Have you checked out link count in Google Webmaster Tools today? If not, you may be in for a surprise when you do. It seems like most people’s link counts are incredibly inflated.

A Google Webmaster Help thread and WebmasterWorld thread has several webmasters noticing the major inflation of their link counts in Google Webmaster Tools.

Personally, I see Google is telling me I have 974,494 links to this site. But some people are reporting just under 2.5 million links, where millions were added over a single night. Here is one report:

So if you see some numbers that don’t make sense in the Google link tool report, don’t worry – it seems fairly wide spread.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.