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.
Backlinks on Moz not on Google Search Console
-
Moz is showing thousands of backlinks to my site that are not showing up on Google Search Console - which is good because those links were created by some spammer in Pakistan somewhere.
I haven't yet submitted a disavow report to Google of well over 10K links because the list keeps growing every day with new backlinks that have been rerouted to a 404 page.
I have asked Google to clarify and they put my question on their forum for an answer, which I'm still waiting for - so I thought I'd try my luck here.
My question...
If Moz does not match Google Search Console, and backlinks are important to results, how valid is the ranking that Moz creates to let me know how I'm doing in this competition and if I'm improving or not.
If the goal is to get Google to pay attention and I use Moz to help me figure out how to do this, how can I do that if the backlink information isn't the same - by literally over 10 000 backlinks created by some spammer doing odd things...
They've included the url from their deleted profile on my site with 100s of other urls, including Moz.com and are posting them everywhere with their preferred anchor text.
Moz ranking considers the thousands of spam backlinks I can't get rid of and Google ignores them or disavows them. So isn't the rankings, data, and graphs apples and bananas?
How can I know what my site's strength really is and if I'm improving or not if the data doesn't match?
Complete SEO Novice
Shannon Peel
Brand Storyteller
MarketAPeel -
@BlueprintMarketing said in Backlinks on Moz not on Google Search Console:
Google's John Mueller was answering questions around an old topic of Google showing only a sample of links in the link report in Google Search Console on Reddit. He said that generally, if the links are not shown in the tool, then they are "pretty irrelevant overall."
The part "pretty irrelevant overall." is surprising. In my case I have links from German newspapers DR 60 , 43,42,58,67,74 to my website.
There seems to be something else playing as news websites make sure theyre articles and pages get crawled all the time.
I used Pingler, ping-omatic and prepostseo and pinged the Newswebsites that relate to my article. As well I made a [BS blogpage](link url) for a couple days where I link to all relevant websites where I have backlinks.
At the moment I am waiting the see the results and will come back here to share. -
@BlueprintMarketing
Thank you for this... it is helpful.I use the link list from Moz and others to help me find out which profiles and forum posts are spammers then I delete and 301 to a 404 page to ensure that URL is 404ed.
I get too many a day and it is a waste of my time.
-
Moz & other third-party tools have a much better method of displaying your actual backlinks going to a domain or URL.
Google search console only displays a sample of known links, so remember it is not showing you all your backlinks or even. all of your data.
Here are some helpful URLs
"Google Search Console only displays a sample of known links, they update infrequently, and no preference to priority or weight is given."
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-tool-sample-data-13636.html
Google's John Mueller was answering questions around an old topic of Google showing only a sample of links in the link report in Google Search Console on Reddit. He said that generally, if the links are not shown in the tool, then they are "pretty irrelevant overall."
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-search-console-irrelevant-27342.html
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-console-guide/209318/
-
Having just launched a new site, a couple of spam sites (xxx .pw sites - used to try to extract your passwords) are already on Google's radar. When I click the link in my Moz backlink profile the website instantly redirected to app.private-check.com tool. Quickly, I got a message from Google that said something to the effect "Aren't you glad we blocked them from your passwords". These links are not in my GSC for this domain.
What would be really great is if Moz and other tool providers, could find these spam sites and filter them out based on what is and is not showing up in GSC. That would be worth paying for, yes?
-
@marketapeel right now were seeing most of the rubbish not coming through into search console, which hopefully means the specialists are correct
However, there is a few that are clearly spam still making it into search console which does have me wonder if it's affecting us for now. Google Search console is more like a magician's magic ball than actually being fully useful. -
@tyrerunner I have not found a solution. When I interviewed SEO specialists on my podcast, I asked them and they said Google would ignore them and not to worry - Which I can see when I look at the backlinks Google Search Console has.
The problem is all these SEO tools showing thousands of these backlinks and making it harder for me to use the tool efficiently.
I followed the backlinks and found I'm in good company in these lists of links, it's just too bad that the anchor text is wrong because some of those back links have a decent ranking.
I did go to some of the higher ranked sites and when appropriate, created my own content with links using the right anchor text in the hopes that the matching keywords would help make it clearer - but they have yet to show up on any of the SEO tools or Google.
I did have a few visits from Google looking for that service but I think they were from before I deleted the posts - so the keywords were there to match - I've since fixed that problem.
I deleted the posts on my site but the url doesn't disappear and the page it lands on was empty so I 301 the pages to a 404 telling visitors the site is about brand storytelling and linked to the different pages if they were interested. This 404 page was already developed for those times a page load messed up.
I asked Google - no one has answered me there.
I have offered to sell an ad page on my site to a company and 301 all the links to it. - Not sure if this is a good idea - but I'd like to benefit somehow
If you come up with a solution or a better way to deal with all this spam and still get good data out of Moz etc... please let me know.
-
@marketapeel We're having the exact same issue coming from India. Did you find a solution? my first thought was that google has perhaps registered these as known spam builders, but on the other hand Google Search Console isn't that great at the best of times and it could be it just takes weeks to show up.
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
-
Footer backlink for/to Web Design Agency
I read some old (10+ years) information on whether footer backlinks from the websites that design agencies build are seen as spammy and potentially cause a negative effect. We have over 150 websites that we have built over the last few years, all with sitewide footer backlinks back to our homepage (designed and managed by COMPANY NAME). Semrush flags some of the links as potential spammy links. What are the current thoughts on this type of footer backlink? Are we better to have 1 dofollow backlink and the rest of the website nofollow from each domain?
Link Building | | MultiAdE1 -
Unsolved Backlinks issues.
I am hoping this is the right forum to ask this question. But, I was looking at my backlinks and noticed that I had some go to a page that resembles my site, but had porn words on it. however, it would link to a place on my site. Under more information it has a real link to my site. What is this? I noticed the domain authority was in I believe the 70's; but PA was in 40's. I am new, so can someone explain this. Thank you. example below:
Moz Pro | | Fashion220 -
Google News and Discover down by a lot
Hi,
Technical SEO | | SolenneGINX
Could you help me understand why my website's Google News and Discover Performance dropped suddenly and drastically all of a sudden in November? numbers seem to pick up a little bit again but nowhere close what we used to see before then0 -
Unsolved Moz doesn't find backlinks for months / link tracking list offline
Hi there
Product Support | | startrek123
I want to share a big problem with you. Moz tracking list seems to be offline or having trouble finding links. I have an example:
The page where the backlink has been placed was created months ago. As you can see on the picture:
Link to the page is http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/profile/tableauxdumonde
Backlink on that page is https://ggongtime.com/ Picture shows clearly that the page of backlink (Microsoft) has been indexed and already has got it's own backlinks in Moz (8) but it is still not linking to the backlink website (ggongtime.com).
I've also attached a picture of page source where you can clearly see that it is a html link and is dofollow.
The problem remains since 3 months and I want to find out what is going on. This Microsoft page is one of example. There are hundreds of other pages being found, or not, and are still not showing up in Link Explorer on website's portfolio.
I want to know if there is a technical problem with link explorer, or anything else, because this is a serious problem for me. moz problem.png0 -
Sudden spike in backlinks - should we disavow?
A kitchen remodelling firm in Australia has noticed a big increase in spammy backlinks to their website since April this year. Majestic shows that referring domains and backlinks during that period have gone up from 400 domains (10,000 links) to 1,070 domains (47,000+ links). About 100 are sitewide links. The vast majority are "follow" links directed at image files on the site - ending in .jpg. Ahrefs now shows the number one anchor text (23%) is a period (full stop) "." Most of the links come from .us domains, eg: cowboysr.us
Link Building | | Adab1
blackphoto.us
alldpic.com Google Search Console isn't showing any of these links, there's no penalty on the site and there's been no noticeable change in rankings (if anything organic clicks went up over May, June, July) ... so we're wondering what action - if any - should be taken. Are these links likely to have a negative impact on the site and homepage? Should we disavow these links? Appreciate any advice. Thanks.0 -
Backlinks from the Same Domain (But Different Pages)
Wayyy back when (in the days of yore) Mr Cutts spelled out in a video that page rank is distributed equally between the external links on the page. If there are two links on a page, each gets passed 50% of the available page rank etc. (Perhaps an oversimplification but bear with me). As a result of this, the company I worked for at the time (this was the dark ages when sidebar homepage links were in vogue) decreed that we would only ever approach a site about a link for a client once, as additional links had little extra SEO Value. Now you could argue that if there are 5 external links, each acquiring 20% of the power, and your site has 2 of those, you are getting 40% of the power, but lets forget the basic math for a minute. I have scoured the web and Mr Cutts' videos and I cannot find the answer to my question: If my site (Site A) has a backlink from SiteB Page 1, and a backlink from SiteB page 2 - does this count as two separate links in the eyes of Google? If the SAME site links out to my site, linking to different pages in different posts, does this give me more SEO benefit? Thanks for your time!
Link Building | | Turkey0 -
Hidden Backlinks
Hi, I hope someone can help me with this. We have a competitor who appears to be ranking No1 for a competitive search term with a very lame site and above some authoritative sites. He has been here for some time as well. When we check out his back link profile through OSE, Majestic and Ahrefs they show as only 3 backlinks from no PR sites. However, someone pointed out that they could be using a link network that is blocking every crawler apart from Google, Yahoo and BIng. I would like to know if there is a way to confirm this. For instance I know that we can use screaming frog to mimic Googlebot, however, if there a way to reveal the real backlinks to a site like this using any tools. Thanks
Link Building | | kirstyseo0 -
Will Google penalize for backlinks on non-indexed pages?
Have a client who has a bunch of links from spammy sites that aren't even indexed by Google. Will Google penalize (i.e. Penguin) for backlinks from spammy sites that aren't indexed? I'm guessing "Yes, Google still crawls non-indexed sites and may penalize the sites linked to from the banned site." Anyone have any data or experience with this? Anyone have a non-indexed or banned site? Does Google still crawl it?
Link Building | | AdamThompson0