One honorable mention while we are inside this part of GPMC: if you navigate one tab further to the right, you will find some more helpful information on this link precedence topic. I am talking about the Group Policy Inheritance tab, as shown in the following screenshot:

This helpful screen shows us not only the precedence of GPOs that are linked directly to this OU, but encompasses those GPOs that are linked at higher tiers and are therefore also applying to this OU via inheritance. Specifically, you can see in the preceding that my Blue 1 and Orange 2 wallpaper settings are linked to the OU itself, and you can see that those GPOs are precedence numbers 1 and 2. Even more specifically, you can see that Blue 1 is first in the list, because we just changed the link order in order to make this GPO be the last one that gets applied.

Then, further down in the list, we also have two additional GPOs on this screen. These GPOs are both linked at higher processing tiers, namely, they are both linked at the root of my domain. One is the Default Domain Policy, which makes sense because that policy is linked by default to the root of the domain and I have never changed that in my test lab environment. The last GPO in this list may be a bit of a surprise though: it seems to be another instance of my Set Desktop Wallpaper to Blue 1 GPO. Why does this show up here? It is because when I linked that GPO to my Accounting OU, I forgot to delete the link that already existed at the root of my domain. Actually, I didn't forget at all, I left it on purpose for the sake of this example.

When Group Policy processes on computers in this Accounting OU, they will actually put the blue wallpaper into place (precedence number 4), then switch it to orange (precedence number 2), and then switch it back to blue (precedence number 1).

Each link is individual. Creating a new link to a GPO never automatically deletes previous links to that same GPO. This is very important to remember as you start doing Group Policy administration.

The Group Policy Inheritance tab inside GPMC can be an invaluable tool for quick reporting on all of the GPO settings that are applying to a particular OU, no matter which tier those GPOs happened to be linked to. Similar to the Linked Group Policy Objects tab, the precedence numbers displayed here are best thought of as first place, second place, third place, and so on. Number 1 is always the winner, but he wins because he crosses the finish line last. Clear as mud, eh?