Open Site Explorer.. Bit of a let down?
-
Hi, not too sure if this is a discussion or rant!?
I’ve been following SEOMoz for a couple of years now. Testing their tools, reading their blogs, sharing their content, and watching the whiteboard Friday videos (massive thumbs up to that one!). They are at the top of the game, no argument there.
Although I should have done so much earlier, I have eventually signed up to the pro version and am about to migrate all my clients over. But there is one major caveat which I’m not sure should exist.. Open Site Explorer.
Don’t get me wrong, OSE provides invaluable metrics, some that no other ‘crawler’ provides, but it is far from perfect, there are things that we SEO’s need, and are hoping to get!
Some feature SEOMoz could add;
- Ability to view a chart of ‘link types’ (i.e. blog post, social media, Press Release etc..) – Linkdex do this!
- Utilise a ‘fresh‘ backlink index as Majestic SEO do. ( we do use majestic alongside SEOMoz)
- Crawl more frequently – enough said!
- Index all ‘not so good’ backlinks – this will help identify what backlinks AREN’T helping.
I realise this is a lot easier said than done, and I’m sure SEOMoz are working on solutions.. just can’t wait till they launch!
What do you think? IS OSE more than it’s cracked up to be? Could it be improved? Let me know
Lee
-
Wow Rand, thanks for such a detailed and frank answer, I now have a better understanding of the issues you face.. it's much more complex than I imagined. Great to see that you''re doing all you can, look forward to the improvements.
Have a great week! Lee
-
Hi Lee - thanks for bringing these up! I'll try to answer with regards to each of the items you've mentioned:
#1 - This is very tough at our scale (literally 1 trillion+ links, and in the latest index about to launch, 150 billion+ pages across nearly 200 million domains). However, you're correct that we're working towards a classification system that will lean on some seeding + machine learning + user input. I'd suspect 12-18 months before we can launch it, though.
#2 - This is not currently in the plans, at least not at full web scale. We will have Blogscape back up and running soon, and that crawls ~10mm+ fresh sources daily, so if you have a link/mention on a blog/forum/news site with any notoriety, we should be catching those and updating hopefully every 6-8 hours. Mozscape (aka Linkscape, our full web index), will continue to be at least 2-4 weeks between updates and will require 3-4 weeks of processing. We're trying some new things on the technology side, but it's a huge challenge to get to Google's scale and keep our metrics, sorting, views, etc. Majestic can do this with their index because they simply export links directly into the consummable portion of the app, but it limits the sorting/views/filters and ability to generate high quality metrics like PA/DA/mozRank/etc.
#3 - Yup. Definitely agree and working on it. We're trying some new hardware stuff, new parallelization of processing and everything under the sun to make it work.
#4 - Our next index will probably have a lot more of this (and we'll be watching carefully to see how this performs for our customers). We're also working to build a spam score that maps against what we've seen Google penalize/ban over time (currently doing a bunch of research there), so you can get a good sense of what things are likely to be hit over time.
Mozscape/OSE is a huge priority for us and we have 7 extremely talented folks working night and day (and a lot of weekends) to improve this. In the next 3-6 months, it will get massively better than it is today - the next new index is only a few days away now, and after that, we shouldn't ever have such a long period without an update (this round was an impossibly hard-to-fathom confluence of problems that we've taken many steps to prevent from ever happening again).
Thanks for your patience and the good questions.
-
Ignore the last reply John, have just tested Link Detective on a site that I know the link backlink profile of.. it's massively inaccurate! The tool simply isn't able to identify correct link types as they suggest. Dissapointing!
-
I've read they would be indexing 2 x the data Anthony, not 3 x. Suppose there must be some confusion out there, fingers crossed it's 3 x the data!
-
Cheers John, will take a look when I get the chance.. have you used it before? Is it accurate?
Enjoy the weekend! Lee
-
Thanks for all the feedback guys, would be good to hear SEOMoz's official stance on this!
-
You might find this tool helpful to analyse your downloaded report from OSE
http://www.linkdetective.com/
-
I have to agree with Kevin on this one...
Items 2,3,and 4 are days away.
Does it suck that OSE's Linkscape Index hasn't been updated since the end of February? YEP!
Will it be worth the wait next week when it is updated and contains three times the data as the previous crawls? YEP!
I consider SEOMoz a community, and though Linkscape's stagnant data is causing some issues, I realize that once those issues are resolved that I'll be getting more bang for my buck than I did before, and I'm totally willing to struggle for a month in order to have better tools at my disposal for many months to come.
Rand and SEOMoz are drastically improving the volume of data that we will have at our disposal. That takes time and resources. They aren't raising prices or making excuses, they're working out bugs and improving the service. I'll take it.
Anthony
-
Lee,
First, I need to say I
OSE - it's invaluable in my forensic audit work. Having said that, I would LOVE to see the "link types" chart. The biggest challenge I expect they'd face in that is properly detecting where a link is on a page, or what class to put it in due to how unspectacular code consistency really is across the vast web. For example, I've seen others attempt this and fail miserably ( what should be identified as a sidebar (blogroll type) link is often seen as something else, and what should be seen as a main content area link is often seen as a sidebar link (too many WP themes for example, label their main content area divs as "sidebar2" for example).
And that just gets worse / more challenging when the need comes in identifying if a site is really a blog, or some other site that happens to use WordPress as it's platform.
Having said all that, I would be in heaven if the Moz team could get that data into OSE
-
From following all the talk, I'm pretty sure they are working on points 2, 3 & 4.
While all that is good, I personally feel they should concentrate on updating more often first, then move towards giving those extra features. The two month stretch between updates has been a real pain in the ass. But I'm sure they know that.
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
-
SEO impact of redirecting high ranking mirror site to the main website
During SEO audit for a client I noticed that they had over a dozen duplicate websites that are carbon copies of the main website. This was done via CMS platform and DNS. One of the mirror sites has about 400 indexed pages and has Moz DA of 42 and 137k External Equity-Passing Links. Full metrics comparison is attached. I originally planned on doing rel="canonical" on the mirror site but the CMS vendor never even heard of it and is refusing to implement it in the header. My only other option is doing one to one 301 redirects. Since the mirror site ranks well, even competes with main domain for some positions on the 1st page of SERP, what will be the impact after the redirects? Is doing 301's still the best option? Thanks! PrUpN3q
Moz Pro | | dasickle0 -
Is your live site supposed to have rel canonical tags?
I recently started working for a company and got them to use Moz and I have found that our secure site and our live sites are creating "duplicate content" according to the Crawl Diagnostics feature. On our secure site we have rel canonical tags pointing to our live site. I'm not super familiar with rel canonical tags, but our developer says we're doing the right thing. Would love any insight you guys may have if this is actually duplicate content or not. Thanks so much!
Moz Pro | | Chase_Cleckner0 -
How can a site not indexed on google still have 40+ Page Authority on OpenSiteExplorer?
Hey guys, I was revisiting the backlinks to my site and found a few that were not indexed on Google anymore. I confirmed this by typing site:"SiteAddress" in google and it retuned 0 result. Yet when i searched the same site on OSE (OpenSiteExplorer) yielded me a PA of over 40. I used to research sites on OSE to see if they are worth pursuing for a backlink but i am second guessing this because of this recent finding. Can someone please shed some light on this? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | MH-Seonoob0 -
How to select a quality site with SEOmoz root domain ranks for guest blogging?
Hi all! I'm going to submit a few guest posts to several web sites. When I'm selecting a blog, to submit a post, I use SEOMoz root domain statistics ( specially DA). I need to know what is the optimum rank level for select a good quality website to submit posts? Currently I use DA30 or higher sites. Is it a good? Apart from that, what are the other criteria that I should check? Specially after the penguin 4 update?
Moz Pro | | Godad1 -
Where do I post this list of hacked sites?
Hey guys, Fairly new to SEOmoz but loving it so far. I was working on a new clients site a noticed some spammy links added right before the tag. Used Open site explorer to list the domains linking to the url and found nearly 300 unsuspecting domains. Some like heartresearch.com.au which just drives me craaazy, I have already emailed them. Below is the list. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links.html?group=0&page=3&site=www.rhcie.com Short of emailing every single person can anyone suggest a forum or such that would be helpful for posting this information ? I know it's just a few links but it is frustrating to me and If I can do something about it I would like to. Thanks in advance. Jason
Moz Pro | | RedshiftWebDesign0 -
Looking to Hire an SEO Expert for Travel Site
Hello Everyone, I hope this is OK to post here. I run a travel website and we operate tours abroad. We are slowly expanding after nearly 10 years in the field. I started the company from scratch and currently do my own website design and SEO work. However, over the last couple of years I've lost the SEO connection due to being so darn busy. I started account here with SEO Moz in order to get the ball rolling again. We continually rank high for keywords, publish superb content by great writers, and overall are doing fine. I would just like to ensure this keeps happening and that we have an expert on board to help us in sustainable organic SEO practices. What I'd like to do is hire an SEO expert to help with our site. It might be part time (10 or so hours per week, perhaps?) Anyhow, I would like if this person used SeoMoz and really had their fingers on the pulse of the SEO world. I want all white-hat SEO, help with page optimization, internal link structure, and help getting quality external links. I know that over optimization is something that is now on the forefront of SEO work, so of course keeping this in mind helps. I would like to be kept up to date (perhaps weekly overviews of data and how we are doing) and am willing to make changes as quickly as needed on the site. I would like to see how we rank with competitors and what we need to do to stay on top - for the long term (no short sighted decisions). I want to learn as we progress, not because I want to do the SEO work myself, I just enjoy knowing what is going on. I will not micromanage. I am too busy for that : ) I am not sure what amount SEO experts are paid, but I have a slightly flexible budget. I really want someone will communicate when needed and is thorough in their responses. Attention to detail is a must. I would prefer an SEO expert located in the US but who also knows how to access / think about markets abroad (Canada/UK/Australia). I suppose we can discuss pay once I have a shortlisted group. I am looking to hire and work with someone starting pretty much immediately (even in May). For starters, I suppose our budget might be $500 to $1500 per month. For the first month or so, we might offer payment on a stipend basis just so we can ensure whoever is hired is the perfect fit. It would be great if this person had worked on travel sites before or has at least traveled abroad a few times. But, no worries either way. Thanks so much! Thomas at jbt@journeybeyondtravel.com
Moz Pro | | journeybeyondtravel0 -
How long would a SEOMoz crawl usually take for a site with around 4000 pages?
We are working through optimising a site for one of our clients and the SEOMoz crawl progress says it has been running since the 8th Feburary. It's now almost a week later and it still hasn't finished. The first run took a few days, is there any way of restarting the process?
Moz Pro | | TJSSEO0 -
Is the Open Site Explorer Tool working right now?
Is the Open Site Explorer Tool working right now? I keep getting directed to a sign-up page.
Moz Pro | | LarryEngel0