Links (external and total) have significantly decreased in 1 month from August to October - why?
-
Greetings,
After comparing a few stats in one of my campaigns, I noticed that External Followed Links, Total External Links, and Total Links significantly decreased from August 29th to when I just checked them a few days ago (October 3).
Any ideas on why this happened?
For example, Total External Links went from 50,589 to 39,203.
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Jenny
-
I'm still trying to get access to GWT for this client, so will definitely check that out. Good call and thanks!!
-
Kyle,
Thanks again for the ongoing help and information - you rock! Our domain authority stayed the same. I'll definitely check out the links to the resources you provided as well. Thanks again!
Jenny
-
Jenny, here is a full list of post were rand and other SEOMoz associates talk about the updates to the mozscape index (which powers OSE and the pro tools):
http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=mozscape+update%3A
In regards to your question of what is mozscape here is another great resource:
http://www.seomoz.org/help/what-is-mozscape
In regards to your last question, it sounds like it was a blend of you losing some links and the mozscape fluctuations. Always take OSE data with a grain of salt, that information is simply to give you insight to trends in your link profile. Did your domain authority drop or stay the same during the changes?
- Kyle
-
Yeah this is the first thing you should do. WMT should give you a more exact number of links than OSE, and those numbers don't tend to fluctuate as much - unless there is an actual loss/gain of a larger number of links/LRDs.
-
Can't believe I didn't think of this earlier, but are you comparing the numbers you're getting here to the numbers you're getting from Google Webmaster Tools? Did you also see a drop in backlinks there?
-
I just learned about vlookup this year. Super useful for cross-referencing spreadsheets.
Here's how it works. In the same Excel document, you will have two sheets. The first one will have all the data from your last OSE report, the one with 50K links. (I'm assuming you exported this.) The second sheet will have all the data from your more recent OSE report, the one with 30k links. The vlookup function will quickly check if something on the first sheet is also on the second sheet.
If it's on the first sheet but not on the second sheet, then that's one of the links that "disappeared." Look those over, check for patterns, test some of them. Maybe you had a sitewide link on a giant website, and that website just went down. But if the missing links are still online, then OSE simply didn't crawl them this time.
If you've never used vlookup before, it's worth spending a few hours reading tutorials, watching videos (tons on YouTube!), and learning the syntax. Best of luck!
-
I'm not familiar with the vlookup function. Is it pretty difficult? I'm pretty good at research and picking things up though so if that's the way to go about it I can give it a go.
Thanks so much for your ongoing assistance.
Jenny
-
How comfortable are you with Excel? Do you know how to use the vlookup function?
-
Forgive this newbie response, but how do I check to see which URLs have disappeared? There are over 10,000 Total External Links which disappeared so let me know if there's an easy way to do this please.
-
Hmm, interesting. I'm new to the pro tool so please forgive this question - but what exactly is the mozscape index and why does it fluctuate?
One competitor went down slightly and another went up, so it seems specific to only our site. So does that indicate a mozscape index fluctuation or something different?
Thanks so much for your help!
-
Have you checked the disappearing URLs to see if they're still online?
-
Keep in mind if you are pulling these stats from OSE or the pro tool that the amount of domains and URLs differ each time they update the mozscape index. So the total amounts may change depending on the variations from those two months.
Have you noticed this change with your competitors sites as well or is it specific to only our site?
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
-
Low KDS but high DA for all page 1 sites
Hi there A KDS report question... My client has a keyword with a low KDS (garden hose - 28). Intuitively this seemed too low, and when I checked what ranks, it is all high quality brand sites with high DAs. Admittedly the specific pages ranking have low PAs, but I can't see my client ever being able to compete with these big boys right now. How come the KDS is so low? This seems just wrong as the metric implies it is a good keyword to target - I know there are always lots of other things to check, but this does make me less confident with KDS reporting Anyone got any thoughts on this? Many thanks
Moz Pro | | Chammy3 -
Why does page report still have "Too Many Links" alert?
I'm a new Moz Pro user and see that the on-page optimization report includes "too many links" on page and references the "100 links" guideline that Google no longer endorses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l6g5hoBYlf0 Too many links is still an issue in terms of passing link juice, but not much else. Matt Cutts has stated that it is fine to have many internal links in this regard. Please correct me if I am mistaken.
Moz Pro | | Shannon-PayLoadz0 -
Discrepancy between followed links. How do you explain this?
My external followed links over time have gone from 346 in late November to 402. Total external links have gone from 400 to 457. Followed linking root domains dropped from 125 to 102 (How do I find out why?). Total Linking Root Domains Over Time dropped from 152 to 126. Linking C-Blocks dropped from 124 to 42. How did I increase my links but drop the other stuff?
Moz Pro | | EcommerceSite0 -
How accurate is the MozBar "Followed Link Highlighter"
I'm currently doing some research on blogs to guest post on and I want to make sure they are providing DoFollow links out. are the green links displayed from the MozBar simply links that don't contain the HTML element "NOFOLLOW" or is it more in depth tan that? according to this article there are TONS of different ways that people can place a NOFOLLOW link on their site http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/identify-nofollow-juiceless-links-guide.html Thanks
Moz Pro | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Google Inbound Links much higher than SEOMOZ
I just started here and really like everything the community and tools so far. One question. My SEOMOZ dashboard shows only one inbound link while Google Web Tools shows 300+. My site has been up for 3 months now and I'm curious about the lack of indexing. Any help, tips or feedback is greatly appreciated. http://CrossTrainingandFitness.com Robb Jarrett
Moz Pro | | carbbon0 -
Why is open site explorer not showing the top links that if found previously.
In previous months ago open site explorer listed many other sites linking to mine. I have checked those sites and they are still linking to my site. Why doesn't open site explorer list them?
Moz Pro | | call4help0 -
Why am I not seeing an increase in external followed links?
Ive been getting some really good links pointing to my domain as of lately, and they appear to be followed links. yet the number of external followed links shown in my seomoz tool bar does not want to budge! nor do these links show up in site explorer! Is there a delay in the toolbars response-time? or could it be something else? Thanks
Moz Pro | | ambisuite0 -
Is the "Too Many Links" metric a blunt instrument?
The SEO Moz crawl diagnostics suggest that we have too many on-page links on several pages including on our homepage. How does your system determine when a page has too many links. It looks like when a page as more than 100 links it’s too many. Should the system take into account the page authority, domain authority, depth of page or other metrics? In addition, no-follow links are being included. As these are dropped from Google’s link graph, does it matter if we have too many? For example, we could have 200 links, 120 of which are no follow. Your tools would tell us we have too many links. Feedback appreciated. Donal
Moz Pro | | AdiRste0