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
-
Links don't show in MOZ
Hi, Im have started some weeks ago with some standard linkbuilding from websites to my domain www.eppinga.nl . These links don't show in Moz. Does this take some time? How long does it take? Thanks in advance for all replies! Tymen
Moz Pro | | Tymen0 -
Reclaim lost links to old pages?
We recently moved our site to a new CMS and did a complete redesign, with new content. It's really hit our SEO. Open site explorer is telling me there are lots of 404 web pages which were basically old product pages that no longer exist, since the way we have structured the site has changed. So is it worth trying to reclaim these links? If so, how can I do that without building pages at the URL - will a 301 redirect be enough?
Moz Pro | | jbritchford0 -
Why does SEOMoz only crawl 1 page of my site?
My site is: www.thetravelingdutchman.com. It has quite a few pages, but for some reason SEOMoz only crawls one. Please advise. Thanks, Jasper
Moz Pro | | Japking0 -
Are organic site links excluded in the rankings report?
If I'm pulling a rankings report for a specific subdomain and a different subdomain appears at the main result and the specific subdomain is a site link beneath it, does that show up in the results? It doesn't seem to in my report.
Moz Pro | | mattiasantin0 -
Dead links-urls
What is the quickest way to get Google to clean up dead
Moz Pro | | 1step2heaven
link? I have 74,000 dead links reported back, i have added a robot txt to
disallow and added on Google list remove from my webmaster tool 4 months ago.
The same dead links also show on the open site explores. Thanks0 -
In OSE "Followed Linking Root Domains" = "links from homepages"
In OSE's, "Followed Linking Root Domains" are defined as "The number of root domains that have at least one followed link to a page or domain." Does this mean that if one of my competitors has, let's say, 1000 followed linking root domains, they have a link pointing to them on the homepage of 1000 other sites? Thanks for your help!
Moz Pro | | gerardoH0 -
OSE lists dead links
Going over the link profile of a competitor who gets 5x the traffic we do.... of course frustrated that the majority of their links are spam blogs (full of words but don't communicate anything) and forum profiles. Thanks Google for telling me what not to do, then rewarding my competitor for doing it shamelessly. Question regarding sites listed by Open Site Explorer as linking to said competitor, but that don't even load when I visit their url. Some go to a godaddy parked page, like the domain name expired long ago. Is this simply a limitation of OSE, and can I assume Google has indexed differently and therefore awarding no link juice from these urls?
Moz Pro | | jotham20 -
OSE Linking Domains CSV Export Blank?
For some client domains, I've tried to do a CSV export from the OSE Linking Domains page, I get a CSV that contains the typical OSE header text, but no output records. Before I click the CSV link I always choose "show domains with links to All pages on the Root Domain". It doesn't happen with every domain I've tried this with, and when I've had the time/patience, some of the time if I try hours later, I get data. The problem though is I rarely have the luxury of running reports a second time during the audit cycle. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it a bug, or just an export fail due to system resources or something?
Moz Pro | | AlanBleiweiss0