Open Site Explorer Question

[Vizergy]

Hello Mozers.  It has been a while

OK - I run an open site explorer report, toggle over to 'Linking Domains' because I am more interested in the number of actual websites that link to my client rather than the number of links my client has (and of course what websites are linking) and although I have been doing this for years there is one little thing I am a bit confused about.

The report shows (from left to right) the 'Linking Root Domain", the "Domain Authority" for the linking domain and then the 'Number of Linking Root Domains" for each 'Linking Root Domain"  My question is (rather stupid, I am sure) is the number of linking root domains for each linking root domain the number of websites linking to them OR the number of websites to which they link?

[Vizergy]

That makes perfect sense.  Thank you very much

[Bryan_Loconto]

Hey Vizergy!!

Great question and I've dug into this myself in the past.

So that it made sense to me, what I did was this...

I took one of the root domains from my initial report (in your example: your clients site) and ran it through OSE to see how many "Established Links" it had. I would then go to the section that shows the number of "Established Links" (then hover over "Root Domains"). This number should be consistent with the number of "Linking Root Domains" from the previous report you ran on your clients website.

After tracing this back, I came to the conclusion that the "Linking Root Domains" are defined as: The Number of unique root domains (e.g., *.example.com) containing at least one linking page to this URL.

I hope I explained this in a way that is understandable. If not please let me know and I will try to revise my response. Hope this helps you understand.