Improved backlink sampling data for websites with Webmaster Tools

Google has recently upgraded how Webmaster Tools works with backlink data to provide better oversight to marketers and website owners.

For many professionals, Webmaster Tools is an indispensable resource for SEO analysis and search health.

One of the problems the Google team was trying to solve was that the website owners what website owners received when they chose to download the 100,000 backlink list on their websites using "Download more sample links" button.  For some websites that data did not provide a clear overview of link health for a website as the results tended to rank links in alphabetical order. One of the big improvements Google recently made was to change the way links are sampled making them more uniform from the full spectrum of backlinks rather than alphabetically.

This change was inspired by feedback from the webmaster community, as many site owners were frustrated by the limited profile of a website's backlink health. The update will offer a much broader, more diverse cross-section of links. This will help website owners and marketing teams understand:

1. How effective & appealing their content is online
2. If there are bad linking practices that need to be cleaned up

The maximum number of links that Google Webmaster Tools will allow for export is still about 100,000 backlinks. Many users lobbying for Google to increase the number, but instead Google decided to focus on the sampling offered.