Discrepancy between OSE internal links and Webmaster Tools
-
Hi,
We have been attempting to increase our rankings for our key term for a number of months now, and we are seeing an unusual discrepancy between OSE and Webmaster Tools that we believe may be causing us harm.
OSE shows our homepage, www.unionroom.com, as having only 27 internal links (only three of these aren't 301's too), whereas Webmaster Tools is showing just over 1,500 internal links to the homepage.
The three pages that OSE are displaying as linking back to the homepage are the homepage, our blog and our accessibility page. These pages are all ran off the same template and have the same header and footer (with three home links spread across header and footer). You can see our confusion!
Is this a case of OSE's stats being incorrect (the website has been live for ~6 months) or is there an issue with our in-linking structure that we are missing?
Thanks!
-
Yep that is correct, which can be 50/50.
-
Thanks for the link David, we will take a look through that.
I've quickly looked at some competitor websites and their home links are all href="/", so would I be correct in assuming that it if this affected our website it should also affect others in OSE?
-
To provide more detail there is a relative link back to the homepage though href="/" which our crawler doesn't work well with so having the full absolute path is recommended.
Here is a great resource that goes more in-depth about the differences: http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/absolute-vs-relative-pathslinks/
-
I ran some inner pages through OSE (/work and /contact) and both look to be indexed.
It's weird that you say 'For example we do have /blog/ indexed but there isn't a link going back to the homepage as "www.unionroom.com"' as this is one of only two pages (blog and accessibility) showing that DO link back to unionroom.com.
In summary:
- All inner pages are crawled.
- All inner pages (that we have tested) are indexed.
- All of our pages use the same template.
- OSE is stating that only two inner pages link back to the homepage (blog and accessibility).
-
It's possible we may not have indexed those pages or they have a link back to www.unionroom.com within the source code. You can verify by putting those pages into OSE directly to see if they have been indexed and also verify the link is in the source code.
For example we do have /blog/ indexed but there isn't a link going back to the homepage as "www.unionroom.com"
-
The crawl looks to be working correctly, as in it is finding all of the pages and posts that we would expect (approximately 300). It looks to be solely an issue with the number of internal links that OSE is saying the page www.unionroom.com has (27).
All but two of our inner pages, aside from the blog and accessibility, aren't listed on our internal link report for the homepage. This includes top level pages like services, about, contact etc, all missing.
The templates that we use for the blog and accessibility pages are identical to to what we use for other inner pages, so it's unusual that the others aren't listed.
-
Anytime!
Website structure can play a part but also time timing of when sites are indexed. There can be various networking issues that can prevent our crawler and others from reaching certain pages. You can always run a crawl test to look for any possible errors which you will have time to correct before the next update: https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test
Also some pages may be blocked intentionally from robots.txt and no-follow tags.
-
Hi David,
Thanks for your reply.
I'm concerned that on the competitor websites that we are evaluating using OSE, their websites' internal links are displaying much higher numbers than ours (27 vs ~300) even though our websites are of similar size. Could this possibly highlight an issue with our website structure (i.e. crawlers are having an issue finding ways back to the homepage via inner pages, even though we have three on each page around the website), or is this a case of MOZ crawling perhaps showing incorrect statistics?
I'm trying to eliminate the possibility of OSE's statistics being incorrect before we attempt to change the structure of the website and begin testing etc.
Thanks!
-
Hi Jordan!
There are a lot of reasons you could be seeing these data discrepancies. If you're seeing more GWT errors, it could be because they have 'discovered links' through different means. Moz starts with your home page and uses recursive crawling to find pages on your site. We keep crawling until we stop finding unique links, or until we hit your page crawl limit. Bottom line, when we crawl your site your homepage is the only seed. We know that Google uses multiple seeds, so it could be possible Google is indexing more pages that way. In sum Google will never match up with OSE but it's good to use both along with other backlink tools to cover all your bases.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Hello There I have a site the problem with this site is I have taken countless backlinks but it is not reflecting on Moz. Is there any way to help Moz find my links?
Hello There I have a site health related..the problem with this site is I have taken countless backlinks but it is not reflecting on Moz. Is there any way to help Moz find my links? herpescurecare.com
Link Explorer | | thelancethealth0 -
Using Link Tracking list to track 301 backlinks for my main site backlink profile?
Greetings, I am utilizing link tracking list to keep a track of 301 redirect backlinks to my main site because these links do not as yet show up in my backlink profile on Moz. Will adding these to the tracking list with the redirected domain as the target / source url show up in my main site backlink profile eventually?
Link Explorer | | AkiedoFung0 -
My site links to my clients not showing in Moz
I've got a web design business with a site that's been out there for 17 years - www.biztoolsone.com. I've got links to my clients' sites in my portfolio page. The backlinks list for my clients, when I check them in Moz, don't show the links from this site. They always showed in the list until a few months ago. The site has a DA of 59 & PA (for home page) of 50. The spam score is 0/17. I'm having a tough time telling my clients that the Moz backlinks list is accurate when that site doesn't show in the list. The same is true for www.fayettevillenc.biz - this is one I created years ago to generate backlinks. It's got a spam score of 4/17, so I'm a little more understanding of that one. Thanks for any guidance!
Link Explorer | | wcksmith10 -
Can I check outbound links from a website?
Hi! Is there an easy way to check if a certain domain has a link to my domain. Is there something similar to "checking outbound links" on a website?
Link Explorer | | AnnabelH0 -
Inbound links not found in Moz Pro(though they exist)
These sites have many inbound links but Moz Pro finds no such links. I also used SimilarWebPro Trial to confirm the existing of such links. (these sites have IP block so it requires an VPN to access with Japan IP) osakado.cc
Link Explorer | | Yuji_m
oskd.biz Could anyone figure out why Moz can't find those links to those sites? Any tricks in place to hide those links from SeoMoz? If I pay to upgrade SimilarWebPro but Id rather stay with SeoMoz Pro. thanks in advance.0 -
Inbound Links - How accurate or up-to-date is Open Site Explorer?
When I type my domain into OSE I get a list of linking domains. Most of them I have seen before and I know were active last year. However, when I click through, many of these links have been removed (which is what I wanted/requested) and some of the pages return 404. Google (via link:www.mydomain.com) doesn't show these links as active either. My question is why does OSE show them? Thanks
Link Explorer | | neilmac0 -
Why don't links from Reddit show up in Site Explorer?
Some are follow and some are no follow. They show up in webmaster tools and not in site explorer. In addition why do some other links show up in webmaster tools but not site explorer?
Link Explorer | | RafeTLouis0 -
Internal Equity Passing Links Showing 0
Hi There. I ran Open Site Explorer on a client's site and it's showing 0 for Internal Equity Passing Links and 0 Total Internal Links. Has anyone seen this before? If anyone knows what might be causing this I'd be very appreciative of the assistance. Thank you!
Link Explorer | | kwaterman0