How dependable is Open Site Explorer and the DA metrics
-
I wanted to get some feedback from the community on the accuracy and dependability of the Open Site Explorer and its DA metrics when evaluating the strength of a website and its authority on the web.
It seems that the data available to OSE is quite different (limited) as compared to that of Google Webmaster tools.
A site I'm evaluating shows the following discrepancy:
Linking domains OSE = 11
Linking domains WMT = 95
Total Links OSE = 39
Total Links WMT = 579
With such a large discrepancy of linking domains and link backs, how accurate can the DA / PA metrics be - what goes into vs whats does not?
I read some place that date OSE is not comprehensive but should account for the top 20% of links (I maybe off here), that said in comparing root domain data it seems to be missing many domains with high DA scores but includes others with very low DA scores.
I would love some feedback or pointers on how much value I should be placing on the info provided by OSE, and opinions on how to truly define a baseline for a sites strength and its linkback structure.
-
Ah, this is a very good question.
If you're looking to measure links by pure link count, then OSE will never match the number of links you find in Google Webmaster Tools. On average, OSE accounts for anywhere between 20-60% of links typically recorded in GWT.
But GWT is a terrible way to measure link building campaigns.
The problem is, Webmaster Tools records "junk" links equally with high value links, and there's no guarantee or seeming degree of consistency with the links they do choose to report. I have 1000's of links in many of my Webmaster Tools accounts, and most of them aren't worth anything.
On the other hand, OSE assigns a "weight" to each link, in terms of different metrics such as MozRank and Domain Authority, so you can get a feel for how much value is passed by that link. And OSE tends to focus on links and those areas of the web that actually pass ranking value, while ignoring many of the less valuable, spam and garbage links.
OSE metrics are highly correlated with a site's ability to rank, and are often adjusted according to Google's algorythm through correlation analysis.
So if you build more links, they will show up in GWT, but you'll never know how much they are worth.
On the other hand, if you raise your domain authority, this is likely correlated with a rise in rankings (assuming your site is well optimized)
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO!
-
As I'm digging a little further into this, it seems that using the OSE ranking matrix for measuring our SEO efforts may not be the best idea.
i.e. http://www.seomoz.org/q/link-analysis
Based on your experience the data provided by Google Webmaster Tools (incoming links, domains ...) -- is that 100% of things out there connected to the site or is that partial data as well? Is that the best dataset to baseline the state of the site and building a history of link building performance?
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
-
Weird Site is linking to our site and links appears to be broken
I have got a lot of weird links indexed from this page: http://kzs.uere.info/files/images/dining-table-and-2-upholstered-chairs.html When clicking the link it shows 404. Also, the spam score is huge. What do you guys suggest to do with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Miniorek
Could it be done by somebody to get our rankings down or domain penalized? Best Regards
Mike & Alex0 -
Big problems with site traffic
Hello! I have big problems with website promotion. It's been 7 months and the attendance on the site is 1-5 people a day. I do not understand the reason. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Site: www.azartlist.com Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bobic1 -
Merging B2B site with B2C site
Hi, A mobile phone accessory client of ours has a retail site (B2C) and a trade site (B2B). The retail site does pretty well and ranks highly for a number of terms. The trade site doesn't really rank for anything as they don't optimise it. They would like to merge the two sites and allow trade customers to log-in and purchase goods in bulk for their business. If they were to merge the trade site into the already successful consumer site, what would be the best way of doing this and what, if any, implications would it have on the organic visibility of the B2C site? Would it be possible to target retail and trade customers on one website? Cheers, Lewis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
How much SEO damage would it do having a subdomain site rather directory site?
Hi all! With a coleague we were arguing about what is better: Having a subdomain or a directory.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Let me explain some more, this is about the cases: Having a multi-language site: Where en.domain.com or es.domain.com rather than domain.com/en/ or domain.com/es/ Having a Mobile and desktop version: m.domain.com or domain.com rather than domain.com/m or just domain.com. Having multiple location websites, you might figure. The dicussion started with me saying: Its better to have a directory site.
And my coleague said: Its better to have a subdomain site. Some of the reasons that he said is that big companies (such as wordpress) are doing that. And that's better for the business.
My reasons are fully based on this post from Rand Fishkin: Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard Friday So, what does the community have to say about this?
Who should win this argue? GR.0 -
Seo for international sites
Hello, I have a question for the group, our main US site- http://www.datacard.com is utilized to move content to other regional sites like http://www.datacard.co.uk/ and http://www.datacard.fr/ and http://www.datacard.com.br/. Anyhow, we essentially have some regional content on those sites, but for ease of maintaining and updating the content we have a company translate this for us and then undergo an in country review for local people in our company to review the content. That being said the meta descriptions, titles, code, everything gets translated to that language. I know there are issue for SEO for these purposes as we get much better rankings with http://www.datacard.com. The regional sites are newer so this could be part of it. We don't have an agency helping us with SEo and i get a lot of questions on what can be done internally for this for regional sites with our current structure. Any tips you have? It would be greatly appreciated! Laura
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson320 -
URL mapping for site migration
Hi all! I'm currently working on a migration for a large e-commerce site. The old one has around 2.5k urls, the new one 7.5k. I now need to sort out the redirects from one to the other. This is proving pretty tricky, as the URL structure has changed site wide. There doesn't seem to be any consistent rules either so using regex doesn't really work. By and large, the copy appears to be the same though. Does anybody know of a tool I can crawl the sites with that will export the crawled url and related copy into a spreadsheet? That way I can crawl both sites and compare the copy to match them up. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Redirection strategy for mobile site
Hello folks! I am just about to launch a mobile specific version of our website. We were not able to make the main site responsive so have decided to make a seperate copy on an m dot subdomain. I have kept the url structure identical between both sites and added a canonical url on the mobile pages pointing to the desktop site. I will detect and redirect all mobile devices and googlebot mobile crawler to the m dot site. The questions i have are as follows... Is that the best approach if you use a mobile specific site on a seperate subdomain? What type of redirects should i use to send mobile users (and googlebot mobile) to the mobile site? My mobile site does not have all the pages the desktop site has. What happens if i redirect a mobile user from a page on the desktop site to a page on the mobile site that does not exist? (will give 404 currently). I guess i could maintain a list of valid mobile urls but this would be a pain (and a bit of an overhead) Your help is most appreciated Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertHill0 -
Similar Sites on Same Class C
Hi there, I asked a similar question a while ago - please pardon the dupe. I figured being more specific may help. Here's the scenario: I have two customers which sell very similar products. They both host with me so they are both on the same class C of ip addresses. Content on sites is similar due to the nature of the business/industry. There are no links between the two sites - they do not link to one another The HTML is about 50% the same, content near zero other than site structure. They have similar category structures. Question - could being on the same Class C adversely effect rankings of either. One site did particularly well until Panda came around and it's sloooowly coming back. Some advise has been given to the client that the IPs being on the same Class C is killing rankings. I am trying to either validate or refute the claim. All help/feedback appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisInColorado0