Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Moz Tools
    3. Moz Pro
    4. Link Explorer
    5. What does "Number of Linking Root Domains" in Open Site Explorer actually mean?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    What does "Number of Linking Root Domains" in Open Site Explorer actually mean?

    Link Explorer
    3
    7
    2356
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • karrabarron
      karrabarron last edited by

      I've read through the forum, but I'm confused as to what "Number of Linking Root Domains" means in the Linking Domains report. For example, if the root domain is Moz.com and the number is 135,000 does that mean there are 135,000 links from Moz pointing back to my site or does it mean there are 135,000 sites linking back to Moz?

      Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • karrabarron
        karrabarron @GastonRiera last edited by

        Thanks Gaston, this makes so much sense! Appreciate your added insight!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • karrabarron
          karrabarron @tawnycase last edited by

          YES! I totally get it now. Thank you so much Tawny!!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • tawnycase
            tawnycase @karrabarron last edited by

            That sounds correct to me - if the number of Linking Root Domains associated with SearchEngineLand is 135,000, that's links pointing to SearchEngineLand's domain, not Moz's domain. 🙂

            karrabarron 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • GastonRiera
              Gaston Riera last edited by

              Hello there!
              Just to help Tawny clarify this.

              In those reports, " Root Domain" means just the domain. In the case of Moz, it is moz.com. This also means that they are taking into account the whole site.
              So, for example, consider that you have 3 pages:

              1. site.com
              2. site.com/landing-page-A
              3. site.com/important-keyword

              On one hand, if every page has one separate link pointing, fron different sites. Let's say: example-1.com, my-blog.org and site-overseas.com
              In the report, when checking for site.com, you'll fine 3 root domain links.
              On the other hand, if every page ( just to keep it generalistic, but it could be applied for just onepage) gets a link from the same root domain, but from diffetent pages (let's say: site-A.net/page1, site-A.net/keyword-two and site-A/whatever) in the repport you'll see just **ONE **root domain link.

              Can you see the difference?

              Hope I've helped.
              GR.

              karrabarron 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
              • karrabarron
                karrabarron last edited by

                Thanks Tawny. So just to make sure I absolutely understand, here's another example:

                If the root domain I entered in Open Site Explorer is www.moz.com and one of the root domains that appears in the resulting Linking Domains report is SearchEngineLand and the number of Linking Root Domains associated with SearchEngineLand is 135,000, that means SearchEngineLand has 135,000 sites linking back to it -- not Moz right?

                tawnycase 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • tawnycase
                  tawnycase last edited by

                  Hey there! Tawny from Moz's Help Team here!

                  The number of Linking Root Domains you see is links from other sites pointing back to your root domain (or the root domain you entered in the search bar in Open Site Explorer). So, in your example, that would be 135,000 sites linking back to moz.com somewhere on the site.

                  I hope that helps! If you have any more questions, feel free to drop us a line at help@moz.com and we'll answer them for ya! 🙂

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • DigitalThirdCoast

                    Unsolved Why am I not seeing search.yahoo.com in my site's backlink profile?

                    link explorer backling issue

                    When looking at the backlinks for a client's competitor I found that they had a backlink on search.yahoo.com/reviews and our domain (harmonyhit.com) did not. I was using the Link Explorer tool. However, when I go to yahoo Search I see that the website of harmonyhit.com is indexed in Yahoo search and has links to the site. Also, it's sitemap has been recently crawled in Bing webmaster tools which Yahoo uses. Why does our client have the backlink accounted for and we do not?

                    Link Explorer | | DigitalThirdCoast
                    0
                  • Lorraine.es

                    Unsolved Links to my website are wrong

                    domain authority link building link building whitehat

                    Hi, I have launch a new website, lorraine on october of 2021 and I have added it to a bunch a local and national directories to improme it local rankings. But when I get the domain authority and link data from MOZ it has only ten links and no one of them is from local/national directories. I have three questions: Do you know if it is normal that after 9 months DA is 1? Is there any problem with local/national directory links? I dont like buy links like others do but it seems the only way to improve domain authority and rankings.

                    Link Explorer | | Lorraine.es
                    1
                  • CinivaAgency

                    WP Events Calendar Creates URLs Too Long in Site Crawler

                    My travel/tourism site is on WP and using an Events plugin that ads a calendar of events to many pages. The MOZ crawler is indexing almost 46K links with a URL too long, but the site only has about 3.8K pages indexed in Google. I can tell MOZ is indexing the same pages over and over again but just adding a random calendar month and year.  Here are some examples. https://www.visitcurrituck.com/four-day-stay/?full=1&long_events=1&country[0]=US&ajaxCalendar=1&mo=10&yr=2003 https://www.visitcurrituck.com/four-day-stay/?full=1&long_events=1&country%5B0%5D=US&ajaxCalendar=1&mo=10&yr=2034 https://www.visitcurrituck.com/beach-houses-family-time/?full=1&long_events=1&country%5B0%5D=US&ajaxCalendar=1&mo=1&yr=1873 Any advice on how to prevent MOZ from indexing this way? I don't believe that Google is seeing this also, but maybe they are. I just know my site has over 63K issues and I'm sure at least 75% or more is because of the way they are picking up on the events calendar. Thanks!

                    Link Explorer | | CinivaAgency
                    1
                  • BobAnderson

                    Spam links and Domain Authority

                    I have a site that I know was Domain Authority 35 but now Domain Authority 25 after someone sent a load of spam links to it, how can this be correct and how can I change it? Is it worth doing a disavow and will moz take that into account?

                    Link Explorer | | BobAnderson
                    0
                  • clifra

                    Open Site Explore page titles show as "No Title"

                    This has been asked many times but I cannot find an answer. On Open Site Explorer, most URLs I enter show as "No title" which means you have to hover over the URL to see which page is being referred to. I know you'd want an example, so here's your own site Moz.com 🙂 CWrkxZQ

                    Link Explorer | | clifra
                    0
                  • jakebellacera

                    Moz Pro: Linking RDs to Page much lower than Google Search Console

                    I'm trying to use the Analyze Keyword tool in Moz Pro, and in the SERP Analysis table, my page has a PA of one, and zero root domains linking to it. If I look at the page in Google Search console, it says I have 229 root domains linking to the page from well known domains like github.com, meetup.com, stackoverflow.com, etc. This particular keyword has been tracked in Moz for the last 6 months, but I just noticed that it was extremely low. I am relatively new to Moz, so forgive me if I sound confused, but can someone explain to me how the numbers can be so low?

                    Link Explorer | | jakebellacera
                    0
                  • wearehappymedia

                    Crawling and Links - Showing Links

                    Hello I have a campaign in Moz that shows a new site as having no domain authority and no links. The site does have links to it, but they don't show up on OSE. Does Moz count links in the comments section of blogs (or is this counted as social, when the commenting system is one that requires facebook login?) I know blog comments are not great for SEO, I just use them when the post/link is 100% genuinely relevant. The site does have actual links on websites not just comment links, so it isn't showing any type of link. What is the best way to see the links the site has? Thanks!

                    Link Explorer | | wearehappymedia
                    1
                  • roberthseo

                    Big drop in Domain Authority

                    Hello there, Our domain authority dropped yesterday from 37 to 33 yesterday Our domain name is: http://www.wallpapered.com We have been building a few quality/relevant links in the last month so am very surprised by this big drop? Would appreciate everyone's feedback? Thanks

                    Link Explorer | | roberthseo
                    6

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.