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
-
Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.
Hi,
Link Building | | JIMBO16
I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim0 -
What is the importance of root domains linking to your website in Google's rankings? I notice our competition has a much higher number on keywords I'm analyzing. Thank you!
I've noticed our competition has a much higher number of "root domains" linking to their page than we do. Is this simply a result of more websites linking to them? How long does it normally take to build up these numbers/rankings? (I'm assuming it's a concerted effort, which I'll be researching.) Thank you!
Link Building | | mjfinet0 -
Can you get "link juice" from an outside company's/organization's intranet?
Will you get the same "link juice benefits" from a University, Government Org, or public company's intranet that are linked to your webpages – vs the benefits that you would get from links from their public webpages? Assume that the external webpages have very high Domain Authority, MozRank/Trust etc.
Link Building | | MLR0 -
Creating your own blog for back linking to your site
Our competitor seems to be linked to a blog that they have created themselves. From an SEO perspective is it worthwhile creating a blog that is related to your particular industry and then only including links back to your site. Also is there any way to upload ,articles etc automatically to the blog to cut down on the people hours involved in updating content?
Link Building | | Hardley10 -
My best links not showing in Open Site Explorer
Why is it that OSE does not display my strongest backlinks, including those from Wikipedia, a legitamite .edu, Squidoo, etc.? Some of those links have been live for a long time, and some (not all) are "dofollow". Impossible to do a thorough backlink analysis in this situation.
Link Building | | veezer0 -
How can see the total # of links to my site?
WMT shows only top 1000 domains that have links to my site. Where or how I can see the total number of domains or links pointing to my site ? Thank you
Link Building | | orion680 -
OSE - why are some external links not showing up?
We use PRWeb for our press releases and carefully choose the anchor text with a link back to our site at metrix.com. This year, we've put out about 8 releases, all with these links included. However, when I drill down to prweb.com in Open Site Explorer, I'm only seeing one link coming from one of those releases. It is definitely an external, followed link when I highlight the releases with MozBar, and I don't see any other differences that would help explain this. Can anyone explain why these links aren't showing up? Thank you.
Link Building | | IFSNA0 -
Do http:// links to a http://www. site count the same to Google?
In terms of links to one's site helping your position on Google, if your site defaults to http://www.example.com (automatically adds "www." even if it isn't typed), does Google count links that appear as http://example.com (without the www.) with the same "weight"? Thanks.
Link Building | | celife0