Last week I wrote about How Do You Uncover Your Spammy Links? There I said, when you want to disavow links or have them removed, using Google Webmaster Tools link report is probably not enough. You probably need to use third party tools as well.
Well, according to Google you may not need to use third party tools.
Spotted by @Marie_Haynes and @joehall, Aaseesh Marina from Google's search quality team said all you might need is Google Webmaster Tools "Links to Your Site" report.
Aaseesh said:
You can get a good idea of your backlink profile from the links provided in the 'Links to Your Site' section under 'Traffic' in your Webmaster Tools account. You can use that download a sample of your site's backlinks from there and remove any unnatural link you find.
Is that Google saying all you need is Google Webmaster Tools link report or do you really need more?
If you think about it, the links Google reports are the links Google knows about. Or does Google not report all your links? Are the reports very delayed or inaccurate? Those are all questions at the top of mind of link builders.
There is a pretty good conversation around these questions as well as how to best use the Google link tool to get at this data at Twitter.
Would you trust Google's link tool in this case?
Update: I asked Google's John Mueller this in a Google Hangout today and he confirmed that you do not need to use third-party tools and that Google Webmaster Tools is fine. He did say, sometimes third-party tools may help with cleaner reports but not needed.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
