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
      • MozCon
      • 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. SEO Tactics
    3. Reporting & Analytics
    4. What would be causing our linking domains and inbound links to decline?

    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 would be causing our linking domains and inbound links to decline?

    Reporting & Analytics
    4
    8
    1395
    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.
    • amanda_feagle
      amanda_feagle Subscriber last edited by

      I am noticing a decline in the number of our linking domains and inbound links from month to month. It isn't drastic but looking like a trend. Any reason why this would happen? I'm not sure where to start. Thanks!

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

        A tool like MOZ or SEMRush will show you where the backlinks were pointing or you may notice a difference in the page rank or traffic to a page if it lost a valuable link.

        If the links all look to be of low quality I wouldnt worry to much if you have a good overall link profile. But I would keep monitoring to make sure it is not a trend that is going to continue.

        https://blog.pagezii.com/how-to-check-backlinks-in-google-analytics/

        The above link may also help. You may need to add a secondary dimension of landing page. Sorry brain not working quite right its been a long day.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • amanda_feagle
          amanda_feagle Subscriber @MrWhippy last edited by

          Thank you! This is helpful. I'm new to tracking this so I'm not quite sure where to gather all of this information. I found the "lost" links and the websites don't seem to be very high quality so I'm not too worried, however I'm having trouble finding the content they linked to. Any tips?

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

            There is something called "link rot"... that every site experiences.  You earn some links a long time ago and most of those links will eventually disappear for reasons described by effectdigital.    If your new content production pace is not as fast as in the past, then you can be losing more links than you are earning.   Link rot hits sites that are slacking on their content production.

            And, as Mr Whippy said...  "The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now."    Sometimes competitors will see your content, produce something much better, then solicit the linking websites to link to their content that is now much better than yours.   We receive lots of emails suggesting better destinations for links in existing articles.   These email messages can be valuable to a webmaster, but if we look at their suggested content and it is crap, we filter their email address to trash.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
            • MrWhippy
              MrWhippy @amanda_feagle last edited by

              Without seeing the data it is hard to say.

              If you have a few years of data take a look back and see what fluctuations you have had previously.

              Also, check the pages that the links were pointing to on your site make sure they haven't been removed.

              If its a small number of links compared to your overall backlink profile then I wouldn't worry to much if its a big percentage of your overall backlink profile then I would be digging into it to see if you can stop it.

              Is there any pattern to the links as I asked in my first response? are they all from one type of site? do they all link to old content?

              amanda_feagle 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • amanda_feagle
                amanda_feagle Subscriber last edited by

                Thank you both! So at what point do you think it's important to investigate to find the cause? And when do you think it's normal fluctuations?

                MrWhippy 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • effectdigital
                  effectdigital @MrWhippy last edited by

                  This is a really good answer.

                  OP also needs to check the data they are looking at. Is it link growth data, or actual static link data? Some charts make it look as if your links are disappearing, when what they are really saying is less domains are 'creating' links to you over time (aka your link growth is slowing)

                  If OP is sure that their actual links are shrinking over time, Steve gave great answers

                  Here are some others:

                  • People re-designing their websites and streamlining their content, some links get removed as some old content (which may contain links) doesn't make it onto the new site
                  • People killing their own content even if it's not part of a re-design, removing old blog posts etc (which may contain links)
                  • People un-linking their internal links to insulate their own PageRank better, which leaves you with un-linked citations
                  • People adding no-follows to their links. These links should still be detected, but they won't count to your SEO any more
                  • People blocking the indexation of content that contains links (e.g: putting Meta no-index and / or robots.txt blocks on blog posts which contain links) as a risk nullification measure
                  • People moving their site from one domain to another. The new links from the new site should be found eventually, but often there's a trough where a backlink tool will see the old site is gone but it won't have found the new site yet!
                  • More people opting out of having their site crawled by backlink data suppliers (e.g: blocking rogerbot, Moz's crawler in robots.txt)
                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                  • MrWhippy
                    MrWhippy last edited by

                    There could be any number of reasons for this.

                    The domains linking to you are clearing up old content and removing it from their site if they no longer see it as valid or valuable.

                    The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now.

                    Old domains disappearing off the web completely

                    For a more specific answer you  will need to provide us with more info, such as how old are the links, are they all from one type of websites such as directories or blog sites

                    Steve

                    effectdigital 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                    • 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

                    • Kickboard

                      If website users don't accept GDPR cookie consent, does that prevent GA-GTM from tracking pageviews and any traffic from that user that would cause significant traffic decreases?

                      I've been doing a lot research on GDPR impact and implementation with GTM-GA for clients, but it's been 12 months since GDPR has gone live I haven't found anything on how GA traffic has been impacted if users don't accept cookie consent. However, I'm personally seeing GA accounts taking huge losses in traffic since implementing GDPR cookie solutions (because GTM/GA tags aren't firing until cookies are accepted). Is it common for websites to see significant decreases in traffic due to too many users not accepting cookie consent? Are there alternative solutions to avoid traffic loss like that and still maintain GDPR compliance? It seems to me that the industry underestimated how many people won't accept cookie consent. Most of the documentation and articles around GDPR's start (May 2018) didn't foresee or cover that aspect properly, everything seems to be technically focused with the assumption that if implemented properly most people would accept cookie consent, but I'm personally not seeing that trend and it's destroying GA data (lost traffic, minimal source attribution, inaccurate behavior data, etc). Thanks.

                      Reporting & Analytics | | Kickboard
                      2
                    • HTXSEO

                      Will noindex pages still get link equity?

                      We think we get link equity from some large travel domains to white label versions of our main website. These pages are noindex because they're the same URLs and content as our main B2C website and have canonicals to the pages we want indexed. Question is, is there REALLY link equity to pages on our domain which have "noindex,nofollow" on them? Secondly we're looking to put all these white label pages on a separate structure, to better protect our main indexed pages from duplicate content risks. The best bet would be to put them on a sub folder rather than a subdomain, yes? That way, even though the pages are still noindex, we'd get link equity from these big domains to www.ourdomain.com/subfolder where we wouldn't to subdomain.ourdomain.com? Thank you!

                      Reporting & Analytics | | HTXSEO
                      0
                    • KathleenDC

                      Fixing Bounce Rate between Domain and Subdomain

                      Currently, the way our site is set up, our clients generally visit our homepage and then login through a separate page that is a subdomain, or they can read our blog/support articles that are also on separate subdomains. From my understanding, this can be counted as a bounce, and I know this sorta of site structure isn't ideal, but with our current dev resources and dependencies, fixing this isn't going to happen overnight. Regardless, what would be the easiest way to implement this fix witihn the Google Analytics code? EX: If someone visits our site at X.com, and then wants to login at portal.X.com, I don't want to count that as a bounce. Any insight is appreciated! Thanks

                      Reporting & Analytics | | KathleenDC
                      0
                    • ProMOZ123

                      Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29\. We have been building good links from high DA pages and producing quality, regular content.

                      Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29. We have been building good links from high DA sites and producing regular, good quality content. Anyone able to offer any ideas why? Thanks

                      Reporting & Analytics | | ProMOZ123
                      1
                    • bozzie311

                      Will 301 redirects (Same Domain) show as referral traffic in Analytics?

                      For an eCommerce site we have 301'd legacy product pages to new product pages. Is all that traffic going to show up as referral traffic from our own domain in Google Analytics? If so, is there any way to preserve original source/medium info or will all the source/medium info be our own domain since there is a 301 redirect?

                      Reporting & Analytics | | bozzie311
                      1
                    • s2bkevin

                      Does traffic coming from Adwords increase overall Domain Authority or Page Rank?

                      If I'm setting up an Adwords campaign, will setting my homepage as the landing page boost my domain rank? and will the Page Rank of the landing page get boosted because of the high click rate coming from the Adwords campaign?

                      Reporting & Analytics | | s2bkevin
                      0
                    • VinceWicks

                      Lost rankings after disavowing links

                      About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I  have  this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?

                      Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks
                      0
                    • apartmentGin

                      Google Analytics VS target="_blank" internal links: How much wrong is it?

                      I am working on an e-commerce website, and our CEO is sure that having target="_blank" in internal search result is boosting the conversion (not sure, but it's not an issue at the moment). The problem is that Google Analytics sees all URLs visited from search results as entrances/direct visits, hence the Booking Funnel Tracking does not work as it was supposed to. Is there any way to recover the tracking? Or we shall get the rid of target="_blank" attribute?

                      Reporting & Analytics | | apartmentGin
                      0

                    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.