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GWMT / Search Analytics VS OpenSiteExplorer
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Just had the experience of using OSE data to show what we call "linkrot" to a client -- only to find that GWMT / Search Analytics shows no such thing.
Fortunately the client is an old friend and no face was lost, but it was dicey there for a bit as I have come to rely on and reference OSE again and again and again,
OSE showed Domain Authority dropping by about 1/3 in the last 12 months, presumably due to old links getting broken, linking sites changing their architecture etc.
And of course, ranking is tanking, as you would expect.
But Google shows many more (and much more spammy looking!) backlinks.
Has anyone had any experience benchmarking the 2 data sets of backlinks against each other? Dr Pete?
Does one update more frequently than another?Do you trust one more than another?? If so, why??
Thanks!
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I know it's not always the answer people want to here, but Matt's right - this is basically where we're at. OSE tends to focus on higher-authority links and quality over quantity. Unfortunately, while this works well for tracking the strengths in your link profile, it doesn't always do as well at tracking the weaknesses. We're very much interested in expanding the quantity as well, but it's a balancing act and, in the interest of full transparency, there are many engineering challenges.
People have compared our index to Majestic and Ahrefs on the blogosphere. Since I can't claim to be unbiased, I'd welcome you to read those posts and make your own judgments. In fairness to Majestic and Ahrefs, all three of us are somewhat transparent about sources and at least our general methodologies. Unfortunately, Google is not very transparent about how they sample links or choose which data to show. So, direct comparison with any of the major SEO tools to Google Search Console proves to be a lot trickier. We're also not clear on Google's update cycle for that data.
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I agree with Eric. No one source is going to give you a full picture of your link profile. Generally, OSE is best for measuring the overall strength of a full link profile, as many low-authority sites aren't indexed.
Also, keep in mind that there are a _lot _ of reasons that DA can go down, many of which have nothing at all to do with your specific link profile. That's why we recommend using it to benchmark against competitors rather than as an absolute score. Rand goes into more detail about that here:
DA/PA Fluctuations: How to Interpret, Apply, & Understand These ML-Based Scores
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Whenever you deal with links, even though I really like OSE, typically we have to compile all of the link data from multiple sources. We typically use OSE, Majestic, ahrefs, Google Search Console, as well as others and compile all of the links into one spreadsheet and then look at them there. Different sites have different crawlers and no one source is the most accurate.
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