Non-Recognition of Links
-
Hi All,
I asked about a client last month and have had to do some other digging to try to find out what's going on with its Google rankings.
According to our link-building spreadsheet, we have got up to 50 links (from 50 domains) in process of being actioned and a large proportion of these are actually in existence.
There are two questions:-
1. Open Site Explorer only recognises 3 domains - as I know that other domains exist and are pointing (mostly 'followed'), what can be the reason OSE doesn't recognise this?
2. What can be done to encourage these external links to be more easily accessible by OSE and, presumably other bots?
Other Points:-
1. I initially thought it might be crawl blocking issue causing the rankings, but Bing/Yahoo rankings are slowly dragging themselves upwards.
2. Robots.txt is not blocking any of the site
3. Pro on-site analysis for the target keyword is 'A'
4. The website's stats per OSE are better than some competitors in the top 20 except on the root domain issue, which is why the above point is important.
Link building for other clients has worked really well without hiccups and with general gradual recognition, so any tips from more experienced folks out there would be gratefully appreciated.
Many thanks,
Martin
-
Hi Martin,
You might find it useful to take a look at the Linkscape Update Schedule in case timing is a factor.
I believe Rand outlined the recent changes to the indexing rationale in this webinar
Using Open Site Explorer to Uncover New Marketing Opportunities , but if you still have questions then as Brian suggested, it may be a good idea to lodge a ticket or email the Help Team. help [at] seomoz.org.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Hey, if the page you got the link on was interesting enough that you wanted to get a link on it, than what harm is there in letting the world know about that resource via Twitter, Facebook, or whatever other service you choose? ... and if it's not worth talking about, or you would be embarrassed to speak of it, than how "quality" was that link anyway
On the OSE Catch 22, gotcha... all I can think of is that perhaps the low quality sites are not always re-crawled with the update, thus not picking up the new links?. An SEOmoz staffer with intimate knowledge of the crawl behavior could better answer that one though
Brian
-
Hi guys,
Thanks for the feedback so far and I will be definitely checking GWT and maybe even tweeting out the links. I did think that seemed a little bit... you know, false - but I guess it's just ensuring Google takes note of the actual page? What do people think? I'm unwilling to Facebook them out, because that's even more 'in your face' and I'm unwilling to SPAM out 50 domains just to get them indexed. Advice welcomed on these points.
@Brian - yes, I suppose they could be coming from lower domains, but equally many have been pulled from competitor link data from OSE, so catch 22?
@Theo - I will double-check
@Ross - firmly NO to Black Hat. I don't do this ANYWAY, but equally something's screwing up the SEO anyway, so going down that route could permanently jeopardise the site and that's not what the client's paying for.
-
Like Theo said, I would start with Webmaster Tools ( Links to your site > All domains area ), if they are in there, Google knows about them, and if they have any value to pass though that link, they are passing it.
One other quick note, if you know those pages you are getting links from are all index and follow pages, you may want to just double check to see if they have been indexed ( Google search for site:www.the-exact-domain.com/and-page-url.html ), if you get no results back, then you know those pages are not in the index (not found yet, or otherwise dropped).
On the OSE thing, if I am remembering this correctly Rand said something about how they were focusing the crawl, pulling in less low quality sites - could it be that the domains you are getting links from are low quality?
Brian
-
Hi Martin,
Although OSE is an awesome tool it is still in its infancy and may not have the capacity to crawl the links you are talking about. Another way to check the links is to have a look via majestic SEO, they having a much bigger index than OSE and tend to show a good deal more links.
I would also have a look at the Google Webmaster Tools and see if the links are present in there.
If you are worried about the links being crawled and indexed by google then take the URL and run it through Google itself with the site: command. If it does not turn up there is a chance it may not be indexed. If it is not indexed I believe that the site: command that returns no values must send a Google bot to the URL to crawl it- can't confirm this is true but it just makes good sense.
If you want to be doubly sure you links are getting crawled you can force a crawl by Google by bookmarking the page thorugh a bookmarking service or sharing it in a social network.
WARNING, MESSY BLACK HAT TACTICS COMING UP*****
And if you really want to give it a good ole kick up the jaxie you can load up a automatic bookmarking tool and bookmark the URL with you link on over a couple hundred domains. Problems with this method include:
- need to buy spammy software like bookmark demon
- you are in effect creating a link wheel which may devalue your efforts
- it sticks out like a sore thumb
- links on bookmarking sites drop of the link graph or get devalued very quickly..
However, the positives that come out of this technique are you link will be crawled and indexed and it will have another couple of hundred links pointing at it....... for a while.
If you are working with a client I would recommend just running it through facebook or tweeting out the link and stay away from forcing any crawls. However, if it is the middle of november and you have a christmas shop that needs to rank quickly get that black hat on.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi Martin,
Although OSE is an awesome tool it is still in its infancy and may not have the capacity to crawl the links you are talking about. Another way to check the links is to have a look via majestic SEO, they having a much bigger index than OSE and tend to show a good deal more links.
I would also have a look at the Google Webmaster Tools and see if the links are present in there.
If you are worried about the links being crawled and indexed by google then take the URL and run it through Google itself with the site: command. If it does not turn up there is a chance it may not be indexed. If it is not indexed I believe that the site: command that returns no values must send a Google bot to the URL to crawl it- can't confirm this is true but it just makes good sense.
If you want to be doubly sure you links are getting crawled you can force a crawl by Google by bookmarking the page thorugh a bookmarking service or sharing it in a social network.
WARNING, MESSY BLACK HAT TACTICS COMING UP*****
And if you really want to give it a good ole kick up the jaxie you can load up a automatic bookmarking tool and bookmark the URL with you link on over a couple hundred domains. Problems with this method include:
- need to buy spammy software like bookmark demon
- you are in effect creating a link wheel which may devalue your efforts
- it sticks out like a sore thumb
- links on bookmarking sites drop of the link graph or get devalued very quickly..
However, the positives that come out of this technique are you link will be crawled and indexed and it will have another couple of hundred links pointing at it....... for a while.
If you are working with a client I would recommend just running it through facebook or tweeting out the link and stay away from forcing any crawls. However, if it is the middle of november and you have a christmas shop that needs to rank quickly get that black hat on.
Hope that helps.
-
The fact that OSE doesn't pick up a link doesn't necessarily mean a link isn't 'active' and giving your site value. Even though Linkscape captures a vast amount of URLs, it only crawls a portion of the web, most likely from the bigger pages down. If many of these links to your site are coming from smaller / less powerful domains, they might not (yet) have been picked up by Linkscape.
Try looking at Google Webmaster central to see if the links are included there. If Google lists them as links there, they are very likely to be counted by them as well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Spammy inbound links: Don't Fix It If It's Not Broken?
Hi Moz community, Our website is nearing the end of a big redesign to be mobile-responsive. We decided to delay any major changes to text content so that if we do suffer a rankings drop upon launch, we'll have some ability to isolate the cause. In the meantime I'm analyzing our current SEO strengths and weaknesses. There is a huge discrepancy between our rankings and our inbound link profile. Specifically, we do great on most of our targeted keywords and in fact had a decent surge in recent months. But Link Profiler turned up hundreds of pages of inbound links from spammy domains, many of which don't even display a webpage when I click there. (shown in uploaded image) "Don't fix it if it's not broken" is conflicting with my natural repulsion to these sorts of referrals. Assuming we don't suffer a rankings drop from the redesign, how much of a priority should this be? There are too many and most are too spammy to contact the webmasters, so we'll need to do it through a Disavow. I couldn't even open the one at the top of the list because our business web proxy identified it as adult content. It seems like a common conception is that if Google hasn't penalized us for it yet, they will eventually. Are we talking about the algorithm just stumbling upon these links and hurting us or would this be something we would find in Manual Actions? (or both?) How long after the launch should we wait before attacking these bad links? Is there a certain spam score that you'd say is a threshold for "Yes, definitely get rid of it"? And when we do, should we Disavow domains one domain at a time to monitor any potential drops or all at once? (this seems kind of obvious but if the spam score and domain authority alone is enough of a signal that it won't hurt us, we'd rather get it done asap) How important is this compared to creating fresh new content on all the product pages? Each one will have new images as well as product reviews, but the product descriptions will be the same ones we've had up for years. I have new content written but it's delayed pending any fallout from the redesign. Thanks for any help with this! d1SB2JP.jpg
Moz Pro | | jcorbo0 -
Duplicate content issues with file download links (diff. versions of a downloadable application)
I'm a little unsure how canonicalisation works with this case. 🙂 We have very regular updates to the application which is available as a download on our site. Obviously, with every update the version number of the file being downloaded changes; and along with it, the URL parameter included when people click the 'Download' button on our site. e.g. mysite.com/download/download.php?f=myapp.1.0.1.exe mysite.com/download/download.php?f=myapp.1.0.2.exe mysite.com/download/download.php?f=myapp.1.0.3.exe, etc In the Moz Site Crawl report all of these links are registering as Duplicate Content. There's no content per se on these pages, all they do is trigger a download of the specified file from our servers. Two questions: Are these links actually hurting our ranking/authority/etc? Would adding a canonical tag to the head of mysite.com/download/download.php solve the crawl issues? Would this catch all of the download.php URLs? i.e. Thanks! Jon
Moz Pro | | jonmc
(not super up on php, btw. So if I'm saying something completely bogus here...be kind 😉 )0 -
Why does page report still have "Too Many Links" alert?
I'm a new Moz Pro user and see that the on-page optimization report includes "too many links" on page and references the "100 links" guideline that Google no longer endorses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l6g5hoBYlf0 Too many links is still an issue in terms of passing link juice, but not much else. Matt Cutts has stated that it is fine to have many internal links in this regard. Please correct me if I am mistaken.
Moz Pro | | Shannon-PayLoadz0 -
Inbound Links to Subdomains
Hi I want to gather a list of sites that are linking to individual blog items. Is there a way of gathering this data easily in Open Site Explorer? I've tried putting in the url/blog domain in the search box, and this just brings up those sites that link to the blog home page. I want to see all the inbound links that link to ALL subdomains within a particular URL. Any help appreciated. thanks
Moz Pro | | goodge0 -
Joined SEOMOZ but non changed.
hi. i am new SEOMoz and i joined pro monthly and create 2 campagnes but there are every thing shows me 0 and i guess nothing changed with before.. please see this.. | | StickerApt |
Moz Pro | | bratt
| Domain Authority | 1 |
| Domain MozRank | 0.00 |
| Domain MozTrust | 0.00 |
| External Followed Links | 0 |
| Total External Links | 0 |
| Total Links | 0 |
| Followed Linking Root Domains | 0 |
| Total Linking Root Domains | 0 |
| Linking C-Blocks | 0 |
| Followed Links
vs
NoFollowed Links****Followed Linking Root Domains
vs
NoFollowed Linking Root Domains | | ubdomain Metrics | canadastickerking | stickeryou | stickybusiness |
| 4.31 | Transparent 5.26 | 4.56 |
| 3.78 | Transparent 5.43 | 4.87 |
| 71 | Transparent 38,649 | 631 |
| 73 | Transparent 38,814 | 1,265 |
| 3,805 | Transparent 235,124 | 26,337 |
| 7 | Transparent 243 | 115 |
| 7 | Transparent 286 | 161 |
| | | | | | StickerApt |
| Subdomain MozRank | 0.00 |
| Subdomain MozTrust | 0.00 |
| External Followed Links | 0 |
| Total External Links | 0 |
| Total Links | 0 |
| Followed Linking Root Domains | 0 |
| Total Linking Root Domains | 0 |
| Followed Links
vs
NoFollowed Links****Followed Linking Root Domains
vs
NoFollowed Linking Root Domains | "No followed (0%)"
"No nofollowed (0%)" | Total Branded Keywords Manage brand rules Non-branded Keywords Week ending: 9/9 Change 9/16 9/9 Change 9/16 9/9 Change 9/16 --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Organic Search Visits 45 -18% 37 7 -14% 6 38 -18% 31 URLs Receiving Entrances Via Search 8 25% 10 4 -50% 2 4 100% 8 | Non-Paid Keywords Sending Search Visits | 20 | -10% | 18 | 6 | -33% | 4 | 14 | 0% | 14 | can any one help me what should i do with SEOMoz? all the keyword i set up tells me not in top 50 ranking.. i set up 12keyword for start.. and aslo i there is craw erros on my site but it can not be fixed because the page that getting erros are automatic quote pages and made php. and it should be duplicate pages it share with other pages, hard to explain.. but you will see what i am talking about it has duplicate title and content.. it should be like that.. http://www.stickerapt.com/quote.php i can not change duplicate erros is it gonna effect page rank? please help..ㅡㅡ0 -
Tracking External Followed Inbound Links - Are We Getting Fooled?
This question is not about how to use SEOMOZ Link tools. It's about the numbers themselves and how their fluctuations are causing confidence issues.... My client wants to track inbound followed links over time. But as I understand it, this number will vary depending on the Linkscape crawling success (or even outages or partial crawls.) In the past few reports, we've had wild fluctuations which have made them very nervous. If my client wants to track inbound followed links over time, what SEOMOZ metric should we use for the most reliable progress checks?
Moz Pro | | scottclark0 -
How do I collect all links through the SEOMoz API?
How do I collect all links through the SEOMoz API? Yes, I know how to pull url metrics info but want to pull the inbound links only via php script w/out having to go to the OSE page to pull. any suggestions would be great!
Moz Pro | | destdigi0 -
Is there a tool that tracks and records your links to your site
What I mean by this is we have a linkbuilder working for us and I'm looking for to record there progress with link building I've seen somthing in Majestic but is there one in SEOMOZ All teh best Steve
Moz Pro | | ibexinternet0