Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why have I lost 1/3 of my backlinks (about 5,000) in 3 months?
-
In August, my client's site (I work at a marketing agency) had about 15,000 backlinks. Now they suddenly have about 10,000 backlinks. And their Domain Authority has dropped from 48 to 40!
Can someone please help me understand what could've happened?
At first I assumed this had something to do with the latest Penguin update, since I knew my client's site had some extremely spammy backlinks they hadn't cleaned up yet. (The site was hacked at some point and hidden pages were created as part of some kind of link-building scheme, and there were lots of links from sketchy sites to those pages. The hidden pages have been taken down and the URLs now redirect to my client's home page.) But that would only explain a sudden drop in Domain Authority, right? How could Penguin suddenly cause my client to lose 5,000 backlinks? And if it's not Penguin, what could it be?
Thanks in advance for any insight that anyone can share!
-
It's entirely possible that indexation issues are contributing to what you're seeing, Matt. I'd also suggest reading through this Q&A thread by Rand:
-
Mello Matt,
If it was my site I would seriously consider getting rid of any redirects from old dodgy pages, you could force Google to consider for the content still exists. If it goes to a 404 Google can then see clearly it no longer exists.
But would be interesting on what others have to say on that.I would source my back links mainly from Google search console.
Hope that helps.
-
Hey Matt,
Our site saw a massive up tick in links and then an even larger drop in links from one index to the next. Read this post below from Moz about their last index and about their not-so-great indexing over the last year. That might give you the answer you are looking for.
I can't remember everything in the article, so rather than try to explain it myself, I'll let them do it for me. Hope that helps.
-
Thanks for the response! And thanks for the advice – I'll definitely look into all those steps.
The redirects from the hacked pages are occurring automatically somehow. I guess that must've been set up by the agency that redesigned the client's website last year. They must've specified 301s for certain key pages and had all other old URLs redirect to the home page.
To answer your question, I'm using Moz for backlink analysis. Could their update be the reason I'm seeing such a drop?
BTW – Search Console shows no notifications that would relate to this issue, and no manual penalties...
-
Sorry just a question, where are you getting your back links list from? It's not unknown for tools to be inaccurate.
Another point I forgot to mention, Moz did update their index in the past few days, lots of people have seen a DA drop.
-
Firstly, sounds like you do have a penalty of some sort.
Secondly, I would not have redirected the hacked pages back to the site anywhere, you could give yourself a penalty that way. You could be passing bad authority or worse from anywhere else on the web, completely out of your control.
Thirdly, don't discount the potential of a website problem. Broken script, user damage, another hack etc
1. Do a thorough link cleanup.
2. Consider taking down any pages that are not relevant or earning any value.
3. Check search console for any notifications or manual penalties.
4. Check the website for performance and functionality.
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
-
Backlinks from The Sun, New Yor Post, etc...
Hello there, Some of my competitors have backlinks from very well-known newspaper websites like New York Post or The Sun. And it is really obvious that their backlinks are paid ones. On these news websites, they don't talk about ghost writing stuff or "partnership" for backlinks. They only write about banner advertising. So I was wondering how they can get a backlink from them.
Link Building | | Veptune
Do some writers sell those backlinks somewhere else, under the table? Are they in contact with SEO agencies who paid them and if this is the case, does their "manager" know it? or does the company directly have partnerships with SEO agencies? Basically, how to get a backlink from the NY Post or The Sun ? Thanks0 -
Backlinks on Moz not on Google Search Console
Moz is showing thousands of backlinks to my site that are not showing up on Google Search Console - which is good because those links were created by some spammer in Pakistan somewhere. I haven't yet submitted a disavow report to Google of well over 10K links because the list keeps growing every day with new backlinks that have been rerouted to a 404 page. I have asked Google to clarify and they put my question on their forum for an answer, which I'm still waiting for - so I thought I'd try my luck here. My question... If Moz does not match Google Search Console, and backlinks are important to results, how valid is the ranking that Moz creates to let me know how I'm doing in this competition and if I'm improving or not. If the goal is to get Google to pay attention and I use Moz to help me figure out how to do this, how can I do that if the backlink information isn't the same - by literally over 10 000 backlinks created by some spammer doing odd things... They've included the url from their deleted profile on my site with 100s of other urls, including Moz.com and are posting them everywhere with their preferred anchor text. Moz ranking considers the thousands of spam backlinks I can't get rid of and Google ignores them or disavows them. So isn't the rankings, data, and graphs apples and bananas? How can I know what my site's strength really is and if I'm improving or not if the data doesn't match? Complete SEO Novice Shannon Peel
Link Building | | MarketAPeel
Brand Storyteller
MarketAPeel0 -
Should backlink URLs include www, https, or both???
My business is located at remotebaba.com, and I am wanting several sites to link to it.
Link Building | | udaipabla
I am only interested in home page at this point, and we are using HTTPS for our site. Which one of these should I have other sites link to (Please provide complete justification):
remotebaba.com (my root domain)
www.remotebaba.com
https://remotebaba.com
https://www.remotebaba.com I really appreciate your help!1 -
Are backlinks in the form of Footer or Sitewide links safe?
Hi There! Some of our competitors are using sitewide links in the header, footer or sidebar…is it ok to use these type of backlinks to increase overall backlinks. The site-wide links increase backlinks dramatically. Thanks Malik Zakaria
Link Building | | mzakaria0 -
Rankings Dropped After New Backlinks.
I have a low-traffic website (under 100 unique visitors per day) and I've encountered a strange issue started yesterday morning. I acquired three back-links, one of these back-links is contextual and the other two are site-wide. The site-wide back-links are from PA 40+ blogs. It looks like the back-links are already indexed by Google. Despite these new back-links, my rankings across multiple keywords have dropped several positions. I'm new to SEO, but I would assume new back-links would improve my rankings. None of these back-links are low quality links, they are from real established blogs with high domain and page authority values. Could anyone give me insights into why my rankings may have dropped with new back-links?
Link Building | | poke11 -
Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
Sorry if this is a basic question I should know the answer for. We have just acquired the .org for a moderately well searched keyword set. Our objective is to fight for rank specifically on this one set of two keywords. We want make sure our site is setup and business named optimally for this. Here is my question. What is the best business name for SEO and keyword rich backlinks, or anything else I'm not thinking of? KEYWORDS: Blue Widget DOMAIN: BlueWidget.org BUSINESS NAME OPTIONS: A) simply BlueWidget.org. We like this but do we lose some benefit of "Blue Widget" with a space on backlinks? **B) Blue Widget Foundation. Is this better because people will reference us by the keywords with a space "The Blue Widget Foundation", instead of "from the people at BLUEWIDGET.org"? ** Am I missing anything important here in the name? We just want to start everything off on the right foot. Thank you Moz. Just joined and my first post.
Link Building | | RetBit0 -
Using Schema markup for backlinks
Hi, Is there any benefits for using schema markup for backlinks. Using for Article directory submission,Drupal Submission etc.. mUz1umK.png?1
Link Building | | ruddyhapiq0 -
Creating Backlinks On Behalf of Client
I'm on my first SEO project with a law firm. I'm at the stage where I am doing competitive backlink research on other law firms that my client gave me. I saw a blog site called typepad. It has a high domain authority so I was going to recommend to my client that they set up an account and blog away! Since it's a law firm, I am not qualified to start blogging on behalf of my client and I know they are extremely busy so now I have to "ride" my client to get busy and start creating content. I feel like I want to do more for them on the blog side to keep things going but not having a law background, probably not doable. Question: Do most SEO's do the blogging for their clients, farm it out or keep pushing their clients to do it? I also want them to sign up with articlebase but the same thing is going to happen. I have to push them to write articles. I guess this is my job? -Bob
Link Building | | Czubmeister0