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.
Directory Listings no longer counted in Backlinks?
-
Interesting situation when I looked at Google Search Console this morning, I found that back-links from directories had dropped off and am wondering if anyone else is seeing this?
Specifically, I am in Australia and had links from Yellowpages.com.au and Truelocal.com.au to my primary domain.
Interestingly, Yellow Pages had gone a bit crazy recently in that the number of links to my site seemed to balloon exponentially from about 50 when I first listed to 700+ to 1500+ to 1800+ and then the balloon popped. Truelocal in contrast was only ever showing the 1 link.
There have not been any changes from my end, and I only ever had one listing in these directories so not sure what generated all these extra links in Yellow Pages.
Anyone else in Australia noticed a sudden drop off in Google Backlinks from Directories? If not it may just be a temporary blip.
-
directory links are still a very much required part of the deal for major directories to say the least. Sure, a lot of them do not pass any link juice or Google may discount a lot of those links in its ranking factors, but you just want to be present where people actually check and where data aggregators grab their source data from.There has to be a reason why Moz local still is as service that charges people for exactly these "directory" listings...
-
Thanks Bernadette. True, I have noticed some movement in the past on other sites that I manage but these links have always been a constant on my site and it was just a bit of a heart-attack moment to see back-links drop from almost 1900 to 91.
Hopefully it settles over time and there is no impact to SERPS I guess we'll find out in due course

-
Excal, I've always looked considered the links that are shown in Google Search Console to be a "snippet" of all of the links to your website. For example, there are links that I know are pointing to our website that are good links--but they come and go in Google Search Console. They don't show us all the links. So, just as you have seen them go away, there's a good chance that they will come back and be listed again.
I do know that the more often you download the links the more often they will refresh the list of links.
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
-
All backlinks not showing on my website
hey folks, i am fairly new to SEO and i have noticed that i have backlinks that tools like ubersuggest or SEM rush are nothshowing my product is lazyapply.com. -> It's an automated job search application can anyone suggest me what should id do ? PS - for example i have backlink from crunchbase.com but my website is not showing me that
Link Building | | viveklazy0 -
Ahrefs Backlinks VS Moz Backlinks
HI Team and members We have website related to jobs in Pakistan and we purchased 5 niche edits backlinks to a specific page " MES Jobs 2021" In ahrefs it show only 2 backlinks to that page but in moz 0 backlinks but in actually there are 5 links. Why this happen in moz? We actually love this tool used for Keywords research for jobs in Pakistan find some cool keywords using moz but we facing backlinks issues in it.
Link Building | | AliHassanbinali1 -
Spammy no follow backlinks - what should I do?
There is a individual/company that is creating lots of spam sites in my niche. It doesn't seem that they are trying to rank for any keywords, so I'm a little confused as to their purpose, but here's what they're doing. They scrape the top 10 Google results for each keyword and create a page - so if the niche is "widgets", they scrape the top 10 ranked sites for 'widgets', 'blue widgets', 'red widgets', and so on. A 'results' page is created for each keyword, which is linked from a home page. The results page always contains 10 websites - text is the site metadescription or similar. Each website gets a nofollow link back with the page title used as the anchor text. The host sites all have the keyword in the domain name - e.g www.widgetsxyz.com. The sites are thrown together but interestingly have a very crappy but individual logo (like 90's clipart). The host sites all have high DA/PA due to some very extensive link spam pointing to the sites, with very targeted keywords. There is seemingly no purpose to these sites that I can see - no other 'followed' links on the page or site. Whoever is doing this is churning out tens, if not hundreds of these sites. Any ideas what might be going on here, and whether I should be disavowing these sites (even though no follow). The fear is that they could switch the links to do follow, and get all the major players penalised in one fell swoop. ???
Link Building | | johnohara0 -
DMOZ Directory Impact on Rankings
For about 5-10 years ago many SEOers said that it is in particular important to be in Dmoz. What about nowadays?
Link Building | | kitoks
Moreover is it still working and accepting new projects. I suggested several of my projects but no news from them0 -
How Many Backlinks Per Day
I am starting to do some manual back-linking for a medium competition word with high traffic. I plan to start back linking with like niche blogs with non spam comments, like niche directories, like niche forums, and guest blogging. My domain is over 3 years old and ranks for multiple keywords, but I'm going to concentrate specifically on this keyword, but need to know how many links to back-link a day. Again none of these will be spam, but will be of real quality. I was thinking 10-20 a day, but unsure.
Link Building | | treeoflife0 -
List of free directories for building / real estate website.
Hi Any suggestion where to source a list of free directories for a property / real estate company which gives reasonable linkback juice Thanks Peter
Link Building | | peterds0 -
What is the best way to manage backlinks?
What back link management software do you guys use or recommend? Need to manage types of links on each page. Thanks
Link Building | | joemas990 -
What are the best paid directories today?
Looking to do some paid directory submissions and was wondering if a) they were still worth the money and b) if you have $500-$1,000 what paid directories would you submit too? I am assuming that BOTW is still on the list, but I rarely every see a BOTW link in any backlink report. Are they still relevant or are they more a sign of quality to the engines rather than an actual link? Same with JoeAnt
Link Building | | BraveheartDesign0