How dependable is Open Site Explorer and the DA metrics
-
I wanted to get some feedback from the community on the accuracy and dependability of the Open Site Explorer and its DA metrics when evaluating the strength of a website and its authority on the web.
It seems that the data available to OSE is quite different (limited) as compared to that of Google Webmaster tools.
A site I'm evaluating shows the following discrepancy:
Linking domains OSE = 11
Linking domains WMT = 95
Total Links OSE = 39
Total Links WMT = 579
With such a large discrepancy of linking domains and link backs, how accurate can the DA / PA metrics be - what goes into vs whats does not?
I read some place that date OSE is not comprehensive but should account for the top 20% of links (I maybe off here), that said in comparing root domain data it seems to be missing many domains with high DA scores but includes others with very low DA scores.
I would love some feedback or pointers on how much value I should be placing on the info provided by OSE, and opinions on how to truly define a baseline for a sites strength and its linkback structure.
-
Ah, this is a very good question.
If you're looking to measure links by pure link count, then OSE will never match the number of links you find in Google Webmaster Tools. On average, OSE accounts for anywhere between 20-60% of links typically recorded in GWT.
But GWT is a terrible way to measure link building campaigns.
The problem is, Webmaster Tools records "junk" links equally with high value links, and there's no guarantee or seeming degree of consistency with the links they do choose to report. I have 1000's of links in many of my Webmaster Tools accounts, and most of them aren't worth anything.
On the other hand, OSE assigns a "weight" to each link, in terms of different metrics such as MozRank and Domain Authority, so you can get a feel for how much value is passed by that link. And OSE tends to focus on links and those areas of the web that actually pass ranking value, while ignoring many of the less valuable, spam and garbage links.
OSE metrics are highly correlated with a site's ability to rank, and are often adjusted according to Google's algorythm through correlation analysis.
So if you build more links, they will show up in GWT, but you'll never know how much they are worth.
On the other hand, if you raise your domain authority, this is likely correlated with a rise in rankings (assuming your site is well optimized)
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO!
-
As I'm digging a little further into this, it seems that using the OSE ranking matrix for measuring our SEO efforts may not be the best idea.
i.e. http://www.seomoz.org/q/link-analysis
Based on your experience the data provided by Google Webmaster Tools (incoming links, domains ...) -- is that 100% of things out there connected to the site or is that partial data as well? Is that the best dataset to baseline the state of the site and building a history of link building performance?
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
-
Combining multiple HTTPS sites
Hi there! I am currently combining several sites (corporate brochure site and ecommerce site) for a client into one central website. All of the content and structure on the new site is set up and relevant pages have 301 redirects ready. My main concern is that the old .co.uk website has an SSL certificate and will be pointing to the new pages on the new .com website (with new SSL in place). Will this cause connection privacy issues? And if so, what's the best way to resolve them? Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daniel_GlueMedia0 -
SEO Priorities for Ecommerce Sites
Hello All! What is the best way to rank SEO tasks by PRIORITY for Ecommerce sites to improve?? It can be quite overwhelming with all the types of projects/tasks needed to improve organic rankings... How would you rank the most CRITICAL tasks to spend the MOST TIME on to the tasks you spend less on. Appreciate your input in advance 🙂 Thank you! Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
Redirecting non www site
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I 100% agree with the redirecting of the non www domain name. After all we see so many times, especially in MOZ how the two different domains contain different links, different DA and of course different PA. So I have posed the question to our IT company, "How would we go about redirecting our non www domain to the www version?", "Where would we do that?", " we cant do the redirect on our webserver because the website is listed as an IP address, not a domain name, so would we do the redirect somewhere at GoDaddy?" who is currently maintain our DNS record So here is the response from IT: " I would setup a CNAME record in DNS (GoDaddy), such that no matter if you go to the bare domain, or the www, you end up in the same place. As for SEO, having a 301 redirect for your bare domain isn't necessary, because both the bare domain and the www are the same domain. 301 is a redirect for "permanently moved" and is common when you change domain names. Using the bare domain or the www are NOT DIFFERENT DOMAINS, so the 301 would not be accurate, and you'd be telling engines you've moved, when you haven't - which may negatively impact your rank. It sounds to me that IT is NOT recommending the redirect. How can this be? Or are we talking about two different things? Will the redirect cause the melt down as the IT company suggests? Or do they nut understand SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
Merging 11 community sites into 1 regional site
I am merging 11 real estate community sites into 1 regional site and don't really know what type of redirect should I use for the homepage?, for instance: www.homepage.com redirect to www.regionalsite.com/community-page Should I 301 this redirect? If yes, how could I 301 redirect a homepage to an internal page in my new site? Cheers 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mbulox0 -
More Indexed Pages than URLs on site.
According to webmaster tools, the number of pages indexed by Google on my site doubled yesterday (gone from 150K to 450K). Usually I would be jumping for joy but now I have more indexed pages than actual pages on my site. I have checked for duplicate URLs pointing to the same product page but can't see any, pagination in category pages doesn't seem to be indexed nor does parameterisation in URLs from advanced filtration. Using the site: operator we get a different result on google.com (450K) to google.co.uk (150K). Anyone got any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidLenehan0 -
How to decide on which site to 301 redirect
Hi there I'd like your opinions please! My client currently has their website at not-very-good-url.it which has a really good link profile they also have duplicate sites at: much-better-brand-name-url.it and much-better-brand-name-url.com but both these other sites have only a handful of links in. How important do you think a better brand url is? And therefore do you think it would be better to 301 to a better brand URL and take the risk that the link profile will get hit? Or leave the main site where it is and 301 the other two to it? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
Site Structure Question
Hi All, Got a question about site structure, I currently have a website where everything is hosted on the root of the domain. See example below: site.com/men site.com/men-shorts site.com/men-shorts-[product name] I want to change the structure to site.com/men/shorts/[product-name] I have asked a couple of SEOs and some agree with me that the structure needs to be changed and some say that as long as I dictate the structure with internal links and breadcrumbs the URL structure doesn't matter... What do you guys think? Many thanks, Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
How important are social bookmarking sites
How important are links from social bookmarking sites from an SEO perspective?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340