What would cause a huge decrease in total links?
-
After the latest crawl of one of my client campaigns in Moz, I noticed that their domain authority dropped by 3 since the last crawl just one week ago. That seems pretty drastic. I took a look around to see what might have been the cause, and in looking at the Links > Competitive Metrics > History section of Moz, I found that the site had a decrease of total links from 5,339 to 1,072 (see image) - also a drastic decrease. My question is, what would cause such a huge, sudden decrease in links over just the course of one month? I haven't changed anything up with the approach to their online strategy, in fact we have put increased emphasis on the creation of natural links so this huge decrease comes as a real surprise. I should also mention that Total External Links also decreased, but only from 243 to 205. Any insight into these numbers and what could have possibly caused such a drastic decrease would be very much appreciated!
-
Thanks for the great input. I think we have figured out the issue, at least partially. This particular client had a Google+ page that they had kept up for several years - lots of posts with links back to the website. That G+ page was deleted this past week, which would explain the sudden disappearance of links. I doubt the page was accountable for 4,000+ links, but I'm pretty confident that is where the majority of the decrease came from. Thanks for the help!
-
Shot in the dark but maybe a sitewide link was removed? e.g. you posted a comment on a blog, it appeared in the sidebar under "recent comments", moz picked them up, your comment is no longer recent, lose all the sitewide backlinks, see that drop.
If you've exported your backlinks previously when you had a lot, compare the current links to the old list and see where they differ.
-
Hmm, that does seem a bit drastic!
Have you tried checking your links using another tool other than Moz? Maybe on the last Moz scan there was some sort of hiccup? Try checking your link using: https://ahrefs.com
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
-
Google Does not find Internal links
Hi guys I involved in difficult situation. in google webmaster tools -> internal links some important pages doesn't have any links from all pages. for example home page just have 9000 internal inks but there are 29000 indexed pages by google and some not important pages have 27000 internal links.(more than home page) Site made by angular v1 Is there anyone can help me why google could not find all internal links?
Technical SEO | | cafegardesh0 -
Direct link vs 302 redirect
So we have recently relaunched a site that we manage. As part of this we have changed the domain. The webdesign agency that built the new site have implemented a direct link from the old domain to the new domain. What is best practice a direct link or a 302 redirect? Thanks
Technical SEO | | cbarron0 -
Removing links - Best practice
Hi I have noticed on webmaster that I have a lot of links to my sites from link building directories. Either I did this many years a go or somehow they've linked to me. Would links to link building directories harm my site? i.e linkspurt.com pingerati.net I have quite a few and just wondering what to do with them. Also I have some customer sites which are massive one site has 38,000 links coming to my site as I have put a credit that I built the site with a link back to mine. It has a low score in Google would this also harm my site? Any advise would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Does Google monitor which links are actually followed?
If a link to my site is posted on another site and many people start following that link and they stay on my site for a while, and I also have GA set up, does Google factor that information back into the Google rankings? In other words, are there ways that Google tries to use clicks and bounce rates and other user behavior to determine page rank and domain rank? Best,
Technical SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher1 -
When criteria do you use for external linking?
When linking out to external sources what criteria do you use? Also, do you ever add the URL in plain text instead to conserve link juice?
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0 -
What loss of value would this link experience?
What loss of value would this link experience? If the link is actually a link to the from site that is 301'd to your site like this example below: i.e., www.domain.com/29834?=www.yourdomain.com My thought is that simply because you're going through a redirect (In this case a 301) you will lose slight value there. But I'd love to hear your thoughts and reasoning on any other affects if any (direct or indirect) you think it may have.
Technical SEO | | Webfor1 -
Too many footer links?
Hi. We're working on http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/ at the moment, and I was wondering what's everyone's opinion on footer links. There's quite a lot on the page, and I was wondering if there might be a few too many. If so, what would be the best plan of action? Remove them altogether, stick them in an iframe or in a bit of JS so they can't be crawled? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | neooptic0 -
Huge and sudden fall in SEO traffic
Hi, I’m writing you because we have noticed in Google Analytics account, a huge fall in the SEO traffic of mywebsite, starting suddenly in one precise day. The difference between this day and the previous one is: -46,36% . Traffic has fallen in all parts of the site in the same way. Some details: - we did not make any relevant change to the website - we haven’t been banned by Google (or we don’t have any message about it in GWT) - the number of the landing pages remains approximately the same - the number of indexed keywords falls from 9.000 to 4.000. - around 2 weeks ago we found out around 120 pages with 404 error, but the error now is solved and the pages are currently working we open the content to Google about 4 months but still we have not published our Site Map. I know that the 404 error could could affect the indexation, but do you have any other idea, apart of this, of what could have happened? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | bodaclick0
