If you report on links to your business, you need to distinguish newly discovered links from newly published coverage. A report of newly found links tells you what entered the collection recently. That is not the same as what was published recently, and the difference decides whether your response makes sense.
What "new" means here
New means indexed within the window ending at the nightly run, which is 24 hours. It describes when the link was found, not when the page went up.
The two dates can be far apart. A page published two years ago and only now collected appears as new. A link added last week to an old article appears as new when the page is next collected.
For news specifically, a stricter condition applies: a result is counted as new only if it also carries a published date within the last seven days. That exists because the news index rotates monthly, and without it older pages collected during a routine refresh would be counted as recent coverage. The Prospect Index applies no publication-date condition, because an old resource page being newly found is a genuine new opportunity.
Why this matters before you write to anyone
Two mistakes follow directly from misreading the date.
Thanking someone for a link they added eighteen months ago. It reads exactly like what it is: a tool found it and nobody looked.
Describing old coverage as recent in a pitch to the same publication, which undermines everything else in the message.
Open the page and check the published date before responding to anything. It takes seconds and prevents the whole class of error.
What a new link is evidence of
Once you have confirmed a link is recent, three readings are available.
Someone chose to link to you without being asked. Worth understanding. Which page did they link to, and why that one? A page attracting unsolicited links is doing something the rest of your site is not, and that is worth knowing before you plan the next quarter's content.
A publication has noticed you. A first link from a publication that covers your market is the start of a relationship rather than a transaction. Whether they accept contributions is worth checking while you are on the site.
A placement you pursued has landed. Confirmation that the submission, pitch or correction worked, which tells you the route works and is worth repeating.
What to do weekly
- Scan the new rows and dismiss anything from a site you already have links from unless the page is substantive.
- Open the pages that look new and check the published date.
- For unsolicited links, note which of your pages attracted them.
- For a first link from a relevant publication, check whether they accept contributions and note it as a prospect.
- Check whether the link points where it should. A link to a page you have since moved is a correction request, and those succeed easily.
That last item is the one people skip and the one with the best return, because you are helping the publisher fix something broken rather than asking them for a favor.
What the report cannot tell you
It cannot claim completeness. No link collection sees everything, so links you have gained may not appear, and a quiet week in the report is not evidence of a quiet week in reality.
It does not date the link itself, only its discovery.
And it does not value the link. Whether it passes authority, how it is marked, and whether any engine counts it are separate questions the report does not answer.
What not to build on it
Do not report new-link counts as a performance measure to a client. The count reflects collection activity as much as your work, so a month with more discovered links is not necessarily a month with more earned links.
Report what you earned, which you know from your own outreach records, and use this report to find what you did not know about.
Before reporting a new link or contacting the publisher, check the live page and its dates. That keeps your report and any response tied to what actually happened.
See Brand Link Gap, what the backlink data shows, or monitoring brand mentions.