Has MozTrust predicted fall in Google rankings???
-
The definition of MozTrust is:
"MozTrust is SEOmoz's global link trust score. It is similar to MozRank but rather than measuring link popularity, it measures link trust. Receiving links from sources which have inherent trust, such as the homepages of major university websites or certain governmental web pages, is a strong trust endorsement."That being the case it is quite disturbing that a number of websites have been hit very badly by the latest Google algorithm changes that did indeed have very respectable MozTrust rankings.
Can I ask whether anybody has carried out any sort of analysis of MozTrust versus negative impact in Google rankings? The prediction would of course be that websites suffering from a lower MozTrust would have been hit quite badly by these recent changes.
-
MozTrust isn't quite a measure of "trust" in the sense of link quality, per se. It was designed to mimic TrustRank, a factor we believe Google uses to supplement PageRank. What MozTrust and TrustRank (theoretically - we can't see in the black box) do is to take a set of trusted seed sites and determine how close in the link-graph any given site is to them. If your site is closely linked to sites like CNN and WhiteHouse.gov, for example (I'm honestly not sure what's in the seed set these days), you're more likely, on average, to be a trustworthy site.
Of course, as with Google, this is just one of hundreds of potential ranking factors. One measure we've found useful in some cases is the ration of MozTrust to MozRank. If you have ton of raw link-juice (MR) but your trust level is very low (MR), then it's often a poor quality sign.
We tend to use DA/PA more than MozRank these days, as they're based on a more complex model. Still, none of these factors look at the actual quality of the linking site or the "spamminess", per se. MR/DA/PA are primarily measures of the strength of your link profile, and MT is just one measure of potential quality.
It appears that Penguin tweaked multiple factors in the Google algorithm and may even be use them in conjunction, so even if we saw Google's own data, we probably couldn't pin it to just one thing.
-
I understand the point you are making, but the argument is that all those websites that had substantial links from 'spammy sites' have been heavily impacted by the algorithm. Those spammy sites were very often visibly poor - we could identify many of them just by casting an eye over them.
My question remains then, surely MozTrust should have picked up these metrics and downgraded the MozTrust values for those websites linking from such obvious spammy sites? Otherwise, what is the point of MozTrust?
-
I can see in Webmaster Tools that one of my clients have a 100 or more dead links from spammy sites that are targeted at pages that never existed.God only knows where they came from.
So, the principal would seem to be - target spam sites at a competitor and hit his rankings.
Also, if someone were 'warned' with the abnormal-link-message from Google then one would expect a problem was looming. If no communication was received then one could assume 'no problem'?
Surely, the algorithm has fused in a few of it's recesses and we just need to wait for the circuits to be rewired by the Google engineers.
-
Great question.
My feeling is that the tools and indicators were based on the playing field pre-Penguin and pre the ground opening up and swallowing a ton of websites (ie all the 1 million plus warnings that were sent out for unnatural links).
They lag - again in my opinion. A dog chasing its tail.
Google has changed the game for many and what was once was not penalized is now being penalized.
No matter how anyone sugar coats it and talks about always focusing on content (all good stuff mind) - this was a significant change to the algo in the area that computes link value and relationships.
My feeling is that noone (in terms of the engineers of these tools) saw it coming and now the calculations that may go into these parameters may need to be also tweaked.
I can name many websites that had good MozRank that have been axed fromt he SERPs.
That's not criticism of SEOMoz. These websites also had good PageRank
To answer your question though - from the analysis that I have been carrying out there is NO CORRELATION between MozTrust and the websites that suffered. again - I have seen websites that have had high MozTrust go just as low ones have.
I must also note though - that these seems to be NOT domain related - but more page related.
ie most of the websites I have looked at - seem as if they are doing poorly all around - but it seems to be that the domain itself has not been effected - but more the page (unless Google has penalized the home page).
We have a client (an Author) who was ranking #1 on Google for one of her books. All natural links from people linking to her book. That page was up in the rankings for 4 years. Now it is not in the SERPs at all. Her other pages are fine and her domain name is fine - but Google seems to think the links to that book page where she sells the book were unnatural. So, in some rare cases it may be the entire domain - but in most cases it seems to me that it just appears that way - since webmasters affected were over optimizing or doing bad SEO - and now all the pages that used to rank for the keywords they went after so aggressively now don't rank.
This doesn't mean their domain is toast though - unless they did this to their main home page on the domain.
I'll stop rambling now
Carlos
-
MozTrust is something SEOmoz calculates and, while it's based on what could be expected to help you rank, it doesn't always correlate with what Google does. A website could have a high MozTrust rank but could be penalized for other issues.
Danny Dover actually suggests that you use metrics like MozTrust and Page Authority and compare them to Google metrics like SERP positioning and PageRank to discover if you're being penalized. A page that SEOmoz categorizes as having a high Page Authority but that has zero PageRank can sometimes be an indication that Google is penalizing the page or website.
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
-
Errors in my coding how significant is this regarding rankings ?
I posted a question on here yesterday about the homepage asking for advice regarding the content and then was told by two people were very helpful bbut moved over comment not on content but to say taht the major problem was that the coding on my website basically has too many errors which would result in me receiving lower rankings in the search engines. I realise this website is old-fashioned Dreamweaver template which was constructed several years ago which I've updated and I'm certainly not a professional, but I watch my Google analytics and there doesn't seem to be any significant change in the stats from this time last year. This is the site http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ I realise the site is old format and has been around for several years it's just from customer feedback they seem to think it looks okay for the products old cottages but I guess technically it's not the best now. I have run a test using Silktide Nibbler - a free online service that gives you a good complete overview of your website with an overall score. And it did give my website an overall good score but did point out errors in the coding but when I checked some of my competitors near the top of Google for the short tail keywords some of them also have errors in their coding, very similar to my own error score.. I then went to Google Webmaster tools and there were no warning messages. So the big question is how important are these errors scores when it appears that most of the top competition also are in the same situation? I think it's quite possible I could do with a redesign using responsive design Best Alan
Moz Pro | | WhitbyHolidayCottages0 -
Why is MOZ and Google search Volume so different?
A search term in MOZ shows the monthly search volume to be 49K. In Google, the same term shows the search volume at only 1300 monthly searches. Which do I trust? Thanks, Don
Moz Pro | | rcman0 -
Why are my keyword rankings dramatically changing week to week?
I have a site (actual several) that has been up for many years now. Content is changed monthly - regularly. It would always rank in the top 5 positions for 5 or 6 keywords. Now all of a sudden (without any dramatic changes to the website) my ranking results from my weekly Moz reports are dramatically different from week to week - every week. One Keyword will be #1, then the next week it will drop 49 positions, the 3rd week it might be #5, then Not in the Top 50, then #1 again, and so and so on. This happens to all my keywords on my site. I was waiting for Google to finish it's changes to it's algorithms but it's now been long enough and I can't get a handle on what's happening, why it's happening, and what to do about it, and what direction to take with my SEO. My Traffic has actually improved over last year by approx. 25%, but I have also started a PPC campaign for this client. Any suggestions would be great.
Moz Pro | | SummitCom0 -
Loss of Google AdWords API
Since August, we've had intermittent access to the Google Adwords API. Like others in this space, they've let us know that our access has been revoked. We've been working to restore this access, but unfortunately, we have not been able to do so. In the meantime we are working hard to find a suitable replacement that is both stable and a good fit for our customers’ needs. We wanted to let our PRO members know, first to apologize, and second to explain how this has impacted your PRO access. We understand how important it is to have all your keyword data in one place, and we're sorry for any disruptions you've experienced from not having this data source in our app.We do want to clarify that this change does not affect your data from Google Analytics. The products affected by this change are our **Keyword Analysis tool and the keyword details and **keyword analysis pages within our web app. We removed this keyword query volume data within PRO a little earlier this year. You can still generate reports, but the metrics previously pulled from the Google Adwords data source is no longer there.The good news is, we don't actually use the Google AdWords data in our calculation of keyword difficulty, so these reports are still 100% accurate—they're just missing the information we usually pull from the API, which you can find on the Google AdWords Keyword Tool here. We're so sorry about this, and understand how frustrating the loss of this data is. We're hoping to have an alternative data source soon, and we will keep you posted as we make progress. Please feel free to comment, ask questions, and get help by replying to this post. Thank you!
Moz Pro | | AaronWheeler7 -
Was there another issue crawling rankings on 9th October?
Again this month I don't appear to have rankings logged for 9th October. Was there an issue earlier in the month?
Moz Pro | | NathanP0 -
I need country specific ranking reports for our Google/Yahoo/Bing positions
Hi Guys, Using the ranking reports given here at SeoMoz I cannot select various countries as it seems to only provide US Google/Yahoo/Bing results. I need ranking reports specifically for Thailand, UK, States, Australia, India, Hong Kong. Does anyone know of any such tools? Many thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | ewanTHH0 -
SEOMoz rocks, but is it breaking Google's webmaster guidelines when it comes to check rankings?
Hi all, The Google's webmaster guideline in question reads... "Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google." So, when WebPosition Gold is not recommended then how come SEOMoz is acceptable to check ranks for websites belonging to SEOMoz PRO? Do Google neglects breaking of few guidelines by good boys? Thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | vinodchaudhary0 -
Ranking
Why is comunicatedepresa.net ranking better than comunicatedepresa.ro for the term "comunicate de presa" Absolutely ALL the factors (links, domains linking, authority, onpage etc) seem to say that comunicatedepresa.ro should have ranked better.
Moz Pro | | seo.academy0