Unable to fully see full spectrum of links built on some backlink checkers
-
We have built various links in directories and blogs to our website. We can clearly see that these links have been established on these websites. Some we have built well over 6 months ago.
However, upon using a range of tools such as Moz Open Explorer, Cognitive SEO Backlink Explorer and SEM Rush's Backlink Checker, we cannot see in any of these backlink checking tools the full spectrum of links we know we have built displayed. In instances of using these tools, we are only seeing a very small sample of links that we have built.
Our question here is then threefold:
- Why is it that a lot of these tools don't pick up the links we know we have built?
- Does google eventually see all the links we have built? Or does it suffer from the same problem as backlink checkers, unable to identify all built links?
- Is there a backlink checker that is throughly comprehensive, or close to, in its ability to identify all links? We have heard good things about Ahrefs and would love to hear people's thoughts here.
-
Thanks Jordan and Tawny! That is a good idea to check in GWT for link profiles of our sites that we want to check. We would love to find also though a link checking tool that is quite comprehensive. Thanks Tawny for your recommendation to check out Ahrefs. It is a tool we have trailed and do find quite effective!
-
Hi there! Tawny from Moz's Help team here. Thanks for writing in with a great question!
Since most backlink checkers don't have the massive resources that a search engine like Google has, it's unlikely that you'll be able to see all your backlinks using any one of them exclusively. For instance, Open Site Explorer is limited to showing you up to 10,000 backlinks at a time (any more than that and you'd need to use the Moz API), and from those, we can only show the top 25 links from each unique linking root domain.If you're not seeing all the backlinks you know you've earned using a backlink checker, but you do see it indexed in the search engines, it's probably because the search engine has used different means of finding those links. It's unlikely that search engines will have the same difficulty finding your backlinks as various backlink checkers will.
Moz is constantly working to improve the shape of our index - choosing which pages to crawl and which to ignore. Our goal is to build the most "Google-shaped" index we can, representative of what Google keeps in their main index and counts as valuable/important links that influence rankings. We make tweaks aimed at this goal each index cycle, but not always perfectly (you can see that in 2015, we crawled a ton more domains, but found that many of those were, in fact, low quality and not valuable, thus we stopped). Moz's crawlers can crawl the web extremely fast and efficiently, but our processing time prevents us from building as large an index as we'd like and as large as our competitors (you will see more links represented in both Ahrefs and Majestic, two competitors to Mozscape that we recommend). Moz calculates valuable metrics that these others do not (like PA/DA, MozRank, MozTrust, Spam Score, etc), but these metrics require hundreds of hours of processing and that time scales linearly with the size of the index, which means we have to stay smaller in order to calculate them.
I hope this helps! If you have follow-up questions, feel free to write in to help@moz.com!
-
This may be a silly question but have you checked in Google Webmaster tool's? I have noticed for some clients I work on Moz may not always show all the backlinks but it is still a good starting point to see if you have any questionable links pointing to your domain. Whereas Search Console or Webmaster tools gives a more complete breakdown of all my backlinks.
If you have Search Console set up download all your backlinks and compare it the other backlink checking tools you have.
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
-
My link research tool is not working
Hello Dear i am facing a problem that my link research tool is not working is there any body else who has the same problem like me need help
Link Explorer | | Arenapile0 -
Can't see the link I earned from Moz in OSE
Hi Mozzers, A month ago I got the nofollow tag removed from the first custom link on my Moz profile but I can't see this in our links on OSE? SEO Spyglass shows it just fine. Is this related to the delays in the back end of Moz or have I set up my profile wrong? Cheers! Jamie
Link Explorer | | SanjidaKazi0 -
OSE Inbound Link Report Exports Returning Blank
We're trying to download a larger OSE report of inbound links and the report only has headers and no actual data. I'm logged in, so is there a bug here?
Link Explorer | | Highland0 -
How to get Root Domain backlinks with OSE
Moz toolbar showing Root links 2111 but when searched on OSE it shows only 71. How can I get full backlinks report? Kindly review attached screenshot. K03BaiU.jpg
Link Explorer | | bondhoward0 -
Just Discovered links - How long before they are counted toward the PA scores
I have a new website I put up in the last 90 days. I have been watching the DA, PA and Keyword rankings. Once I set up the campaign I got a report back a week later and some data showing some keyword rankings and some DA & PA scores and links showing from 2 domains. Since this time OSE has Just Discovered 16 more backlinking domains - however the DA and PA scores have not changed ? How long after the new Just Discovered backlinks before they affect the scores I am seeing for my DA & PA ? Thank you in advance for any insight on this matter, Happy Holidays - Joe
Link Explorer | | jlane90 -
Why do I not see any data in Open site Explorer for my site www.mtg-sg.com
The PA and DA shows as one. The message is "It looks like we haven't discovered established link data for this URL yet." But its shows me that there are facebook shares. Therefore, it can't be the reasons stated below.
Link Explorer | | Dineshr840 -
Feedburner Links Showing Up In OSE
I, for years now, have been seeing lots of links from http://feeds.feedburner.com/ showing up very high in backlink profiles. Why is this? And if these links are not passing link juice why are they being reported on in OSE? Seems like there should be some sort of filter for these, or that OSE bot should follow robots.txt directives as googlebot does.
Link Explorer | | MiguelSalcido0 -
External link numbers down year on year
Hi, Just wondering if anyone knows why a website that has definitely had some links acquired over the last year would now show less links and from fewer referring domains than they had this time last year? How is that possible - assume it is down to the way OSE / Moz crawl the web and collect data but need a definitive explanation for a client that has noticed the drop in link metrics and as a result authority. Many thanks,
Link Explorer | | lollowe0