Why doesn't OSE show results from sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, etc.?

[ProspectMX]

I know OSE used to provide link data from these domains. But I have been doing link profile lookups on sites that I know have links from these domains - and they don't show up in my results. Just to make sure, they don't even show up when I sort the sites by domain authority.

[Jeepster]

Hi ProspectMX

Don't know if you're still after an answer for this.

I came across this from October last year which may shine some light (with apologies for the crude cut-&-paste job)

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| Oct 9, 2012Keri MorgretOn-site Community Manager at SEOmoz

Another reason is that we just don't have the same size server farm that Google and Bing have. We could crawl all of Twitter and get nothing else crawled, or we could crawl some of Twitter, and some of the rest of the web. We aren't able to crawl all of the web, and we release a new index about once a month, so that's why you don't see all of your links or see them right away.

However, what we do offer that is different from Google and Bing is that we show you links for sites that are not your own, we add metrics about the trust and authority of the page, etc.

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[William.Lau]

Hi Jeepster,

Yep, having a good split of nofollow and dofollow are usually more natural.

Links on sites like Wikipedia are not always a huge indication of authority due to the filtering Wikipedia is physically able to do. There are some spammy sites that get dropped in there. Matt Cutts even stated Wikipedia links will not affect your rankings at all.

However, grabbing from the citations may be able to generate links, but nofollow links from authoritative sites will not help you.

[Jeepster]

Fair enough. The follow/no-follow issue was really trying to address this comment from William Lau.

I should have made that clear.

Usually links from Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter are nofollow so it doesn't really boost your PA/DA(correct me if I'm wrong).

[ProspectMX]

Jeepster - theory-wise, we are pretty much on the same page. Thank you for sharing.

That said, I wasn't really looking to debate no-follow v. do-follow here. The reason I asked is because I know OSE has previously shown these types of links in their report.

Just curious why it isn't now.

[ProspectMX]

Wasn't really looking to debate no-follow v. do-follow here. The reason I asked is because I know OSE has previously shown these types of links.

Just curious why it isn't now.

[Jeepster]

Speaking as an SEO ingenue, I believe the situation is that no one tool gives a comprehensive view of your backlinks, although I'm guessing Google Webmaster Tools runs pretty close.

On the issue of whether no-follow links count, 2 issues in my opinion:

1. Having too few no-follow IBLs suggests an unnatural link profile;

2. Links (even no-follows) from sites such as Wikipedia are a huge indication of authority and boost your site, albeit indirectly.

[William.Lau]

OSE doesn't scrape all the links on the web but portion of it. Usually links from Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter are nofollow so it doesn't really boost your PA/DA(correct me if I'm wrong).

Now if your link profile is small, there is a good chance those type of links will show up. Google WMT is pretty good at getting links from a lot of sites like Pinterest.

If you are looking to get backlinks to your site, it is best to use a variety of different tools. ahrefs/OSE/WMT and a couple others.