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
-
Having 1 page crawl error on 2 sites
Help! A few weeks back, my dev team did some "changes" (that I don't know anything about), but ever since then, my Moz crawl has only shown one page for either http://betamerica.com or http://fanex.com. Moz service was helpful in talking about a redirect loop that existed, and I asked my team to fix it, which it looks to me like they have. Still, 1 page. I used SEO Book's spider tool and it also only sees 1 page, and sees the sites as http://https://betamerica.com (for example), which is just weird. I don't know enough about HT Access or server stuff to figure out what's going on, so if someone can help me figure that out, I'd appreciate it.
Moz Pro | | BetAmerica0 -
Link from Gizmodo disappeared from Open Site Explorer
Hi, I have been using OSE to check competitor links, DA, PA etc. And recently noticed that an author at Gizmodo was kind enough to link us to a blog post of his. This is great news as Gizmodo has a DA of 94 and a PA of 50 (Which is pretty big compared to our DA of 30 and PA of 42). The link to the post is here: http://gizmodo.com/5956401/everything-you-need-for-the-best-trick+or+treating-house-in-the-neighborhood And the link to our website is: http://www.electromarket.co.uk/lighting-effects/lighting-effects/strobe/ffa0144 It was showing on OSE for the past few days but now it has vanished and it is showing channel5 (TV Channel in the UK) as the highest DA linking to us, which is still pretty good. But I just want to know why the link has stopped displaying on OSE 😞 Any help or insight is appreciated! Tom
Moz Pro | | tomhall900 -
Need help locating a 404 link
My reports are showing a 404 error for a link to a page in our WP site for which we changed the URL months ago. I can't find where the link is coming from. I used Screaming Frog, but can't find where it might tell me the origin of the link, only that it exists. I am pretty sure it's internal. Can someone please tell me how to find the originating page so I can remove the link without having to comb through every page of the site to look for it? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | gfiedel0 -
How can I download all the inbound links to my Site?
Hi, From Site Explorer, I want to download all the inbound links linking to my site: www.comm100.com/livechat/. But it seems that there is a limitation. I can only download a part of the inbound links? What should I do? Or is it because my account is free trial? Do I have to pay for it? Please help. Thanks,
Moz Pro | | Sophia_M0 -
Linking Building: Do I have to beat Linking Root Domains or Total Links?
Hello, When skoping for how to beat competitors, do I need to aim to beat the linking root domains number or the total links? Or do I need to think about both? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | BobGW0 -
Open Site Explorer missing links
Hi, When the update of Open Site Explorer was released I noticed that the new version was missing a huge amount of links that the old version previously found. This still seems to be the case and it's pretty frustrating as we use the tool for our clients. Is this something that everybody is seeing and if so SEOMoz when do you think you'll have a solution? Many thanks
Moz Pro | | JonathanSmith0 -
OpenSiteExplorer is not seeing all my inbound links
I know I have back links to my site from about 5 or 6 websites and most of them even show in my Google webmaster account but according to OSE I only have 1 inbound link. Is it normal for the OSE stats to be wrong? I really want to use it but am worried the info isn't going to be accurate.
Moz Pro | | JasonHegarty0