Big drop in Domain Authority on 17 Nov 2015

[SameerBhatia]

Hello,

My domain authority dropped on 17 Nov 2015

Domain name is: http://www.proprofs.com/ drop from 74 to 68

Also on another domain : http://www.marriage.com/. Drop from 38 to 34.

Very much surprised by this big drop?

Would appreciate everyone's feedback?

Thanks

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

It's not me suggesting it, it's Rand Fishkin (founder of MOZ) saying it - check the link I refer to in my answer. Second paragraph. (It's quoted in my answer as well)

[elliotthill]

Can anyone at moz confirm this?

Our site and its competitors all dropped in DA. Ours went from 57 to 48, which is no small change.

I can't really let this drop without a proper explanation, if it is as Dimitri suggested a recalibrating of the scale from 0-100 then someone from Moz should confirm this.

[DmitriiK]

Hi, Greg.

I still think that the explanation roots in the relativity idea I have quoted above. Also I linked to original post by Rand, so, check it out - you might find all the answers

[ghuegerich]

I saw a similar effect across campaigns. 9 out of 10 dropped, just last week.  Whenever I see that across a number of campaigns, I assume it is one of two things:

1. A simple algorithm tweak for the DA calculation.

2. Google is tuning their main algorithm, it caused real DA impact to sites, and creates a cascading effect across the DA ranks.

The last time I saw this effect was late april early may of this year, right as google was starting to push out the update that they eventually rolled back.  A few months later, I saw the DA ranks all go up to where they were before, again, across 9 campaigns.

I guess the question is, is Google moving again?  Or is Moz simply tuning?

Thanks,

Greg

[SameerBhatia]

Thanks for a great explanation,

Checking competitors trends was a great addition. We saw a drop in DA and I was at first concerned,but then noticed the same in competitors. Thanks Dmitrii

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Please refer to this topic by Rand: https://moz.com/community/q/da-pa-fluctuations-how-to-interpret-apply-understand-these-ml-based-scores

Read #2:

You've earned more links, but the highest authority sites have grown their link profile even more
Since Domain and Page Authority are on a 100-page scale, the very top of that represents the most link-rich sites and pages, and nearly every index, it's harder and harder to get these high scores and sites, on average, that aren't growing their link profiles substantively will see PA/DA drops. This is because of the scaling process - if Facebook.com (currently with a DA of 100) grows its link profile massively, that becomes the new DA 100, and it will be harder for other sites that aren't growing quality links as fast to get from 99 to 100 or even from 89 to 90. This is true across the scale of DA/PA, and makes it critical to measure a site's DA and a page's PA against the competition, not just trended against itself. You could earn loads of great links, and still see a DA drop due to these scaling types of features. Always compare against similar sites and pages to get the best sense of relative performance, since DA/PA are relative, not absolute scores.

Basically, DA/PA is relative metric, it's relative to 100 DA websites, so, if let's say facebook got +million links, and you got only +10, then relatively to FB your website DA will drop. That's why so many websites' DAs have dropped after last crawl.

To see how good/bad your DA changed, compare to your competitors.

Hope this helps.

[Dan-Lawrence]

HI Sameer

I wouldnt worry too much since i think this is much more to do with MOz recent Index update.

If i look at my 'Manage Campaigns' page where i see a list of all my campaigns currently running (10 campaigns), 9 out of the 10 DA has dropped by a similar percentage.

Hence this IMO is a Moz crawl drop in DA rather than real world drop in site authority

Would be good to get a response from a Mozzer too just to confirm ??

All Best

Dan