# What does \`incoming link count\` in discourse database mean?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-does-incoming-link-count-in-discourse-database-mean/122515>\
**Category:** Data & reporting\
**Tags:** sql-query\
**Created:** [10 ביולי,‏ 2019,‏ 4:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-does-incoming-link-count-in-discourse-database-mean/122515 "2019-07-10T04:13:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [16 ביולי,‏ 2019,‏ 12:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-does-incoming-link-count-in-discourse-database-mean/122515/2 "2019-07-16T12:07:41Z")

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I believe it is the number of incoming links from the forum itself, that is, the number of other posts that have linked to that post.

There is no rational way to determine how many times external websites have linked to a place without crawling the entire web, like Google.

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