What is the difference between "external backlinks" & "referring domains" on Majestic SEO?

[nicole.healthline]

According to Majestic SEO's glossary, a "Referring domain, also known as "ref domain", is a domain from which a backlink is pointing to a page or link."

Given this definition, I'm not sure what an external backlink is?

[KeriMorgret]

If you've noticed this anomaly in SEOmoz tools, email the SEOmoz help desk. If you've seen it in Majestic SEO, email their help desk -- SEOmoz and Majestic are two separate companies with two separate tools.

[KeriMorgret]

If you find that example again, email help@seomoz.org and let them know so they can either see if it's a bug or let you know why it's happening.

[AdoptionHelp]

You've stumped me there. Maybe its not giving you an accurate count of backlinks, or maybe its counting the www and non-www version of the domain name as 2?

[nicole.healthline]

I've noticed some cases where the referring domains are more than external backlinks. How would that be possible?

[AdoptionHelp]

Say you had links coming from example.com/page1.html and example.com/page2.html. You would have 2 external backlinks from one referring domain.