Google’s John Mueller reiterated something he said before, he said on Twitter “there is no objective way to count links.” He said this in 2019 when he said, “counting links on the web correctly is technically impossible, and everyone just makes different approximations & assumptions.”
John later added saying, “don’t focus on the number of links any particular tool shows — there is no “correct” way to count links, interpretations vary wildly.” “Think of links as a way that people can reach your site, not as a metric of its own. The number of links any tool shows is not a ranking factor,” he added.
Here is that new tweet where he said this:
There is no objective way to count links. As for that report, check out the docs 🙂
— 🫧 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🫧 (@JohnMu) July 22, 2022
He then posted this:
Don’t focus on the number of links any particular tool shows — there is no “correct” way to count links, interpretations vary wildly. Think of links as a way that people can reach your site, not as a metric of its own. The number of links any tool shows is not a ranking factor.
— 🫧 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🫧 (@JohnMu) July 22, 2022
The late Russ Jones in 2019 echoed John’s statement and if you remember, Russ ran a lot of Moz’s tools around counting links (I am simplifying plying what he did).
Agreed. Which is why when presenting data we should be as clear as possible about how it is collected, counted, what assumptions are made, etc.
— Russ Jones (@rjonesx) September 12, 2019
Forum discussion at Twitter.