How accurate is Open Site Explorer?
-
I noticed for one of my sites, a large number of links do not show up in Open Site Explorer, including some of my stronger links. That being the case, how much weight can I put on using these tools to compare sites?
I'm not trying to bash here, I really like the tools but if my PA is 29 and my competition is 34, how much weight can I put on these numbers? Or if it says my site has 50 links from 25 domains and my competition has 60 links from 30 domains, these numbers obviously aren't very accurate? So how much weight can I put on these comparisons? Are there better tools?
-
I agree with Ryan completely. I would only add that the ultimate metric is your ranking for keywords, and as you are the only one who knows what is happening to your site and link profile, you need to track and measure everything to see what effect your changes have.
Link scape is a great tool, and certainly one of the best on the planet. But it, like any of the tools need to be assessed with an understanding of the task they undertake, their methodology in doing so, and a clear understanding that it, and all tools , are guides, mere hints if you will, as to what is happening in the hallowed halls of Google search.
-
OSE is dependent upon the Linkscape index. The Linkscape database is refreshed about once per month and contains the top 25% of web pages. For SEO, that's mostly what matters. The index was last updated July 25th.
It can take 60+ days for you to have visibility to a link in OSE. It depends upon when the link was created and when Linkscape began crawling the internet.
It's a great tool to use if you understand it's limitations.
-
That's what I figured. I'm just surprised that it seems as if the majority of my sites stronger links aren't showing up. Actually, after I asked this question I began setting up an account with Majestic SEO.
What do you find seomoz most helpful for then, if you don't mind me asking?
-
I can't speak to how thorough OSE is. I know they don't find every link, but in my experience, they seemed to find most of the strong links. I can suggest Majestic SEO for a very thorough, but not free, backlink profile.
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
-
Crawl diagnostics up to date after Magento ecommerce site crawl?
Howdy Mozzers, I have a Magento ecommerce website and I was wondering if the data (errors/warnings) from the Crawl diagnostics are up to date. My Magento website has 2.439 errors, mainly 1.325 duplicate page content and 1.111 duplicate page title issues. I already implemented the Yoast meta data plugin that should fix these issues, however I still see there errors appearing in the crawl diagnostics, but when going to the mentioned URL in the crawl diagnostics for e.g.: http://domain.com/babyroom/productname.html?dir=desc&targetaudience=64&order=name and checking the source code and searching for 'canonical' I do see: http://domain.com/babyroom/productname.html" />. Even I checked the google serp for url: http://domain.com/babyroom/productname.html?dir=desc&targetaudience=64&order=name and I couldn't find the url indexed in Google. So it basically means the Yoast meta plugin actually worked. So what I was wondering is why I still see the error counted in the crawl diagnostics? My goal is to remove all the errors and bring it all to zero in the crawl diagnostics. And now I am still struggling with the "overly-dynamic URL" (1.025) and "too many on-page links" (9.000+) I want to measure whether I can bring the warnings down after implementing an AJAX-based layered navigation. But if it's not updating it here crawl diagnostics I have no idea how to measure the success of eliminating the warnings. Thanks for reading and hopefully you all can give me some feedback.
Moz Pro | | videomarketingboys0 -
Fresh Web Explorer Question
Hi, I have been using the FWE tool currently in the SeoMoz toolbox but can't seem to do something. I want to search for say 'Flower Pots' but only return results with the extension .co.uk. Is this possible using the operators? Thanks
Moz Pro | | Bondara0 -
Open Site Explorer - Image Anchor Text
Hey there. I'm researching internal links and In my report I get alot of image links with the following text in the Link Anchor Text column: (img alt)(img)[No Anchor Text]. Is it because my images don't have alt-text or something else... How to optimize correctly? See attached screenshot. Best regards K87xLN8
Moz Pro | | nosuchagency0 -
Open Site Explorer
Hi - open site explorer always showed backlinks to my site's blog for Wordpress, a couple of edu sites and others that ranked somewhat high. These are no longer being shown. However, they do show up on some other backlink check tools. Does anyone know why and if this should be a concern? Thanks. Don www.uniquegiftsanddecor.com
Moz Pro | | uniquegifts-2778790 -
What do you use for site audit
What tools do you use for conducting a site audit? I need to do an audit on a site and the seomoz web crawler and on page optimization will takes days if not a full week to return any results. In past Ive used other tools that I could run on the fly and they would return broken links, missing htags, keyword density, server information and more. Curious as to what you all use and what you may recommend to use in conjunction with the moz tools.
Moz Pro | | anthonytjm0 -
How long would a SEOMoz crawl usually take for a site with around 4000 pages?
We are working through optimising a site for one of our clients and the SEOMoz crawl progress says it has been running since the 8th Feburary. It's now almost a week later and it still hasn't finished. The first run took a few days, is there any way of restarting the process?
Moz Pro | | TJSSEO0 -
Open Site explorer (last 1-3 updates) shows new and wierd results
Hi Moz'ers! I have a questions for you guys. Can you explain why the website "Netspiren" has a lower "domain Authority" than "Duft og Natur"? See screenshot. I know it's a tough question without a detailed analysis, but looking at OSE's data, does the mozrank,moztrust, C-block don't reflect the power of the Domain Authority. What's you take? BTW: "Netspiren" has always had more and better links, and also had a higher Domain Authority. Something about the Domain Authority changed since the past 1-3 OXE updates. Looking forward for your take on this! Have a good weekend! mnRPI.png
Moz Pro | | FrederikTrovatten220 -
How to set up SEOMOZ to track multilanguage sites?
Hi, I am managing a site in 5 different languages/regions. Our language structure is as follows: www.domain.com/en-us/ - For US www.domain.com/en-uk/ - For UK www.domain.com/fr/ - For France ... However, SEOMOZ does not allow to set up a domain with "/" as a campaign. How can I do it? Thanks
Moz Pro | | hockerty1