Pages with Internal Links: Understanding Google Webmaster Central

[BettyM]

I have a site with a lot of word text link menus on every page. Google webmaster central is reporting 0 internal links for some of my pages that internally should have 10,000 links.

Not sure how this is possible. Can someone give me insights into how they cound internal links?

[tedster]

Not sure how this is possible.

It's not possible. The data Google has currently exported for many of the Webmaster Tools reports is buggy... very buggy. So there's no understanding possible.

If Google really wants webmasters to use this tool, and I'm sure they do, they really should communicate about the current trouble and make fixing it a higher priority than it currently is. How about a global message inside every account apologizing for the bad numbers, as a start.

[g1smd]

Looking at a site with 80 pages, Google WMT lists only 20 pages as having links from internal pages, but some of those 20 listed pages show as having anything up to 70 links from within the site... so Google HAS spidered those 70 pages, but doesn't report any of the OTHER pages that those 70 pages link to as having incoming links. It only reports 20 of them as having incoming links. It has been like that since the site launched.

[BettyM]

I have provided a site map. Google has indexed all of my pages and it does appear that the pages they are saying have a lot of internal links are listed better for key phrases in their results.

So even if their webmaster tools might not be accurate . . . it appears accurate for how Google looks at the pages. Which has me worried.

[Marcia]

Google has indexed all of my pages and it does appear that the pages they are saying have a lot of internal links are listed better for key phrases in their results.

Two questions, Betty:

Are the pages they're saying have a lot of internal links, linked to from the same location on the pages they say are linking to them? In other words, are the pages linked to a lot, linked to only from within the site's navigation menus, or do some have links in the body text of site pages, or outside of the global nav menus, or maybe in different sections of the site?

How do the "linked to a lot" pages compare for TBPR with those that aren't?

[SEOPTI]

Tedster, I senond this, they should apologize for the buggy tool or close down the buggy sections until they provide a solution.

Not everyone is reading WW and all the WMT bugs may be extremely confusing for amateur webmasters.

Regarding communication, I have the feeling they don't communicate with webmasters any more, not about WMT, not about anyhting ...

[BettyM]

On all my site the text menus show on 98% of the pages within the body of the site.

On one site . . . I have navigational text menus on the top, right hand side menu and bottom menu of every page. No javascript . . .the site is in tables. It is wierd . . . one text link will say 100 links and right below it another text link will say no internal links.

On the site with thousands of links, Google seems to like my Movable Type blog with 200 pages. It shows most of the internal linking structure. However it is ignoring all the internal links for the thousands of other pages on the site. The text link menus on this site are on the top and bottom of the site.