Google has added a new way of discovering websites that link to yours in the webmaster tools that they offer. Google’s link: operator is famous for not showing all of the external links back to your website, something that often frustrated webmasters, but was done so webmasters could not manipulate rankings to easily. They have even offered the ability to download the data so you can look at it more closely using a spreadsheet.

The Google Webmaster blog has all the details on this new external link feature that they have added to the webmaster tools. If you don’t have it on your webmaster tools yet, expect it soon. This is a great new feature that they have added and I look forward to looking more closely at the sites that link to mine.