Google not providing all competitor site's external incoming links?
-
I heard Google is not providing all of a competitor's site's external links, speculated as protecting their privacy. But that Yaho still provides the complete list of their recognized links. (I assume they mean when using the term 'link:url')
Has anyone else heard this claim? Is there a way around this check?What sources do you use at SEOMoz for your Pro reports? thanks, geo
-
This has been the way for ages now. As Alan said, YSE is okay, OSE is great, but nowhere can you get a full list, especially not an up-to-date one.
-
Google has communicated that the list of links shown during a link: operation are a sampling only, and in fact just as likely to show low value links as high value links.
As for Yahoo, I've compared their link: operator to OpenSiteExplorer.org and the Yahoo result is consistently much smaller than what I get from OSE.
Then again - even with OSE, it's not 100% perfect either.
Just as in any analytics you work with, best practices state that you should a) use at least two sets of data for your evaluations and b) use data mostly to observe and spot trends rather than trust data as being 100% accurate.
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
-
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
Can a feeder site link directly to the main site?
I have a client that has several coupons sites. They have about 15 different URLS all of which are [city]deals.com all of the domains have coupons lists that are relevant to that area. Other than the coupons there is not any other content on the sites. There is a Main site however, that has coupons, content, store locations, blogs, news etc... The coupons on the feeder sites are displayed differently than what is displayed on the main site. They are also categorized differently. So the question is on the feeder sites can they have the coupon link directly to the store page on the main site?
Link Building | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
01 November 2013 - A possible Google's update??
Hello Guys! On 01 November 2013, one of our website's traffic has been dropped by more than 70%. We had added plenty of domains to the disavow tool, I am just wondering if its a Google's update or the disavow tool has destroyed the site? Any ideas? 9p3sN3p.jpg
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Why aren't my links being indexed
I am building backlinks from similar sources to 2 different domains. Domain A seems to get its linked indexed within a day or 2, while Domain B has virtually identical links that haven't indexed for over a month. Domain A is older and has more authority, and Domain B is hosted on a different server. Any insight into why this is happening? It's very frustrating.
Link Building | | insitegoogle0 -
Open Site Explorer - Finding 404s from my competitor's external linking Root Domains
I want to find websites that have linked 404s to my competitors. My goal is to contact webmasters who have linked to my competitors with 404s, but I cannot figure out how to get Open Site Explorer to give me that data. I can easily see this in GWT for my own site, but I need this for my competition instead. Does anybody know a quick way to get this information?
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza0 -
What is the best way to seek out good incoming links?
I get "form letter" type requests for links all the time from companies whose product has absolutely no relationship to mine. I always decline them. But I really want to build up link juice, and I'm wondering how to begin. Is the "form letter" all right to send or should it be more personal? I sell tablecloths; I assume I should go to home decor companies? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | go4linens0 -
Open Site Explorer and comparing links of competitors , then export the differences?
Hi, I'm totally new to this community so please forgive me if this question is a bit dumb.
Link Building | | severtservice
A client of mine is trying to get better rankings for a specific keyword and if we check out the competition we notice that our site has way better and more unique content. The tools here at SEOmoz indicates that the competitor sites have more authority, and so probably more backlinks. With the Open Site Explorer I can quickly see what sites are linking to competitor sites.
And since we're in the same country and trying to rank for the same keywords we also are after the same backlinks. Now there are a few that my client is missing compared to the competitors.
So I would love to get a document that tell us what backlinks we are missing instead of
downloading many reports and do all the checks manually. Is this possible? Thank you,
Dennis0 -
SEOmoz's ranking of links on competitor question..
I am Perplexed about SEOmoz crawl for new links on a competitors website. When I looked at a company who received very high ranks for the links...on SEOMoz...such as. 95, 96, 97 etc..... I couldn't figure out how they ranked so high. One company bought 20 links for a couple hundred dollars and all of them were ranked very high on SEOmoz but when I used the page rank tool on them individually they were either "0" or "1" and none were over a 2. I was debating submitting for those since I am just starting out and wanted to get our name listed in the internet world. Are the high rankings by SEOmoz related to something else? Would I be better off buying a listing in some of the premium directories instead. Like Yahoo or BBB or Manta. ( After I get my site optimized first) Thank you, Greg
Link Building | | Boodreaux0