Reference guide · search-console · Published 2026-08-16 · 3 min read
Referring Pages report (retired Link report)
The retired Referring Pages legacy report in Search Console Links, what it counted, and how to get backlink and internal-link data now.
- ·What it was
- ·Where the data lives now
- ·Working with it today
What the Referring Pages report was
Search Console used to have a report, under Links then External links → Top linking sites, with a dedicated *Referring Pages* view: the external pages that link to your site, with the anchor text used, shown in a per-page list. Alongside the later Backlinks (beta) surface, it answered "which external pages point at my site, and with what anchor text".
It is deliberately in the past tense. The granular Referring Pages external view is no longer a first-class Search Console area: the old separate pages under that name retired, and what remains is the summary-level Top linking sites and the Backlinks functionality that has been the live link view since 2020. The instructions here treat the report as a legacy that still surfaces in older documentation and bookmarks.
What replaced it
Two replacement surfaces, with the division being whether the link is from your own site or another site:
| Data you want | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Which sites link to you (count, latest link) | Links → Top linking sites (still current) |
| Full list of backlinks with anchor and target | Links → Backlinks (current) |
| Internal site link flow, pages linking to a page | Pages report → "internal links" tab, or the site: query |
| Own-site internal link counts | internal link analysis is the on-tool practice |
The export capability is the same either way: use the data export flow (search console data export) if you need the underlying per-URL numbers as a file, and the Links report itself for the aggregate.
How to use the current Link surfaces
The Backlinks view shows the top 1,000 or your site: query domain sample with columns: source URL, anchor, and date. The Links page aggregates them by Top linking sites and Top linked from articles/pages. That covers the two operational questions:
- Which pages are most externally linked? (Top linked pages list)
- Which outside sites point at me, and do I want more of that? (Top linking sites)
For per-page counts across every URL, the honest current tool is the Pages report's internal-link column plus a bulk export; the legacy Referring Pages-style per-anchor breakdown is no longer in the UI. The internal link analysis article is the modern, on-tool replacement for the "which pages link to this page" problem.
A note for anyone who still searches for it
If you are searching for "Referring Pages report" you most likely want one of three things: the set of pages that link to a given page (an internal-linking question), the external sources that link to the site (a backlinks question), or anchor-text counts (today: source-level data, not per-page). Choose the surface above. The orphan pages article covers the internal-only case, and the indexing analysis article documents the report statuses the old Links page was often bundled with.