We have investigated the structure of very thin films of Gd‐Co alloys sputtered onto substrates of NaCl held at room temperature. The composition of these films ranged from .18 to .24 atom fraction of Gd and thickness from 80Å to a maximum of 600Å. We find that the structural intensity modulations, as a function of the momentum transfer vector ∣ s ¯ ∣ = 4π sin θ/λ (Å) −1 , are very similar for comparable film thicknesses and only weakly dependent on composition. The scattered electron intensity of the 80–200Å thick films show considerable difference to the intensity scattered from thicker films and to the x‐ray data of Cargill and Wagner et al. These differences are in the ratio of the intensities of the first two amorphous haloes and the amplitude and shape of the modulations in the range of s from 3.7 to 7.8. For the thin films the ratio of I (2.05)/ I (2.95)=.97 and for the thicker films this ratio reduces to 0.73. Similar qualitative results for the scattered intensity are also observed for the Gd‐Co‐Mo amorphous alloys. The radial distribution functions of the thin films have strong radial correlation peaks at r 1 =2.50Å a weak peak at 3.17Å and a strong peak at 3.62Å. The remaining correlation peaks for higher r values can be qualitatively explained as distances arising from higher order pairs of the dense random packings of atoms. The radial distribution function of the thicker films shows an increase in the peak height at 3.17Å and a decrease of the peak at 3.62Å. We conclude from these results that the initial few layers of these amorphous films have a modified structure as compared to the thicker films. This is due to the high reactivity of Gd with O2 which produces a large number of Gd‐0 pairs ( r =3.62 A ̊ ), which as we show here decreases with increasing film thickness.