, as covered in Google Search Console vs Bing Webmaster Tools.

Step 1: Open the Links Report for Your Property

Open the Links report from Search Console for the property you want to inspect. Google's help page for the report has an “Open the links report” link that asks you to choose a property (Links report).

Why: this is the only place in Search Console that lists sites linking to you. What you see: two groups of tables, External links (top linked pages, top linking sites, top linking text) and Internal links (top linked pages). Each table has a MORE link at the bottom that opens the full list.

Expected result: populated tables. How to verify: the external tables show at least some domains other than yours. Common mistake: reading an empty report for a brand-new property as proof of zero links. Google says data is collected for a property as soon as anyone adds it, but takes a few days to appear (Verify your site ownership); a new site may also simply have few links Google has found.

Step 2: Read the Top Linking Sites Table

Open Links report > External links > Top linking sites and click MORE to see the full list. Google describes it as showing “the root domain of sites with the most links to your site, sorted by count of links.”

How to read it: each row is a root domain, not a page. Google says subdomains are omitted, so links from news.example.org appear as example.org. If your own domain appears in the list, Google explains that it represents one of your subdomains linking to the property.

What Google suggests using it for: confirming that you recognise the sites listed, and checking “whether sites that are important to you point to your site”. For a company that has run a PR programme, that means looking for the publications you were covered in.

Expected result: a ranked list of linking domains. How to verify: spot-check one domain you know links to you. Common mistake: treating the count column as a quality measure. A site-wide footer link can produce thousands of links from one domain; one editorial article produces one.

Step 3: Drill Into One Linking Site to See the Exact Pages

Click a domain in Top linking sites, then click one of your pages in the list that opens, to reach the table of individual linking pages. Google documents the path as Links report > External links > Top linking sites > MORE > [site] > [page].

What the table shows: a Linking page column (the URL on the other site) and a Target URL (if different) column. Google says a value in the second column means the link URL is not the target page, either because your site redirects it or because Google chose a different canonical URL for it.

Expected result: the specific article or page URL on the other site. How to verify: open the linking page and find the link. Common mistake: assuming every listed link still exists. Google says the report “includes links that Google has found over time”, which “may have since been removed”.

Step 4: Check Top Linked Pages and Top Linking Text

Open Top linked pages to see which of your pages earn the most backlinks, then Top linking text to see the anchor text other sites use.

• Top linked pages: Google suggests using it to “confirm that your most linked pages are the ones that you expect.” Click a URL to see the top sites linking to that page. Google says the per-page site breakdown is available only for pages in this table.
• Top linking text: covers only links from outside your property. Duplicates are combined case-insensitively, so “Hello world” and “HELLO WORLD” count as one. Image links with no text show as “(empty)”. Google suggests checking that the text is “not spammy” and that other sites describe you accurately.

Expected result: a view of which pages attract links and how they are described. How to verify: your homepage or a well-covered page should sit near the top. Common mistake: ignoring keyword-heavy anchor text. Google's link spam policy names “links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites” as an example of link spam (Google spam policies).

Step 5: Review Internal Links

Open the internal Top linked pages table to see which of your pages are linked most from within your own site, then click a URL to see which of your pages link to it.

Why: Google suggests using it to “confirm that the core site pages (home page, contact page) are properly linked within your site.” For PR purposes, this is where you check that a newsroom or press page is reachable from the rest of the site. Expected result: core pages near the top. How to verify: click a page you expect to be well linked. Common mistake: confusing internal and external counts; internal links say nothing about who else links to you.

Step 6: Export the Link Data

Click the Export button on the Links report landing page and choose a data slice. Google says you can export “up to 100,000 rows” as a CSV file or a Google Sheet.

Expected result: a file or Sheet listing linking pages and target pages. How to verify: filter the file for a domain you saw in Step 2. Common mistake: exporting only from a single table and assuming you have everything; on-page tables cap at 1,000 rows.

Step 7: Confirm That Press Placements Actually Link, and How

Search your export for each publication's domain, then open each article and inspect the link itself. The report can tell you Google found a link; only the live page can tell you what kind of link it is.

1. Search the exports. Filter Latest links for the publication's domain or the article URL. If it is not there, check More sample links.
2. Open the article. Confirm the link is still present and points to the page you agreed. Google says listed links may since have been removed.
3. Inspect the link element. Right-click the link and choose your browser's inspect option, or view the page source and search for your domain. Read the rel attribute on the <a> tag.
4. Record what you find: no rel value, sponsored, ugc, nofollow, or a combination.

<a href="https://www.example.com/">Example Co</a>                    <!-- no qualification -->
<a rel="sponsored" href="https://www.example.com/">Example Co</a>    <!-- paid placement -->
<a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.example.com/">Example Co</a>     <!-- no endorsement -->

Why the extra check: Google says the Links report “doesn't specify if a link is marked as nofollow” (Links report). Google's outbound-link documentation says links marked sponsored, ugc or nofollow “will generally not be followed” (Google, Qualify your outbound links). Wire releases are a common case: in our own check of 70 PR Newswire releases, every external link in a release body carried rel=nofollow, as reported in do wire services nofollow your links.

Expected result: a placement log with a link status and rel value per article. How to verify: a colleague repeating the inspection sees the same attribute. Common mistake: counting a placement as a “backlink win” because it appears in Search Console. Appearing in the report does not tell you whether the link is qualified, and a link count is not a measure of outcome; see how to measure whether a placement worked.

Step 8: Cross-Check in Bing Webmaster Tools' Backlinks Report

Open the Backlinks report in Bing Webmaster Tools for the same site to get a second, independent sample. Bing says the report shows “the aggregated count of referring pages, referring domains and anchor texts detected by Bing” (Bing Webmaster Tools Help, Backlinks).

Bing's Download all button exports the Domains data as CSV and also exports the Pages data; Bing says Anchor texts data can be exported too. Expected result: a second list to compare with Google's. How to verify: look for the same press domains in both. Common mistake: expecting the totals to match. Bing describes its data as “a representative set of links” and “not a complete backlinks profile”; Google calls its report a sample. Bing's help page for the report does not say whether nofollow links are included or flagged, so the page check in Step 7 still applies.

What the Links Report's “Sample” Means

The Links report is a sample of the links Google knows about, not a full inventory. Google says it “isn't a comprehensive list of every link on your site” and shows “a sample of internal and external links to help you understand your site's overall link profile” (Links report). The documented limits:

• Omissions: “Some URLs might be omitted for various reasons, such as non-indexed pages or deduped URLs.”
• Deduplication: a duplicate link (same source URL to same target URL after parameters are removed) is combined. In the link text table, duplicates are based on the text.
• Canonical grouping: your pages are grouped by canonical URL, so anchors and some parameters are dropped.
• Row caps: tables are limited to 1,000 rows; exports to 100,000 rows per slice.
• History: links found over time are included even if since removed.
• No rel data: the report does not say whether a link is nofollow.
• Top-level domains are kept apart: example.com and example.com.de are not grouped.

Google does not publish how quickly a newly published link appears in the report. Treat absence from the report as “not seen in this sample yet”, not as proof that a link does not exist.

What Google's Link Spam Policy Says About Paid Placements

Google allows paid links, as long as they are qualified so they do not pass ranking credit. Its spam policies define link spam as “creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings” and list, among the examples, “exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links” and “advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass ranking credit” (Google Search Central, Spam policies).

The same policy says buying and selling links for advertising and sponsorship is “not a violation of our policies” when links are qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". Google's outbound-link guide says to mark “advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links)” with sponsored, and that nofollow “is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred” (Qualify your outbound links). Bing's guidelines also list “link buying” under link schemes that violate its guidelines (Bing Webmaster Guidelines).

In practice, a sponsored article that carries rel="sponsored" is the expected outcome, not a fault. A paid article whose link carries no qualification is the publisher's policy risk and yours. The trade-offs are covered in does a paid placement pass SEO value. If unqualified paid links already exist, Google's first recommendation is to get them removed; it reserves the disavow tool for a “considerable number” of spammy links tied to an actual or likely manual action, and warns that incorrect use “can potentially harm your site's performance” (Google, Disavow links to your site).

How to Verify It Worked

• Report populated: Top linking sites lists domains other than your own.
• Drill-down works: clicking a domain and a page shows at least one Linking page URL that opens in a browser and contains the link.
• Exports saved: you have a Latest links file with a discovery-date column and a More sample links file.
• Placements logged: each press placement in your list has a status (found in report / found on page only / not linked) and a recorded rel value from the live page.
• Second view: Bing's Domains view lists your key press domains, or you have noted which it does not.

How to Choose Which View to Use

Common Problems and Fixes

What Not to Do

• Do not report the Links report total as “all our backlinks”. Consequence: an inaccurate number in a client or board report. Correction: call it Google's sample and date it.
• Do not infer follow status from the report. Consequence: counting nofollow or sponsored links as ranking links. Correction: inspect the live page (Step 7).
• Do not ask a publisher to remove rel="sponsored" from a paid link. Consequence: the link becomes the kind Google's policy names as link spam. Correction: accept the qualification and judge the placement on readership and coverage.
• Do not request keyword-rich anchor text in press releases or guest posts. Consequence: Google lists optimised anchors in such content as link spam. Correction: let the publisher use your company name or a plain description.
• Do not disavow links reflexively. Consequence: Google warns misuse can harm performance. Correction: use it only under the conditions Google sets.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Methodology

This guide is built from Google Search Console Help, Google Search Central documentation and Bing Webmaster Tools Help. Google pages were read on October 7, 2026. The Bing Backlinks page, which loads with JavaScript, was read in a browser on October 7, 2026; the Bing Webmaster Guidelines were read in a browser on October 7, 2026. Interface labels in bold are quoted from those pages. We did not open a Search Console or Bing property for this guide, so we have not tested how long new links take to appear; neither Google nor Bing publishes that. The wire-release finding comes from our own earlier data report, linked in Step 7. Time estimates are ours.

1. official Google Search Console Help, Links report. Tables, sampling, grouping, nofollow note, exports. Read October 7, 2026.
2. official Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search, link spam section. Last updated August 28, 2026; read October 7, 2026.
3. official Google Search Central, Qualify your outbound links to Google. sponsored, ugc, nofollow. Last updated December 10, 2025; read October 7, 2026.
4. official Google Search Console Help, Disavow links to your site. When to disavow; disavowed links still shown. Read October 7, 2026.
5. official Bing Webmaster Tools Help, Backlinks. Views, limits, export. Read October 7, 2026.
6. official Bing Webmaster Tools Help, Bing Webmaster Guidelines. Link schemes. Read October 7, 2026.