Google has announced some important changes to their free Webmaster Tools product based on community feedback. The most significant improvement you'll see is that most of the links are now sampled uniformly from the full spectrum of backlinks rather than alphabetically. In the past, you might not have a complete picture of a site’s backlinks with the “Download more sample links” because the link data skewed toward the beginning of the alphabet.

The links data Webmaster Tools provides has always been critical to developing an effective SEO strategy. Here are a few ways marketing teams can utilize the link data:

1. Clean up bad links

   If your site currently has a manual penalty applied to it, you can go through your link profile and disavow them.

2. Discover social outreach opportunities

   Find out who is linking to you and engage them over social media. Build relationships with them and let them know when you publish new content.

3. Watch your anchor distribution:

   See how people are linking to you. If too many links contain the same anchor text other than your site name, search engines may think you are spamming.