Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 2:57 PM
Webmaster level: AllToday we’re making a change to the way we categorize link data in Webmaster Tools. As you know, Webmaster Tools lists links pointing to your site in two separate categories: links coming from other sites, and links from within your site. Today’s update won’t change your total number of links, but will hopefully present your backlinks in a way that more closely aligns with your idea of which links are actually from your site vs. from other sites.
You can manage many different types of sites in Webmaster Tools: a plain domain name (example.com), a subdomain (www.example.com or cats.example.com), or a domain with a subfolder path (www.example.com/cats/ or www.example.com/users/catlover/). Previously, only links that started with your site’s exact URL would be categorized as internal links: so if you entered www.example.com/users/catlover/ as your site, links from www.example.com/users/catlover/profile.html would be categorized as internal, but links from www.example.com/users/ or www.example.com would be categorized as external links. This also meant that if you entered www.example.com as your site, links from example.com would be considered external because they don’t start with the same URL as your site (they don’t contain www).
Most people think of example.com and www.example.com as the same site these days, so we’re changing it such that now, if you add either example.com or www.example.com as a site, links from both the www and non-www versions of the domain will be categorized as internal links. We’ve also extended this idea to include other subdomains, since many people who own a domain also own its subdomains—so links from cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorized as internal links for www.example.com.
| Links for www.google.com | External links | Internal links |
| Previously categorized as... | www.example.com/ www.example.org/stuff.html scholar.google.com/ sketchup.google.com/ google.com/ | www.google.com/ www.google.com/stuff.html www.google.com/support/webmasters/ |
| Now categorized as... | www.example.com/ www.example.org/stuff.html | scholar.google.com/ sketchup.google.com/ google.com/ www.google.com/ www.google.com/stuff.html www.google.com/support/webmasters/ |
If you own a site that’s on a subdomain (such as googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) or in a subfolder (www.google.com/support/webmasters/) and don’t own the root domain, you’ll still only see links from URLs starting with that subdomain or subfolder in your internal links, and all others will be categorized as external links. We’ve made a few backend changes so that these numbers should be even more accurate for you.
Note that, if you own a root domain like example.com or www.example.com, your number of external links may appear to go down with this change; this is because, as described above, some of the URLs we were previously classifying as external links will have moved into the internal links report. Your total number of links (internal + external) should not be affected by this change.
As always, drop us a comment or join our Webmaster Help Forum if you have questions!
55 comments:
Hi,
Thanks to you and your team for taking the time to work on this, having more accurate link data is a ++ for all webmasters and I am happy to see you are treating www.example.com and example.com as the same thing - the vast majority of sites have the same info on both versions so this is a great move.
Thanking the team to consider the idea and make this more simpler for me and the public to have more accurate line data with my domain thanks to the team
Great and timely move. Many thanks to the innovative and helping spirit of the team. With Regards.
"a subdomain (www.example.com or cats.example.com)"
Hi Google,
can you please explain how you can treat www version of a website as a subdomain?
Sorry but does how it work in platform like *.wordpress.com, *.tumblr.com and *.blogspot.com too?
@merlinox
"...
If you own a site that’s on a subdomain (such as googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) or in a subfolder (www.google.com/support/webmasters/) and don’t own the root domain, you’ll still only see links from URLs starting with that subdomain or subfolder in your internal links, and all others will be categorized as external links. We’ve made a few backend changes so that these numbers should be even more accurate for you.
..."
Does that not answer your question?
What about 3rd level domains?
A link to "black.example.com", placed in "white.example.com" is considered external for "black.example.com"?
Thanks Autocrat, I reread and understand.
Good thing and long due I would say, because most people even dont know that there is a difference between www.example.com and example.com
I still seeing our own domain show as "links coming from other sites". Is this immediately impact or it need time to update?
+1'd this article and I am very glad reading all the above statements. Last time, after using websitegrader, it reported my site having this type of problem where crawlers "confused" between the both.
Thank you, Google! for providing this type of solution. Few minutes ago, I checked it out, this problem no longer exits to my site (I mean, no more statement on this issue).
Great change. Feels a little overdue, but pleased none the less :)
Does this change mean that Google treats sub domains and the root domain the same when it comes to Panda quality scores?
Nice addition. Would still love a way to consolidate all subdomain info into a single GWT dashboard for the root domain.
does this mean that if I host my blog in a sub-domain or sub-folder then links coming from it will be considered as internal.. and it won't prove to be much valuable now for my domain ??
what?!
I thought subdomains were considered internal links since always :)
anyways, thanks for the announcement!
have a wonderful day! ;)
wow this is a huge change
But suppose if we want separate report for sub domain then?
Hi,
Thanks for sharing knowledge.
I have one question is this changes cane be effect on keywords ranking.
Thanks
Now I wonder: when New gTLD come around, if two domains under a same TLD can they be set as the same domain too?
For example links between about.canon and support.canon will be consider internal links.
This is a very helpful change, thanks for always making improvements.
Is this only a cosmetic change to how subdomain links are counted in Google Webmaster Tools, or are you changing the way that subdomain links pass PageRank as well?
Will this change affect the SERP position?
Thanks for your update.
But how we calculate number of backlinks of our website?
is this effect keyword ranking ?
What about this? You have the same root domain named (eg www.domain.com and blog.domain.com). But the second domain (blog.domain.com) has an other hosting service provider. The ip-address is complete different to both domain-names. Is this also an internal link? Has this any effect to pagerank, serps, etc?
I like everything except that links from cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorized as internal links for www.example.com, unless a link from cats.example.com to pets.example.com is considered an external link. Will that be considered an external link?
"Can you please explain how you can treat www version of a website as a subdomain?"
www is a subdomain because it's a subsection of the domain -- it's separated from the domain by a period, just like any other subdomain (e.g. foo.example.com). In "www.example.com" com is the TLD (top-level domain), example is what we usually refer to as the domain, and www is a subdomain. Most people think of www.example.com as the same thing as example.com, but they are technically two different URLs, and can serve different content and behave differently.
"I still seeing our own domain show as "links coming from other sites". Is this immediately impact or it need time to update?"
This should be rolled out to all sites by now, so if you're still seeing this, please post in our Webmaster Help Forum with the details so that we can look into it.
"But suppose if we want separate report for sub domain then?"
You can add & verify that subdomain as a site in your Webmaster Tools account, and only links from that subdomain will be shown as internal when you're looking at the links for the subdomain.
Re: all the search algorithm- and ranking-related questions: This update only changes how links are displayed in Webmaster Tools. It doesn't affect how links are valued in relation to the search algorithm or ranking. It has nothing to do with Panda, nothing to do with keywords, nothing to do with PageRank.
"What about this? You have the same root domain named (eg www.domain.com and blog.domain.com). But the second domain (blog.domain.com) has an other hosting service provider. The ip-address is complete different to both domain-names. Is this also an internal link?"
In this case blog.domain.com would be listed as an internal link for www.domain.com; we're only looking at the URL, not other factors. Please note my comment above; our search algorithms may take these other factors into account, but for the purposes of this blog post and the way links are categorized in Webmaster Tools, we only determine internal vs. external based on the URL.
"I like everything except that links from cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorized as internal links for www.example.com, unless a link from cats.example.com to pets.example.com is considered an external link. Will that be considered an external link?"
Yes, a link from cats.example.com to pets.example.com will be shown as an external link.
how do you know if the owner of a sub domain does or doesnt own the root domain
Hi Susan
On the subject of www & non-www verification, could a tweak be made to Google Webmaster Tools so that when verifying a www subdomain, that it automatically tries to verify the non-www too using the same method (e.g. if it's a verification file, check it in both locations).
This would be rather handy indeed.
Hi Susan
Just to check something - are one.domain.com, two.domain.com and www.domain.com treated as seperate sites when it comes to applying for any SERP penalties to be removed? I.e. could we 'fix' one.domain.com and submit a resubmission request for it to be reviewed in isolation?
Thanks!
That's something very good as link data holds prime importance for end number of reasons. However still I guess proper categorization is needed to depict internal links and external links. Even something more needs to be done to give preference to links from within the sites (www.example.com/abc) as you can clearly see in most of the Analytics accounts, www.example.com containing maximum number of links while other pages often neglected.
Good update but need few clarification. Does affect again ranking in Google.
Hi,
Thanks to you all for conveying such knowledgeable information with us. This post will really help all of web masters.
thanks for clarifying this.
"how do you know if the owner of a sub domain does or doesnt own the root domain"
For the purposes of this blog post we assume that a verified owner of the root owns all the subdomains, but we do not assume that a verified owner of any subdomain also owns the root.
@wendyirene: Reconsideration requests are read and processed by human beings, so you should just write clearly whatever you want them to know about your site and/or its subdomains.
@Susan - thanks very much for getting back to me on that!
Will keywords in the subdomain have the same value as keywords in the subdirectory folder?
Thanks
Carla
thanks..!!
This change has many ripple affects.
Because we are now seeing site links being maxed at 6 (can Google confirm this officially?) the opportunity for valuable resources on deep sites will be an additional step/click out of reach of searchers (now they'd need to click 'more results from..'), things like forum.example.com or blog.example.com if more valuable links already occupy the 6 allowed.
I have a hunch this was a direct attempt to correct sub-domain 'spam/strategy' as it was a common tactic used to push down negative reviews showing in brand searches. The unfortunate result to this move will likely be junk domains taking their place. Something I hope doesn't catch on.
OK so i dont need to have validation of the subdomains? you will asume i own them.
What about sitemaps. should we have one for all subdomains? or one each?
Thanks
What about external links pointing to cats.donmain.com
Will we be able to see these in wmt for domain.com?
Another question
You say that this is only for WMT nothing to do with rankings, but how does google treat a site and sub domains if you understand them to be owned by the same person?
Thanks for sharing lots of information
Hi,
I have just started studying SEO and have a test.com, a classified website, this information has help me to save my time in submission of website to different search engines.
Thanks,
VIK
I'm thinking of changing my www.bizgreenglobe.blogspot.com to something else. Will my alexa backlink rankings be changed?
ora webmastertool non riesce a distinguere siti diversi di terzo livello, esempio il sito di hosting gratuito altervista.org che pubblica siti con nome miosito.altervista.org
trova come link interni tutti i link provenienti da altri siti esempio tuosito.altervista.org e questo non mi sembra corretto
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