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Light Dark Use Device Settings Advertise Contact Us Home / Google News / Google SEO / Google Search Console Links Report Is Broken Google Search Console Links Report Is Broken May 21, 2026 - 4:14 pm 0 — by Barry SchwartzBarry Schwartz / Executive Editor
Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick and a technologist, a New York Web service firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. Barry is also the founder of the Search Engine Roundtable and the News Editor of Search Engine Land. He is well known & respected for his expertise in the search marketing industry. He only provides consulting services to expert SEOs and also performs search marketing expert witness services. Barry graduated from the City University of New York and lives with his family in the NYC region. You can follow Barry on Twitter at @rustybrick or on LinkedIn and read his full bio over here. 38,445 Articles as barry.schwartz Filed Under Google Search Engine Optimization
It looks like the Google Search Console link report has gone haywire and is broken pretty badly. Tons of SEOs are seeing zero links in the report, whereas others are seeing huge drops in the link counts in the report.
It is not uncommon to see fluctuations, even significant ones, in the link report - I've been keeping a log recently over here. But this is big, this looks like something significant broke in the code or data where tons of links dropped out of the report.
Some are suggesting that the May 2026 core update is the reason this report is off, but I highly, highly doubt that. The link report and the core update have nothing to do with each other, and these types of reports in Search Console are normally days delayed.
I am seeing at 87.5% drop in the links being reported for this site from the last time I checked:
Today:
February 20, 2026:
Here are some responses to my post about this on X:
Yes, just came on here to check if anyone else. Just toggled through two client profiles and see this. pic.twitter.com/gqEgLs6fHg
— Steve Weber (@swebermarketing) May 21, 2026
clearly a bug i'm seeing here on my end pic.twitter.com/VtM52wOUOk
— Steve (@ScubaSteve1219) May 21, 2026
OK, this takes the cake. Hahaha. Yeah, something is very off with the links reporting in GSC. pic.twitter.com/KIYmFPm1fX
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 21, 2026
So don't panic if you see zero links or a huge drop in links, it is everyone and I assume it is a bug in the report.
I did ask John Mueller from Google about this but I did not yet get a response on Bluesky.
Update: John replied on Bluesky:
Thanks for the heads-up, Barry. We'll take a look to see if there's anything unexpected happening (given the long weekends it might take a bit of time).
— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) May 21, 2026 at 4:27 PM
Forum discussion at Bluesky and X.
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