Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Link Building
    4. Different number of backlinks (Search console - Majestic)

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Different number of backlinks (Search console - Majestic)

    Link Building
    4
    4
    2373
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • skrauss
      skrauss Subscriber last edited by

      Hi there,

      I saw a notable difference between the number of backlinks from ref domains to my website in search console and majestic.

      I basically have two questions: why such a difference? And which tool gives me the most accurate number between these two?

      Thank you!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Marketing-Omoda
        Marketing-Omoda last edited by

        Google's primary objective is to give users the best experience, off course they do so by crawling the entire web for the most relevant results based on their search queries.

        Google's Search Console is a free service that provides you with links Google the came across / found in the before mentioned proces.

        With this in mind, be aware that Google does not crawl the web to give you as a webmaster the most recent en relevant backlink reports.

        many links in Google's Search Console can therefore be old, non-existing links (even in most recent link reports)
        Another shortcoming of Search Console in my opinion, is that is show where links are/were FROM, but not where they link TO.

        I personally think paid services such as MOZ, Majestic en Ahrefs do better jobs at this, because their primary objective is to give webmasters / SEM's the best experience, not searchers.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Travis_Bailey
          Travis_Bailey last edited by

          There will likely always be a significant variance between backlink tools. They have to first discover the links, and later determine if the links are still there. It's a pretty big job to do, for the entire internet.

          Google Search Console will show you a sampling of links. You'll seldom ever get anywhere near the whole story from them. Unless, the site is new. I've still seen months long delays in reporting totally legit backlinks.

          Majestic is pretty good. I've always found their metrics to be something of a gobble-dee-guk, which is only useful for comparisons between sites - within Majestic.

          aHrefs is another backlink tool. And they do a fine job. But still, they have to update their database after crawls. The same as anyone else.

          Open Site Explorer has always kind of lagged, but it's another source you should consider for backlink data.

          So, no one tool has all of the information. I don't think that will happen for at least 10 years, if not more.

          The reasons various tools lack certain information varies. Some tools, like ahrefs, are actually on the 'bad bots list'. And some webmasters use that to block their official bot from crawling their site. Thus no links would be discovered through their official bot, where sites block their bot.

          Backlink research is as post-modern as it gets. (read: literature) You're seldom privileged with all the information. The sources you think should be authoritative aren't.

          The answer has been, and will be for a while, seek out an array of backlink data information. No one thing is going to do it for you.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
          • ThomasHarvey
            ThomasHarvey last edited by

            It'll vary because of the crawlers, each company will have a different amount of sites in their database, and they will also have a different process to get their data live in their console. Honestly I would take each with a grain of salt and just try and use them as a rough guide.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • MarketAPeel

              Backlinks on Moz not on Google Search Console

              google search console backlinks

              Moz is showing thousands of backlinks to my site that are not showing up on Google Search Console - which is good because those links were created by some spammer in Pakistan somewhere. I haven't yet submitted a disavow report to Google of well over 10K links because the list keeps growing every day with new backlinks that have been rerouted to a 404 page. I have asked Google to clarify and they put my question on their forum for an answer, which I'm still waiting for - so I thought I'd try my luck here. My question... If Moz does not match Google Search Console, and backlinks are important to results, how valid is the ranking that Moz creates to let me know how I'm doing in this competition and if I'm improving or not. If the goal is to get Google to pay attention and I use Moz to help me figure out how to do this, how can I do that if the backlink information isn't the same - by literally over 10 000 backlinks created by some spammer doing odd things... They've included the url from their deleted profile on my site with 100s of other urls, including Moz.com and are posting them everywhere with their preferred anchor text. Moz ranking considers the thousands of spam backlinks I can't get rid of and Google ignores them or disavows them. So isn't the rankings, data, and graphs apples and bananas? How can I know what my site's strength really is and if I'm improving or not if the data doesn't match? Complete SEO Novice Shannon Peel
              Brand Storyteller
              MarketAPeel

              Link Building | | MarketAPeel
              0
            • shelbythomas

              Why are there less backlink domains in Moz vs. Semrush?

              For our domain studyville.com, Semrush is reporting 46 linking domains, and Moz is reporting 7. Does anyone know where there is such a large discrepancy?

              Link Building | | shelbythomas
              0
            • AliHassanbinali

              Ahrefs Backlinks VS Moz Backlinks

              HI Team and members We have website related to jobs in Pakistan and we purchased 5 niche edits backlinks to a specific page " MES Jobs 2021" In ahrefs it show only 2 backlinks to that page but in moz 0 backlinks but in actually there are 5 links. Why this happen in moz? We actually love this tool used for Keywords research for jobs in Pakistan find some cool keywords using moz but we facing backlinks issues in it.

              Link Building | | AliHassanbinali
              1
            • FriedmanSimon1000

              Backlinks and SPAM

              I was doing some back link review of competitors and I have noticed that many of our competition have 300+ do follow back links from Justia.com  and an additional 300+ do follow links from law.cornell.edu (they share the same database). The links on Justia are from different pages and they are all going to the root of our competitors site. So the questions are as follows; 1: For the purpose of SEO is this considered SPAM 2: If not SPAM, then does it have a positive effect on the competitions website and should I attempt to emulate for my client. Thanks in advance. -Jeff

              Link Building | | FriedmanSimon1000
              0
            • helgeolaussen

              Backlinks from newpapers that requires subscription

              Don't know if this has been answered in another post, but what happens to backlinks that requires users to subscribe and/or pay to view the content with the backlink on it?
              Some newspaper sites has subscription requirement to view certain content.
              Does the backlink drop in value? Or is there any negative effect from this?

              Link Building | | helgeolaussen
              0
            • danieldunn10

              Backlinks and PDFs

              Hi, we are trying to improve on the number of links to our website. A supplier has added a PDF file which is case study to their website. In the PDF it has a link to our website, will this count as a link or not? Thanks

              Link Building | | danieldunn10
              0
            • joeko

              Backlink from foreign language websites good for SEO

              I was wondering if backlinks from foreign language webistes can help me in ranking? For example: I ve got website in slovak language and I would place article with backlink on the foreign language website.  In which language should be the text surrounding the keyword?

              Link Building | | joeko
              1
            • joemas99

              What is the best way to manage backlinks?

              What back link management software do you guys use or recommend? Need to manage types of links on each page. Thanks

              Link Building | | joemas99
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.