example.com

www.example.com

cats.example.com

www.example.com/cats/

www.example.com/users/catlover/

www.example.com/users/catlover/

www.example.com/users/catlover/profile.html

www.example.com/users/

www.example.com

www.example.com

example.com

www

example.com

www.example.com

example.com

www.example.com

cats.example.com

pets.example.com

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/

example.com

www.example.com

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 (), a subdomain (or), or a domain with a subfolder path (or). Previously, only links that started with your site’s exact URL would be categorized as internal links: so if you enteredas your site, links fromwould be categorized as internal, but links fromorwould be categorized as external links. This also meant that if you enteredas your site, links fromwould be considered external because they don’t start with the same URL as your site (they don’t contain).Most people think ofandas the same site these days, so we’re changing it such that now, if you add eitheroras 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 fromorwill also be categorized as internal links forIf 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 likeor, 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!