Is WMT "Links To Your Site" showing internal as well as external links?

[Planet13]

In google webmaster tools, in the Traffic > Links to Yur Site section, How your data is linked subsection, do yoiu have a lot of keywords listed there that SHOULDN'T be there?

For instance, when I look at ours, it has "contact us" as second, following only our domainname.com

Our fourth is "return policy"

If I click the More link to expand, the anchor text section lists things like "privacy policy", "about us" and "shipping and returns".

Is not that supposed to be anchor text from EXTERNAL sites?

When I cross-reference by looking at the PAGES that are most frequently linked to, none of them are our "contact us" or "abous us" or "shippng and returns" pages.

so is the How Your Data Is Linked supposed to show internal, external, or both internal and external links?

[lucy24]

The "how your data is linked" list DEFINITELY conflates external and internal links. The question came up somewhere else fairly recently.

Not sure if this is the thread I was thinking of, but it's the only one I could find:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Count your blessings. At least the list doesn't include same-page link text-- "back to top" and the like.

[treeline]

Mine has a lot of "more like this" and "next page"

[lucy24]

Yes, mine is bloated with "back to thumbnails". It would be bloateder still if I hadn't no-indexed so many pages :)

[Planet13]

So that section of webmaster tools is basically useless is what you are saying then, right?

[lucy24]

I think it's one of several gwt areas-- another is the keyword list-- that's essentially padding, created purely for wmt-internal use. It's got little-or-nothing to do with anything happening in the world at large.

A more useful approach may be the "link:" feature in ordinary search. I've just tried it and am bemused but not really surprised to find a slew of links to me that aren't mentioned anywhere in gwt.

:: detour here for closer investigation ::

[Planet13]

Thank you fo rthe explanation, Lucy24.

I just tried the link: search operator and there was only one page of results, have of them being from our own domain.

So it only showed five from domains other than our own.