Specific external links
-
So...we have an A+ rating with the BBB and have for some time. We have a link from their page. We also use sites like pricegrabber and reseller rankings and have links from those.
What I can't figure out is why links from the BBB and Pricegrabber don't even show up in open site explorer but the reseller ratings links are everywhere. The BBB one is easily the oldest and the other two are roughly the same age (i.e. at least a couple years old.)
-
The Open Site Explorer indexed is completely refreshed every few weeks, and currently consists of 105 billion links. While that's quite a large data set and mostly comparable with other indexes in the space, it's still only a fraction of the links on the web and only a portion of the links Google undoubtedly knows about.
The way OSE finds links is that it prioritizes pages with lots of inbound links and links it found during previous crawls. Because BBB pages are often found deep-deep-deep under layers of navigation and usually don't have a lot of external links pointing to them, they aren't easy pages for crawlers to find on a regular basis. BBB has an especially difficult site architecture, and sadly this issue comes up a lot with that particular site
We're working on including more historical data in the index, so that even if we didn't crawl the link in the past two weeks, we'll still include it if we are reasonably confident it still exist. This will help alleviate some of these concerns.
The good news (or bad depending on how you look at it) is that while OSE doesn't show every link, it tends to show the majority of the most valuable links.
Regardless, thanks for the feedback and best of luck with your SEO.
-
I share your frustration in wanting to be able to track links in OSE. Someone at Moz told me a while back that OSE only reaches 20-25% of links out there. I've just come to tell myself that if I know the link exists then I don't need to see it in OSE.
-
I wonder if Moz understands and follows the Robots.txt file? I know at one point they never, back in the day when I used Moz most of my errors came from URL's which were hidden by robots which would not of caused errors for Google.
& what your saying Oren makes perfect sense if it's correct. Why would they want to crawl aggregated content.
-
Perhaps a Mozzer can verify this, but I remember someone saying they Moz doesn't crawl some big sites that aggregate lots of data (twitter, BBB, yelp, domain listings, etc. etc.) because of the size of their servers, and the likelihood that the user put it there themselves. They have smaller servers than say, Google or Bing.
-
Hi,
Firstly it could be that Open Site Explorer has not had time to pick them up, if it's years old then let's not forget the OSE manually crawls the internet and is not Google's crawler meaning there will be sections of the web which won't be crawled by Moz.
If it's old then there may be no links pointing to these pages which would not give OSE a reason to crawl them, certainly if it's years. Don't worry about it, a missing link on OSE is one less your competitors can find I had a similar issue with a few links from BOTW but in time it updated and works fine but Open Site Explorer is not flawless.
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
-
Plan for Analyzing and Optimizing Internal Link Structure
I've noticed that our site has what appears to be a poor ratio of external-to-internal links. I know there are no hard and fast rules in SEO but generally I've come to understand that this ratio should be relatively balanced, and in some cases I've seen some correlation of high-performing/ranking sites closer to 70-30 (external-internal). I'm not going to get into specifics, but our ratio is well-below 50-50 (heavy on internal links compared to the volume of inbound external links). My hypothesis is that this is diluting the link equity/authority for the domain. Moz's tools don't really provide any data beyond the initial data point of the volume of internal links compared to external. Being that I've never really gone down this rabbit hole before, I'm wondering if anyone else has ever experienced anything similar and could point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance for any assistance or guidance!
Moz Pro | | IWaldron0 -
Sudden increase in on-page links
Within one week, the site crawl shows my on-page links going from ~10 to ~100+ Does anyone know of a rational reason for this? Sucuri shows my site is clean, so I don't think it's a hack. 10 seems too low to begin with anyway. Any ideas? Thanks 🙂
Moz Pro | | pupstar0 -
Opensiteexlorer - Download CSV show different links
Making backlink report, got results -> Download csv Open downloaded csv in excel, it is different links set inside - copied some urls from the web interface and could not find them in excel using Ctrl+F... wtf?
Moz Pro | | Liston810 -
Internal links not showing in Open Site Explorer
So I'm working on a law firm site and looking at the links for pages in OSE. For practice areas, the links to each practice area are in the left hand menu on every page of the site. Can anyone help me with this question: Example: http://www.comitzlaw.com/personal-injury/car-accidents.html When I plug this URL into OSE, it only shows one linking page, www.comitzlaw.com/practice-areas.html, yet there is a link to this on every other page in the site. When I plug in a random competitors page, www.lesagelblaw.com/Personal-Injury-Overview/Car-Accidents.shtml, it does show all the internal pages linking to it. Since I'm not using a flash menu or javascript, any ideas as to why no internal links are showing up in OSE? Even when I plug in the main URL for the home page, it only shows 4 other internal pages linking to it, yet there is a link on every page. What am I doing wrong?
Moz Pro | | c2g0 -
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 -
Competitive link finder not working
Hi guys, I just wanted to check the status of the Competitive Link Finder. I've been trying to use it for well over a week, literally trying it every day and every single time I get the "we may be a little busy" message. Are there any plans to upgrade it? I realise its a labs tool, but its actually a really useful tool which I just don't seem to be able to benefit from whatsoever. Would love to hear what the plans for this tool are. Thanks Al
Moz Pro | | dotcentric0 -
What is the best way to analyze all of the outgoing links from a website to determine which links are not beneficial?
I've recently been tasked with the SEO on an old site that was ranking somewhere on page two for desirable keyword phrases. The site was taken completely offline for a few months and started ranking on page one for the same desirable keyword phrases. The site has a lot of link partners and I think that some of the links from the site are going to undesirable pages and I'm looking for the best way to get rid of the links that are hurting the sites rankings.
Moz Pro | | kerrick-955310 -
Is there a tool that will show me where links with a given anchor text are coming from?
In OSE I can see how many links there are with a given anchor text, but I can't see where those links come from.
Moz Pro | | seocraig-3101770