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.
Site has DA of 26 but no backlinks
-
I'm asking this for a guy over at SEOchat: http://forums.seochat.com/new-user-seo-questions-answers-123/unusual-change-domain-authority-486962.html
Here's what his post says:
Exclamation Unusual Change in Domain authority
Guys and Girls,I'm having a weird issue in one of my sites , thing is the site had DA 11 in July and however when check on September Site is having 26 without me doing any type of link building and there are no new posts for this month as well. When checked using open site explorer there are no backlinks indexed in their Mozcape index as well.
Site: http://www.beijingtravelchannel.com/
Can you give me any plausible reasons for this to happen, so that i can check them out.
Thanks in Advance.
-
I just posted this for a user on a forum I am a moderator on so unfortunately I can't answer that question.
This was his reply to your post:
"Hi, Thomas I think the lady who replied last to your thread in Moz had hit the spot. backlink from Washington post must have bump up the DA ( Even though the change is too high ). I wonder why this link didn't show up in web master tools. Google mustn't have indexed this link thus far. and Moz not showing the link is also a question.
"
-
I see everyone's responses and understand that DA is based on a variety of factors, but I also agree that a domain authority of 26 seems unusually high for this site.
Majestic reports a Trust Flow of 0 and Citation Flow of 31 and 35 incoming links from 8 different sources, both of which would lend me to expect a lower domain authority for this site. That said, a couple of the recently discovered incoming links are coming from powerful sources, most notably:
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-us-publishers-owe-china/2015/05/26/0b100ff8-02fd-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html?utm_term=.1ad4d52de865; and
- http://blog.livedoor.jp/takemiya31/archives/51761738.html
It's possible Moz found these links and just isn't displaying them in Open Site Explorer.
It's not unusual to see dramatic fluctuations in DA when a site has few incoming links. If it was me, I'd wait to see what the next API update reports before concluding real progress has been made. Did you bump up the volume of content on the site recently?
-
To determine Domain Authority, we employ machine learning against Google's algorithm to best model how search engine results are generated. Over 40 signals are included in this calculation. It's possible that the other factors that contribute to Domain Authority are helping to carry the score a bit higher than it otherwise would be. A solid backlink profile is one of the best ways to work on improving a DA score, but it's not the only way.
It's also possible that we previously found and indexed backlinks pointing to this domain, but those backlinks have since fallen out of our Mozscape Index. The links themselves would likely still be in place, but unless our tools were prompted to re-crawl the area of the web where they first found the links, they could very well no longer be included in the current data set and aren't currently displaying if you look at this domain in Open Site Explorer.
You can read more about Domain Authority over here, if this is helpful to you: https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
-
Everything I can see is all link based though. So this is a link metric correct?
If so, how does a site have a DA of 26 but no link profile.
-
Hi there! Tawny from Moz's Customer Support team here.
Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. It is made up of an aggregate of metrics (MozRank, MozTrust, general link profile, and more) that each have an impact on this score. it can be difficult to directly influence your DA, but one way to move toward increasing it would be to improve your overall SEO. A great place to start with that could be to focus on link building! You can learn more about link building here and get a more detailed explanation of Domain Authority through this resource.
In general, I'd recommend keeping in mind that all of these metrics are relative with respect to the other sites included in our index. The metrics will probably have some additional context when compared to sites similar to your own, including your competitors.
Rand does a great job of breaking down how to interpret DA fluctuations through this post. Give it a once over to see if it helps clarify some of your questions! I hope this helps!
-
I am sure I have read that it isn't just links, but quite happy for MOZ to put this right.
What makes me thing it isn't just links, is this:
The best way to influence this metric is to improve your overall SEO. In particular, you should focus on your link profile—which influences MozRank and MozTrust
So it says to focus on your link profile, but improve your overall SEO - I would assume from this that it is more heavily biased towards links, but that isn't the end of it.
-Andy
-
-
Hi Thomas,
DA isn't just calculated off links, so it could be a wide range of factors making this happen. Moz explain it here:
Domain Authority is Moz's calculated metric for how well a given domain is likely to rank in Google's search results. It is based off data from the Mozscape web index and includes link counts, MozRank and MozTrust scores, and dozens of other factors. It uses a machine learning model to predictively find an algorithm that best correlates with rankings across thousands of search results that we predict against.
I hope this helps
-Andy
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
-
How is Moz DA affected by spam links? Disavow file?
So it does not appear that moz let's you upload your disavow file. So when moz calculates your DA how do spammy links factor in? After digging through our GA it appears our site was hit with the 2016 penguin update and never recovered. Our weekly visitors were 2k, then dropped to 500 and have stayed close to that level for a while. We've used the disavow tool, without success over the past 3 years. During that time we have done link out reach and built around 10 legit good quality DA links since. But we have not recovered. At this point i'm thinking I should just remove the disavow file. Moz says our spam score for our domain is 5%.
Link Explorer | | jessicapremier0 -
REACT site and sitemap.xml
I have a REACT site www.nettheory.com. MOZ seems to only index the homepage but not all the internally linked pages, even the sitemap.xml is there. The reason I say that is the crawl result only shows the http and https version of the homepage, no other pages mentioned. I also noticed MOZ crawl results point out my content is very thin (<50 words). As a matter of fact, it has a lot more words if the JS runs correctly. Do we know if MOZ crawls REACT or JS based sites correctly?
Link Explorer | | NetTheory-Analysts0 -
PA 1 and DA 1, the website is not new
Hi everyone! I have a website (ponturipariuri.pro), few years old. The PA and DA used to be around 25-35 but now it shows me 1 for both PA and DA. I just discovered it and I do not understand why. Take a look at the image I attached here. There was no spam on my website. Google still shows my website on the first page for many keywords. 3ojp7qt.png
Link Explorer | | adi23050 -
Is Moz's backlink checker.... just... not good?
Hey everyone! Can somebody explain to me why this keeps happening: Whenever I'm trying to backlink my competitors, I typically use RavenTools. Every time, without fail, if I put that same URL into Moz's Open Site Explorer - It gives me about 1/20th of what RavenTools shows me. Sometimes it literally comes up with 2 or 3 links total. Unfortunately, RavenTools has a cap on how many backlink checks you can perform in a month - so once I've used those up, I have to start using OSE... But, it just doesn't work. Does anyone else have this issue? Thanks!
Link Explorer | | TaylorRHawkins1 -
Spam Score and crawling of my site
Hello, I'm trying to analyze the spam score of my site which is 9/17 Actually I have few backlinks and all of them have a low spam score (max 4/17, just one). I think there's some kind of issue with the crawler since I get strange spam factors: Large Site with Few Links (likely true, I recently deleted a lot of tags used once) Low Number of Pages Found (wasn't it a "Large Site"??) Low Number of Internal Links (I got a considerable number) No Contact Info (I have a link to my facebook in the menu and a "contacts" page) Thin Content (It's just a blog with min 300 words per post, why thin?) Site Link Diversity is Low (likely true) Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Subdomains (likely true) Low MozTrust or MozRank Score (true) Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Domains (likely true) Can you please help me to understand it, is it a crawling problem or similar? If needed I will post the url of the website. Thank you so much Marco
Link Explorer | | MarcoBP0 -
Open site explorer is giving me strange redirect message.
Hi all, I tried to find answer in help section. Few people have asked this before but in none of the answers it tells how they fix it. Sorry I will need to ask here again. In Open Site Explorer i get this message. You entered the URL https://a-fotografy.co.uk/ which redirects to http://www.a-fotografy.co.uk/. Because it's likely to have more accurate metrics, we're showing data for the redirected URL instead. Click here to analyze https://a-fotografy.co.uk/ instead? My current site is https://a-fotografy.co.uk/ not sure why it is redirecting to my old domain. Weird. My web developer couldn't explain this issue. Saying that I also go my first analytics report and in priority issues I have http://a-fotografy.co.uk 302 redirect and not sure where it is redirecting to. If someone could shed some light of how to figure out how to find exactly what is redirecting to what and where is the problem. Thank you guys, Regards, Armands
Link Explorer | | A_Fotografy0 -
Issues Checking Backlinks To YouTube Videos
Hi, Hope someone might be able to help here. I have been using OSE to check backlinks to sites without an issue. However, I do seem to have problems checking links to videos. For examplpe, I took a video url and checked backlinks and OSE reports 33 million just discovered, majestic SEO reports none and Ahrefs seems about right with 17. I was wondering if there is something I need to do to ensure OSE returns correct results for individual youtube videos. FYI, I am using the url that appears in the Google search. Thanks Mark
Link Explorer | | mitonmark0