Huge Drop in External Links
-
Hello, My total external links dropped from 900 to zero on a site that I've had running for about 10 years. What could possibly cause this? Thanks, Joe
-
Exactly.
-
Hi Joe!
To reiterate what the other folks on this thread are saying, it's very, very likely that the drop to 1 is because we didn't end up indexing your site or the sites linking to it in the last index update (which isn't the same as a bug, for what it's worth, though if your data isn't there I realize the distinction is academic). This index was rather smaller than the previous one, with 161 billion URLs after the previous update's 193 billion. You can get all the details here.
I'm extra-inclined to believe this is the case because 1) the site's previous DA was 14, which is low enough to imply that linking domains are also of generally low DA and less likely to be crawled, and 2) DA/PA of 1 almost always means we simply don't have information on the URL.
We're always working to grow the index, and I'd say there's a very good chance the site will be back in the next one. Rand has written about the affects of index changes on link metrics here.
-
GR,
Absolutely, there are no guarantees. That's why i measure head to head with our direct competitors.
Bottom Line: somebody's going to get the opportunity, and they probably rank in the top 10, I believe monitoring and adjusting will give us the best chance at that opportunity.
TY,
KJr -
Kevin,
You should know that measuring the PA/DA is not guarantee for better positions. You shold alway check other factors besides PA/DA and links.
PA/DA movements may be due to a lot of reasons. Here the official explanation and a question answered by Rand Fishkin.
Mozscape Link index update - Moz Domain authority get down significantly. Internal MOZ Issue? Google Algoritm Update?Regarding the updates, you can check them out here: Mozscape API Update
Best of luck.
GR. -
Joe, Gaston & Donna,
I track 11 competitors w/ a spreadsheet after every DA release, 8 lost a major amount of links, one lost 1,712,850 while we dropped 77,480. Last year I disavowed monthly for 6 months, now just quarterly, so I know it was not on my end. I also noticed a much higher rise in DA w/ this release than any other this year, we went up 3 (which is great) while a major competitor improved 7.
Gaston, if this is a minor bug as you indicated, do you foresee another DA release sooner than scheduled, or possibly an announcement from Moz?
KJr
-
No, none of those Gaston. Thanks for the information!
-
Hi Donna,
I see it in MOZ / Competitive Link Metrics.
My link data is fairly consistent over the years and then a huge drop off in the past 2 weeks from 900 to zero!
Thanks,
Joe -
Of course its related to the same bug.
just to clarify, you didn't change or redirect the main domain? Https, www to non-www, re-brand or checked a different URL?
-
Wow! That's great news Gaston!
My Domain Authority went from 14 down to 1. Can you tell me if that is bug related as well?
-
Hi Joe,
Not sure how you detected this problem. Was it on Moz Open Site Explorer? If that's the case, then Gaston has provided an answer. Especially if those 900 links were coming from very few sources, it's credible that Moz may not have picked them up in the last build of its backlink index.
If you detected it using another tool, or even with Moz, I'd use a few other sources to confirm whether you have a problem or not. Take a look at Search Console, MajesticSEO, and/or aHrefs. They will show you how many links you have. The last two will show you patterns of acquisition and loss. Most sites gain and lose links over time. You'd want to look for an abrupt change in pattern.
If that doesn't answer your question, let us know and we can pursue other possibilities.
-
Hi Joe,
It's know that from update to update the Backlink count may vary that much. It doesnt mean that all your external links have desapeared.. It's just a minor bug at mozscape.
Don't worry.
Best Luck.
GR.
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
-
Can you regain any SERPs / link juice of links that have 404'd?
We have a client whose 301 redirects disappeared and have been gone for about 6 months now. We are going to be putting the 301 redirects back in place. Will we be able to regain any of the previous SERPs or link juice from old links or is all lost? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | SavvyPanda0 -
Are sitewide links bad for SEO?
I have 11 real estate sites and have had links from one to another for about 7 years but someone just suggested me to take them all out because I might get penalized or affected by penguin. My main site was affected on July of 2012 and organic visits have dropped 43%...I've been working on many aspects of my SEO but it's been difficult to come back. Any suggestions are very welcome, thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | mbulox0 -
HUGE decrease in links since website redesign
We recently added several new pages pages to our website. These new pages were constructed on a dev site, and then pushed live. Since the new site has gone live I have seen a huge decline in links. My external followed links have dropped from 3000 to 500 and my total website links have fallen from 35,000 to 4,500. I have done some research, and I think there is a server side issue. Where multiple versions of my URL may be running. The majority of the links built were pointing to the homepage. That being said I do not have access to our in-house dev person this week, so I am trying to identify the problem myself. I have used screaming frog to crawl my site and did not see any errors which stand out. I realize I probably need to use 301 redirects to solve this problem, I just need some guidance on how to identify what I need to 301 redirect. Second question. If I move a landing page out of the global navigation but it can still be reached through other pages on the website , will this cause issues?
Technical SEO | | GladdySEO0 -
Is this an OK back link profile?
Hi Guys I have worked throug this SEOMoz article to examine our back link profile http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankings This is an image of the chart I ended up with. http://bit.ly/Z7Pp1G Does this look like an OK back link profile? Should I be doing something about the high number of 0 and -1/NA rank links? Thanks Paul backlinkprofile.gif
Technical SEO | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
'External nofollow' in a robots meta tag? (advertorial links)
I believe this has never worked? It'd be an easy way of preventing any penalties from Google's recent crackdown on paid links via advertorials. When it's not possible to nofollow each external link individually, what are people doing? Nofollowing and/or noindexing the whole page?
Technical SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Sudden drop in rankings
Hi there, I've been working on this site for three or four months (it was a brand new site), and we were seeing some really great improvements in rankings. I've concentrated on writing lots of good quality content and building a network of links through blogging and social networks. Then, last weekend (6th October), we got completely wiped off of the results. We went from rankings 2,3 and 4 for our target terms to not being in the top 100. I assumed we'd been given a penalty from Google as we'd been SEOing too hard and removed a reciprocal links page we had and asked Google to reconsider. I just got a message back saying there hasn't been any manual penalty, so it's just down to the algorithm. I'm running am SEOMoz analysis, but so far it's just coming up with things like page titles too long and too many links on pages, which I can fix, but don't seem like something that would completely destroy us so abruptly. I think we really have the most and best content on the subject of becoming a model, which has taken a great deal of effort to put tgether, so this is crushing. If anybody can shed any light, I'll be extremely grateful, and I'd be interested to knwo if anyone else has experienced anything similar. Thanks in advance! URL: www.modellingadvice. info Kat
Technical SEO | | Katja1230 -
Asking to remove links from other sites
How hard is it to get people to take off links that point to your site that are on theirs? I have about 4 sites that I would like my link OFF of their blogroll because I think I was hit by the penguin update because of that. Do you know if there is anything you can do if they DON'T take it off?
Technical SEO | | SeaC0 -
Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
Technical SEO | | glennfriesen1