Links (external and total) have significantly decreased in 1 month from August to October - why?
-
Greetings,
After comparing a few stats in one of my campaigns, I noticed that External Followed Links, Total External Links, and Total Links significantly decreased from August 29th to when I just checked them a few days ago (October 3).
Any ideas on why this happened?
For example, Total External Links went from 50,589 to 39,203.
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Jenny
-
I'm still trying to get access to GWT for this client, so will definitely check that out. Good call and thanks!!
-
Kyle,
Thanks again for the ongoing help and information - you rock! Our domain authority stayed the same. I'll definitely check out the links to the resources you provided as well. Thanks again!
Jenny
-
Jenny, here is a full list of post were rand and other SEOMoz associates talk about the updates to the mozscape index (which powers OSE and the pro tools):
http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=mozscape+update%3A
In regards to your question of what is mozscape here is another great resource:
http://www.seomoz.org/help/what-is-mozscape
In regards to your last question, it sounds like it was a blend of you losing some links and the mozscape fluctuations. Always take OSE data with a grain of salt, that information is simply to give you insight to trends in your link profile. Did your domain authority drop or stay the same during the changes?
- Kyle
-
Yeah this is the first thing you should do. WMT should give you a more exact number of links than OSE, and those numbers don't tend to fluctuate as much - unless there is an actual loss/gain of a larger number of links/LRDs.
-
Can't believe I didn't think of this earlier, but are you comparing the numbers you're getting here to the numbers you're getting from Google Webmaster Tools? Did you also see a drop in backlinks there?
-
I just learned about vlookup this year. Super useful for cross-referencing spreadsheets.
Here's how it works. In the same Excel document, you will have two sheets. The first one will have all the data from your last OSE report, the one with 50K links. (I'm assuming you exported this.) The second sheet will have all the data from your more recent OSE report, the one with 30k links. The vlookup function will quickly check if something on the first sheet is also on the second sheet.
If it's on the first sheet but not on the second sheet, then that's one of the links that "disappeared." Look those over, check for patterns, test some of them. Maybe you had a sitewide link on a giant website, and that website just went down. But if the missing links are still online, then OSE simply didn't crawl them this time.
If you've never used vlookup before, it's worth spending a few hours reading tutorials, watching videos (tons on YouTube!), and learning the syntax. Best of luck!
-
I'm not familiar with the vlookup function. Is it pretty difficult? I'm pretty good at research and picking things up though so if that's the way to go about it I can give it a go.
Thanks so much for your ongoing assistance.
Jenny
-
How comfortable are you with Excel? Do you know how to use the vlookup function?
-
Forgive this newbie response, but how do I check to see which URLs have disappeared? There are over 10,000 Total External Links which disappeared so let me know if there's an easy way to do this please.
-
Hmm, interesting. I'm new to the pro tool so please forgive this question - but what exactly is the mozscape index and why does it fluctuate?
One competitor went down slightly and another went up, so it seems specific to only our site. So does that indicate a mozscape index fluctuation or something different?
Thanks so much for your help!
-
Have you checked the disappearing URLs to see if they're still online?
-
Keep in mind if you are pulling these stats from OSE or the pro tool that the amount of domains and URLs differ each time they update the mozscape index. So the total amounts may change depending on the variations from those two months.
Have you noticed this change with your competitors sites as well or is it specific to only our site?
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
-
What impact has external links reported as http503
Hello I have 72 external broken links who are reported with a http 503 status. When I ask the owner of that site, he confirmed he has removed it from GA by using this status. My question is. Does this have an impact for the quality of my site? The site is available, there is no delay when you open the link. Thank you for your support. br
Moz Pro | | kjerstibakke
Kjersti Bakke0 -
Percentage of good links vs. bad
Hi Does anyone know the best way of determining good links from bad links using the SEO Moz tools? I bought some directory links to two or three pages on my site a few years back. The were all very obviously spammy because of the anchor text and I didn't have a high enough ratio of good links to counteract them. I read somewhere that if more than 10% of the links to a page have the same (or similar) anchor text, it's obvious that you're on the bad list.
Moz Pro | | nsjadmin0 -
Why does google not recognize inbound links from bbb.org?
After using site explorer I noticed my companys links for bbb.org are not included. They are for our competitors but not us. Anyone know why? Thanks, Cole
Moz Pro | | coleda0 -
How do I get our full domain link profile?
With Open Site Explorer I have exported our domain link profile but I only get 65 domains returned when our marketing software reports that we have 315 . . . I know that some domains point to www.bluelink.ca which redirects to www.bluelinkerp.com. Is Open Site Explorer missing these links?
Moz Pro | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Only 1 page has been crawled. Why?
I set a new profile up a fortnight ago. Last week seomoz crawled the entire site (10k pages), and this week has only crawled 1 page. Nothing's changed on the site that I'm aware of, so what's happened?
Moz Pro | | tompollard0 -
How many of my linked pages should I redirect (301's)
I'm moving my store to a new site and will have a much friendlier but completely different URL structure. I used Open Site Explorer to find inbound links to 513 pages and have done about half so far. The remaining pages have one link each at a page authority of 27 or less - but there are still 250+ of them. I have to manually view each old page, search for the product on the new site, and enter the redirect as there is no way to translate old URL's to new ones. How important is it for rankings to redirect the remaining 250 or so pages?
Moz Pro | | agirlandamac0 -
Link from home page
I see an abundance of websites that don't link out at all, and there is no data available to seoMoz for the sites, some like http:// regal - diving dot com (trying not to get moderated AGAIN Innocent need to show which link and its a competitor kind of) are not linking to anyone else just internal links. How come they dont show info to SEOMOZ Should I link out from home page, is this detrimental does ANY single link from home page show google that I am not a PROPER web business. thanks
Moz Pro | | landed0 -
Strange Links in OSE
Hey seomozers, The most recent Linkscape update has created some strange links to our domain. They are links which when I navigate to are download links, here is one example: http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4.9/updates/x86_64/headers/kernel-largesmp-0-2.6.9-89.0.25.EL.x86_64.hdr Now this links has nothing to do with our site and I can't see how it would count as a link to our domain, can anyone shed some light on why these types of links are being crawled as a link to our domain? Thanks Nigel
Moz Pro | | NigelJ0