Most people open the Google Search Console Links report, stare at a list of domains and numbers, and have no real idea what to do with it. That's not a knock on anyone — GSC gives you the data but not much context. Here's what each part of the report actually means, and what to do with it.
WHERE TO FIND IT
Log into Search Console, select your verified property, and click Links at the bottom of the left sidebar. You'll land on a page split into External Links and Internal Links. For backlinks specifically, you want the External Links side, which breaks into three reports: Top Linked Pages, Top Linking Sites, and Top Linking Text.
TOP LINKED PAGES — WHAT IT MEANS
This shows which pages on your own site attract the most external links. Your homepage usually sits at the top, but look past that — which blog posts or service pages are earning links naturally? That tells you what content other sites actually find worth referencing. If a page has plenty of backlinks but disappointing traffic, that's often a sign the content is worth refreshing or expanding, since it clearly already has authority.
TOP LINKING SITES — WHAT IT MEANS
This lists the external domains linking to you, grouped by root domain — one site linking to you from 50 different pages shows up as a single domain with a count of 50, not 50 separate rows. Scan this list for domains you don't recognize. Unfamiliar sites sending a lot of links can occasionally indicate spam, though Google has said repeatedly that its algorithm is generally good at ignoring low-quality links on its own, without you needing to manually disavow them.
TOP LINKING TEXT — WHAT IT MEANS
This is your anchor text distribution — the actual clickable words other sites used when linking to you. A healthy profile mixes branded terms (your business name), generic phrases ("click here," "this article"), and topic-relevant keywords. If one exact-match keyword phrase dominates the list, that's sometimes a sign of manipulative link-building rather than natural, editorial links.
WHAT GSC DOESN'T SHOW YOU
This is the part most guides skip. GSC shows the backlinks Google considers worth reporting, sourced from its own index — it is not a complete map of every link on the internet. Paid tools like Ahrefs and Semrush run their own continuous, independent web crawls and surface a much larger dataset, including links Google hasn't reported here. GSC's data is smaller, but it has one real advantage: it's 100% accurate for what it does show, because it comes directly from Google itself rather than a third-party crawler's estimate.
HOW TO EXPORT AND ACTUALLY USE THIS DATA
- Export it. Click "Export External Links" (or the download icon) on any of the three tables to get a CSV.
- Find your best content. Cross-reference Top Linked Pages against your traffic data — pages with links but weak traffic are strong candidates for a content refresh.
- Spot relationship opportunities. Sites appearing repeatedly in Top Linking Sites are worth a direct outreach relationship — they've already shown they're willing to link to you once.
- Check your anchor text health. If Top Linking Text looks unnaturally keyword-heavy, that's worth investigating before it becomes a problem.
MAKING THE RAW DATA EASIER TO READ
The CSV export is useful but not exactly readable at a glance — it's just rows of text and numbers. I built a free tool that turns any of these three GSC exports into an actual visual chart, sorted by count, so patterns are obvious instead of buried in a spreadsheet.