Dramatic drop in Domain Authority

[muzzmoz]

I have a client who has reported a drop in Domain Authority from 16 to 1 in a matter of a few weeks. Also, MOZ was reporting links, but now none!

I know there were some issues with the recent MOZ index update. However, this sounds like something else. Anyone got ideas on where we should start looking?

[muzzmoz]

Hey Andy,

Somewhat heartening to know we're not alone, but I share your pain!

My client went from a Domain Authority of 16 in December to a DA of 1 after moving to https. They have finally bounced back to 11, but it has taken 3 months AND they still only have 2 referring domains linking to the https version.

There are 53 referring domains still linking to the http version. In fact, this has risen from 40 referring domains in the last month. So how can the number of referrers to http be increasing, when there is an https verion? I just don't get it!

Anyone know (a) how this can happen and (b) how to address the issue?

[andy_simpson]

Hi,

We're experiencing a similar issue. We did have a DA of 27 now 16, a huge 11 drop since our change to https in Feb. Our competitor changed to https in September and has gradually dropped 32 to 20 but only by 4 this month.

It's making little sense when our links are still higher as well as other metrics - but we now have the lowest DA compared to our competitors.

[muzzmoz]

Definitely looks like something to do with http/https...

Just checked the domain in ahrefs (http and https):

• The http version has 102 links from 45 referring domains
• The https version has 'no data' for backlinks or referring domains

I also noticed in ahrefs:

• The http version has a Domain Rating of 28 and a URL Rating of 20
• The https version also has a Domain Rating of 28, but a URL Rating of only 3

Although all the http pages appear to be redirecting to https, it seem that the backlinks have been lost.

If this is the case, can they get them back? And if so, how?

[muzzmoz]

The challenge is I've only just started with this client, so I don't really know what has/hasn't been done over the last few months.

What I can see is:

• They moved from http to https on 18 December 2016
• A number of keywords then lost their rankings, but almost immediately returned on the https site
• Although there were ups and downs, looking at a sample of 20 keywords, on average they moved up 1.5 ranking positions

So does it sound plausible that the switch from http to https could also affect DA?

[ViviCa1]

Hmm, I look after 7 websites. Haven't done any link building on any of them, but one maintained its DA, one dropped from 10 to 1 and the others all dropped a bit but not as dramatically. Most competitors have also seen some drops.

DA is helpful as a guideline, but I wouldn't use it as a KPI because it is a relative metric.

One of the things you could do is manually check those links that showed up in OSE before and check whether they're still there. Other than that, if you are sure that something is wrong, go through everything you've done in the past couple of months and any changes that have been made to the website to see if any of them caused any issues.

However, I still think that if your rankings haven't gone down and your traffic haven't suffered, I wouldn't assume there is an issue purely because the DA has gone down.

We have seen huge increases in organic traffic and conversions over the past 6 months but our DA has gone down.

[muzzmoz]

Yes, I read that post before.

Unfortunately this client's primary competitor has maintained their DA of 19. So I suspect (the client is certain) there is something else going on. So I need to know where to start digging!

[ViviCa1]

This sounds exactly like the problem many have seen after the recent API update. I would suggest reading this topic: https://moz.com/community/q/is-everybody-seeing-da-pa-drops-after-last-moz-api-update You'll find a few more in the Q&A section but this one has a really helpful reply from Rand Fishkin.

We also saw one domain drop from 10 to 1 and I have seen someone else here mention a drop from 12 to 1. I for one am not going to worry about it for now, fairly certain it will get fixed with the next update which is expected in a little over two weeks.