Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Moz Tools
    3. Moz Pro
    4. Link Explorer
    5. Is Moz's backlink checker.... just... not good?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Is Moz's backlink checker.... just... not good?

    Link Explorer
    3
    7
    4053
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • TaylorRHawkins
      TaylorRHawkins last edited by

      Hey everyone!

      Can somebody explain to me why this keeps happening: Whenever I'm trying to backlink my competitors, I typically use RavenTools. Every time, without fail, if I put that same URL into Moz's Open Site Explorer - It gives me about 1/20th of what RavenTools shows me. Sometimes it literally comes up with 2 or 3 links total.

      Unfortunately, RavenTools has a cap on how many backlink checks you can perform in a month - so once I've used those up, I have to start using OSE... But, it just doesn't work.

      Does anyone else have this issue?

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • tawnycase
        tawnycase last edited by

        Hey there! Tawny from Moz's Help Team here. I think I can help explain why you're seeing fewer links with our tools than with others.

        Open Site Explorer and the Link Analysis page of Moz Pro Campaigns are both tied to our Mozscape index, which tends to update roughly once a month.

        Just a few points on how we compile our index:

        • We grab the most recent index.
        • We take the top 10 billion URLs with the highest MozRank (with a fixed limit on some of the larger domains).
        • We start crawling from the top down until we've crawled ~130 billion URLs

        The idea here is that we're focusing on the highest-quality links we can find, coming from the most prominent pages of authoritative sites. So, while you may not see every link for a site within our index, we're aiming to report the most valuable ones available!

        Most new sites and links will be indexed by our spiders and available in Mozscape and Open Site Explorer within 60 days, but some take even longer for many reasons - including the crawl-ability of sites, the number of inbound links to them, and the depth of pages in subdirectories. This tends to bias our index in favor of newer links. Linking data is only stored in the index for around 180 days. After that point, unless the crawler has a compelling reason to return to your site and the sites linking to yours, recrawl and reindex them, those links to your site can fall back out of our index again. That doesn't mean they're not out there on the web affecting your SEO, just that our tools don't see them anymore.

        You can see our most recently updated schedule here as well as some more technical metrics on our Mozscape API Updates page. You can also see when the last and next updates happened on the Open Site Explorer (OSE) homepage at any time.

        Since Moz focuses on quality of links over quantity, we are always focused on the most relevant links to display to our users. It's possible that Moz's index will leave out some of the lower-quality (non-link juice providing) links out of our index because of this. So, that might explain why you may see some discrepancies with what other tools may be showing.

        You can read more about how we build our index in our guide here.

        I know this is a ton of information, so if you have any questions or if I didn't make anything clear enough, please don't hesitate to ask! You can always drop us a line at help@moz.com and we'll do our best to clear up any questions you might have. 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • TaylorRHawkins
          TaylorRHawkins last edited by

          Bump.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • TaylorRHawkins
            TaylorRHawkins last edited by

            I'm going to comment on here again to bump this post. This is a little aggravating: I ran a report on one of our clients using OSE and it says they have 3 backlinks. I then immediately ran a report on RavenTools and their report says we have 61 backlinks.

            Why would I want to use OSE if it is only going to provide me >5% of my client's backlink profiles? I simply don't understand.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • CopyChrisSEO
              CopyChrisSEO @TaylorRHawkins last edited by

              You are most welcome. And thank you for the followup.

              You are right. More results are better. The point I meant to establish was that OSE is not bad even though it could be better. It, like the other tools, provides an accurate slice of a site's back links. The size of that slice depends on the tool's resources.

              Equipped to Act Having back link profiles from these tools leaves us equipped to act. I said this in my answer as a blanket statement for link building, disavowing*, content development, and outreach. Here are some quick examples:

              Link building — If OSE (or any tool) returns 4 domains for you and 150 for your competition, It's time to get some links. Plug in some competitors to see if there are any gaps you can target, hit up Fresh Web Mentions to focus your outreach, and explore content opportunities.

              Disavow* — If your tool returns 4 root domains, 15 total links and one of those is complete spam level 10, I'd probably want to disavow* it and audit my site for more spammy links using GSC. I'd know from the slice of back links Moz provided that my site was likely to have more.

              Footnote on Disavowing* Penguin 4.0 has presented some changes for us as to the when and what to disavow. I have not had a recent and significant enough experience with spammy back links to formulate my response yet. If you find yourself the victim of bad back links, do some research before you throw the SEO book at the issue. It might save time.

              Cultivate those links,
              CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • TaylorRHawkins
                TaylorRHawkins @CopyChrisSEO last edited by

                Thanks for the well articulated response, Chris! It's much appreciated.

                I'm gonna contest your last statement though, and I'd like to see what you have to say. If I use Moz to check my backlinks, and it gives me (4 root domains, 15 total links) VS. using someone else and getting (150 root domains, X amount of links) ---- How is this a good way to be equipped to act on my backlink portfolio, in regards to using Moz? I wouldn't be able to know if I have spammy backlinks, or a good amount of high quality links?

                CopyChrisSEO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • CopyChrisSEO
                  CopyChrisSEO last edited by

                  Hello TaylorRHawkins and fellow Mozers,

                  I have had the pleasure of using all sorts of backlink tools, including OSE and RavenTools. In doing so, I've run into this issue. Clients notice this difference too and frequently bring it to my attention. Here's what I say: These are different tools with different limitations. They give different results because of these limitations, which always come down to resources. Whether it's the software, indexing process, or bots, all of these tools are limited by their resources.

                  Tools with larger resources typically return more results. However, even more well-funded tools, including Ahref's beefy bot and index, won't get them all. You can see this in action by comparing your site's links—as reported per your chosen tool—to Google Search Console, which Google has pinky-promised us is the full list. You'll see the difference right away.

                  So is this a bad thing? No, not at all.

                  The tools I've used (OSE, RavenTools, Ahrefs, SEM Rush, and Brightedge) all do a pretty great job of delivering an accurate slice of my competitor's backlinks across the internet. Take this data and extrapolate the backlink profile using other metrics like domain authority. You'll get a good picture of what they have—and be equipped to act on it—even if you can only see 1/20th of their backlink pie.

                  Keep crawling,
                  CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

                  TaylorRHawkins 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • JessicaThompson

                    I couldn't check Page authority or Domain Authority for any page, what can be reason?

                    I am trying to check DA and PA for page but not able to do this. Tried it before two days and it was working fine, problem occurring today. I want help regarding this issue, is anyone other facing this problem. Kindly help me out (provide some other way to check DA/PA).

                    Link Explorer | | JessicaThompson
                    1
                  • jessicapremier

                    How is Moz DA affected by spam links? Disavow file?

                    So it does not appear that moz let's you upload your disavow file.  So when moz calculates your DA how do spammy links factor in? After digging through our GA it appears our site was hit with the 2016 penguin update and never recovered.  Our weekly visitors were 2k, then dropped to 500 and have stayed close to that level for a while. We've used the disavow tool, without success over the past 3 years.  During that time we have done link out reach and built around 10 legit good quality DA links since.  But we have not recovered.  At this point i'm thinking I should just remove the disavow file. Moz says our spam score for our domain is 5%.

                    Link Explorer | | jessicapremier
                    0
                  • rajas2019

                    New backlinks not getting index

                    Hi.
                    I have been creating backlinks for my website since 2 months. The backlinks are from different linking domains. The issue is that moz is not showing me all the backlinks that i have created. It is displaying only 10% of all the backlinks of my domain bestessaywritingservice.org homepage. Is there any way to tell moz about all the backlinks i'm building?
                    Thanks

                    Link Explorer | | rajas2019
                    0
                  • Rosa_M

                    Subdomain and nofollow backlinks are used to calculate the domain authority?

                    Greetings, I have a couple of questions about domain authority. 1 - The backlinks that come from different subdomains count several times or only once coming from the same domain? 2 - The nofollow backlinks are used to calculate the domain authority? Thank you.

                    Link Explorer | | Rosa_M
                    0
                  • yuewiioweiwjksa3832

                    How to index backlinks in moz?

                    hello my website has some backlinks from high authority website that has been indexed by google but moz is not indexing my backlinks and also my pages so what should i do?

                    Link Explorer | | yuewiioweiwjksa3832
                    0
                  • SeoSheikh

                    If I have a MOZ PRO account, do I still need Screaming Frog?

                    Hi, I have a MOZ PRO account which is brilliant for me. I am about to move my site from HTTP to HTTPS and was looking for a smooth way to list every page and its details so I can make sure I do the correct redirects etc.. before the switch to SSL. Do I need to get Screaming Frog, or can the tools with MOZ Pro ease my path just as well? Thanks

                    Link Explorer | | SeoSheikh
                    0
                  • billyguyette

                    Why doesn't my site show up in Moz Site Explorer

                    I started this website about 2 months ago, www.guyetteroofing.com. I know it still needs a lot of work, but I can't find any information on it on the site explorer tool.

                    Link Explorer | | billyguyette
                    1
                  • allyunit

                    The difference between the statistics MOZ & Ahrefs

                    Hello dear. I have a website for a year. I made 10K links in one year(from 45 Root Domains).the Ahrefs.com has show full list of link root domains and pages. the ahrefs rank is 49. but MOZ said my Established Links are 5! So I have some questions, please help me: 1- what is difference between MOZ rank and ahrefs rank? 2-When Just-Discovered Link Calculate for my site? 3-why my moz trust is 0.00!?How to improve it? URL: https://esta-register.org

                    Link Explorer | | allyunit
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.