Links (external and total) have significantly decreased in 1 month from August to October - why?
-
Greetings,
After comparing a few stats in one of my campaigns, I noticed that External Followed Links, Total External Links, and Total Links significantly decreased from August 29th to when I just checked them a few days ago (October 3).
Any ideas on why this happened?
For example, Total External Links went from 50,589 to 39,203.
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Jenny
-
I'm still trying to get access to GWT for this client, so will definitely check that out. Good call and thanks!!
-
Kyle,
Thanks again for the ongoing help and information - you rock! Our domain authority stayed the same. I'll definitely check out the links to the resources you provided as well. Thanks again!
Jenny
-
Jenny, here is a full list of post were rand and other SEOMoz associates talk about the updates to the mozscape index (which powers OSE and the pro tools):
http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=mozscape+update%3A
In regards to your question of what is mozscape here is another great resource:
http://www.seomoz.org/help/what-is-mozscape
In regards to your last question, it sounds like it was a blend of you losing some links and the mozscape fluctuations. Always take OSE data with a grain of salt, that information is simply to give you insight to trends in your link profile. Did your domain authority drop or stay the same during the changes?
- Kyle
-
Yeah this is the first thing you should do. WMT should give you a more exact number of links than OSE, and those numbers don't tend to fluctuate as much - unless there is an actual loss/gain of a larger number of links/LRDs.
-
Can't believe I didn't think of this earlier, but are you comparing the numbers you're getting here to the numbers you're getting from Google Webmaster Tools? Did you also see a drop in backlinks there?
-
I just learned about vlookup this year. Super useful for cross-referencing spreadsheets.
Here's how it works. In the same Excel document, you will have two sheets. The first one will have all the data from your last OSE report, the one with 50K links. (I'm assuming you exported this.) The second sheet will have all the data from your more recent OSE report, the one with 30k links. The vlookup function will quickly check if something on the first sheet is also on the second sheet.
If it's on the first sheet but not on the second sheet, then that's one of the links that "disappeared." Look those over, check for patterns, test some of them. Maybe you had a sitewide link on a giant website, and that website just went down. But if the missing links are still online, then OSE simply didn't crawl them this time.
If you've never used vlookup before, it's worth spending a few hours reading tutorials, watching videos (tons on YouTube!), and learning the syntax. Best of luck!
-
I'm not familiar with the vlookup function. Is it pretty difficult? I'm pretty good at research and picking things up though so if that's the way to go about it I can give it a go.
Thanks so much for your ongoing assistance.
Jenny
-
How comfortable are you with Excel? Do you know how to use the vlookup function?
-
Forgive this newbie response, but how do I check to see which URLs have disappeared? There are over 10,000 Total External Links which disappeared so let me know if there's an easy way to do this please.
-
Hmm, interesting. I'm new to the pro tool so please forgive this question - but what exactly is the mozscape index and why does it fluctuate?
One competitor went down slightly and another went up, so it seems specific to only our site. So does that indicate a mozscape index fluctuation or something different?
Thanks so much for your help!
-
Have you checked the disappearing URLs to see if they're still online?
-
Keep in mind if you are pulling these stats from OSE or the pro tool that the amount of domains and URLs differ each time they update the mozscape index. So the total amounts may change depending on the variations from those two months.
Have you noticed this change with your competitors sites as well or is it specific to only our site?
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
-
A single metric to evaluate link quality?
We're using Moz and Ahrefs to monitor backlinks that we're getting to Siftery. Given that there are so many factors that affect the potential quality of a backlink - domain authority, page authority, context, anchor text, etc. - is there a single metric that attempts to quantify the value of a link? I realize that this would be an inexact science, but it would be a helpful view to get a quick directional sense of what are our most valuable backlinks (and be able to tie it to the campaigns that led to them, for example). If there's no "single metric" out there, are there heuristics that people have withstood the test of time? Thanks for your help!
Moz Pro | | ggiaco-siftery0 -
Inbound links not showing in reports
My clients site so far only has a few inbound links. If I do a report on MOZ/Open Site Explorer it only lists 10 domains linking in and, a number of important ones are not on that list. As an example, one of the leading UK national newspapers (Daily Telegraph) has a link on this page to the client www.vidavida.co.uk and yet this link/domain does not appear in the above reports. Is this an intentional nofollow type thing that the telegraph does and is there a way for me to check that on their site/page? http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG8655068/Holiday-travel-in-style.html Any comments most appreciated. Thanks,
Moz Pro | | MrFrisbee
C0 -
Crawl Test produced only 1 page
Hi, I recently submitted a crawl for www.cirrato.com using SEOMoz Crawl Test Tool. I have a lot of pages, but the crawl result shows only 1 page, which is the front page and nothing else... Does anyone know what this could mean or what the problem is?
Moz Pro | | yusufcirrato0 -
Getting PA & DA off of a list of links
I have a list of links that I want to get PA and DA for each individual link, can this be done in some way other than one at a time? I've heard this can be done with excel and using api but I don't know the specifics of this.. Help would be appreciated
Moz Pro | | Fergclaw2 -
Reg. internal followed links
Our site is new. So far we have a 534 pages. Our competitors have around 5000. I'm working on building more, but that's a lot of catching up. The report says we have only 174 internal followed links. Why is that? I have all links set in the site to be nofollow links, but not the inside links. I also have lots of landing pages, which are not added to the main menu, obviously. But the the main menu shows up on all landing pages. Just wondering if either the nofollow has anything to do with it or the landing pages set up, or the numbers are accurate. Any ideas? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | FinanceSite0 -
Juicy Link Finder Working?
I cant seem to get this tool to work for any targeted keywords & amounts. Anyone else having this issue?
Moz Pro | | Anest0 -
"Opt Out" of free month through MozPoints
This is probably going to sound a bit strange but I'd like it if I could "opt out" of the 200 MozPoints in a month giving a free months worth of membership. The reason being that I am enjoying using the forum but feel like every time I click on a thumbs up for my stuff to get MozPoints, it's like I'm trying to take advantage of the offer... when in actual fact I have no interest in that. Don't get me wrong, I want MozPoints because I want an SEOmoz t-shirt lol, and maybe one day I'll get to find out what the "something really special" is (I don't want to have one of whatever it is, I just want to know what it is.... the curiosity is killing me!) Anyway, what I'm saying is that I would feel more free to use the forums without having this kind of uncomfortable feeling that it may look like I'm just in it for the points to skimp on cash lol. I use the service, I love the service, and so I am happy to pay for the service... not only that but the forums are part of the benefit of the service, so I'd rather not worry that every comment I make may look like I'm doing it for reasons of greed, rather than reasons of interest. So, can we have a thing where we opt out?
Moz Pro | | SteveOllington2 -
Which would you chose? Link on PA56 with 88 OBL's and 80 IBL's or a link on a PA75 with 225 OBL's & 40 IBL (Same Domain)
Which would you chose? Link on PA56 with 88 OBL's and 80 IBL's or a link on a PA75 with 225 OBL's & 40 IBL (Same Domain) Pretty self explanatory. I want to know what metrics SEOMozzers rely on most. If you are not an expert at evaluating links for large scale development please don't muddy the waters on this question with a thin and vague answer.
Moz Pro | | DavidWolf580