SEOmoz not displaying correct amount of links?

[tarik3001]

When I go to the link analysis page where ti shows how many links my site has and how many my competitors have...it shows that I have 0 links.  But Google Webmaster Tools shows my site as having 149 links.  Is this a glitch with zeomoz or whats going on? The reason I initially subscribed to seomoz was to track my links.

Thanks

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Tarik,

Unfortunately, no one tool can track all your links. Open Site Explorer is the best tool on the market (in my opinion) for backlink research, but Google Webmaster will almost always show you more.

The problem with Webmaster tools is it often shows you "junk" links, links that pass no value, and it leaves out many of the links that count. It leaves a lot to be desired in terms of finding actionable insights into your incoming link profile.

The advantages of Open Site Explorer are two-fold. 1. SEOmoz tends to show you the links that pass value, filtering out most of the "junk" that Google doesn't count anyway, and 2. SEOmoz attaches metrics to the URLs of the linking pages and domains (DomainAuthority, MozTrust, Etc) so you better understand the value of your backlinks and those of your competitors.

That said, SEOmoz isn't the only game in town. Majestic does a fair job of reporting links, and you'll often find links there you can't find in other places. My tool of choice is SEOmoz, because of the accuracy of the Index and the associated metrics. In the end, you'll have to discover the solution that works best for you.

[KeriMorgret]

OpenSiteExplorer crawls a portion of the web, then processes what it crawls, then updates on about a monthly basis. It can be up to two months for your links to show, and sometimes not all of the links show. The next update is on February 29th.

OSE won't show you every link you have, but neither does Google. OSE does offer you a lot of valuable metrics and insights into links and domains that Google does not.

[Francisco_Meza]

OSE is not perfect, but it is a gauge I use for competitor analysis. My sites have much less links in OSE compared to GWT. Compare the smartness of GoogleBot with RogerBot. When GoogleBot get to an ecommerce website, somehow it grabs the product listed on your HTML sitemap and inserts it into the search box. I heard Matt Cutts say that. Imagine them doing that with WordPress and every other CMS that has a search field? RogerBot isn't as smart.

[nicole.healthline]

SeoMoz is a bit behind GWT, especially for smaller sites. GWT is a more accurate measure of your backlinks.