How Often Does Webmaster Update Inbound Links?

As per the title, how often to Google Webmaster update the number of incoming links you have to your site?

I believe I have acquired more links since the last number that webmaster quoted, but the number hasn’t gone up, anyone any ideas?

The short answer is: Less often than you probably think.

In general, it might take several days or even weeks for the list to be updated. But, even then, it should not be regarded as a complete list of all the incoming links. Google itself says “Not all links to your site may be listed. This is normal.” (Source.) At best, what you are seeing is a represantive sample rather than a definitive listing.

In addition, there are certain links that will never show up. These include links to pages that are blocked to Google by robots.txt, or links to non-existent pages (404 errors). There might also be discrepancies caused by different host names (e.g. www. example.com vs. example.com).

So, the best advice is: Continue to encourage high-quality links from reputable sites; but don’t worry about whether or not they show up Webmaster Tools.

Mike