Dramatic drop in Domain Authority
-
I have a client who has reported a drop in Domain Authority from 16 to 1 in a matter of a few weeks. Also, MOZ was reporting links, but now none!
I know there were some issues with the recent MOZ index update. However, this sounds like something else. Anyone got ideas on where we should start looking?
-
Hey Andy,
Somewhat heartening to know we're not alone, but I share your pain!
My client went from a Domain Authority of 16 in December to a DA of 1 after moving to https. They have finally bounced back to 11, but it has taken 3 months AND they still only have 2 referring domains linking to the https version.
There are 53 referring domains still linking to the http version. In fact, this has risen from 40 referring domains in the last month. So how can the number of referrers to http be increasing, when there is an https verion? I just don't get it!
Anyone know (a) how this can happen and (b) how to address the issue?
-
Hi,
We're experiencing a similar issue. We did have a DA of 27 now 16, a huge 11 drop since our change to https in Feb. Our competitor changed to https in September and has gradually dropped 32 to 20 but only by 4 this month.
It's making little sense when our links are still higher as well as other metrics - but we now have the lowest DA compared to our competitors.
-
Definitely looks like something to do with http/https...
Just checked the domain in ahrefs (http and https):
- The http version has 102 links from 45 referring domains
- The https version has 'no data' for backlinks or referring domains
I also noticed in ahrefs:
- The http version has a Domain Rating of 28 and a URL Rating of 20
- The https version also has a Domain Rating of 28, but a URL Rating of only 3
Although all the http pages appear to be redirecting to https, it seem that the backlinks have been lost.
If this is the case, can they get them back? And if so, how?
-
The challenge is I've only just started with this client, so I don't really know what has/hasn't been done over the last few months.
What I can see is:
- They moved from http to https on 18 December 2016
- A number of keywords then lost their rankings, but almost immediately returned on the https site
- Although there were ups and downs, looking at a sample of 20 keywords, on average they moved up 1.5 ranking positions
So does it sound plausible that the switch from http to https could also affect DA?
-
Hmm, I look after 7 websites. Haven't done any link building on any of them, but one maintained its DA, one dropped from 10 to 1 and the others all dropped a bit but not as dramatically. Most competitors have also seen some drops.
DA is helpful as a guideline, but I wouldn't use it as a KPI because it is a relative metric.
One of the things you could do is manually check those links that showed up in OSE before and check whether they're still there. Other than that, if you are sure that something is wrong, go through everything you've done in the past couple of months and any changes that have been made to the website to see if any of them caused any issues.
However, I still think that if your rankings haven't gone down and your traffic haven't suffered, I wouldn't assume there is an issue purely because the DA has gone down.
We have seen huge increases in organic traffic and conversions over the past 6 months but our DA has gone down.
-
Yes, I read that post before.
Unfortunately this client's primary competitor has maintained their DA of 19. So I suspect (the client is certain) there is something else going on. So I need to know where to start digging!
-
This sounds exactly like the problem many have seen after the recent API update. I would suggest reading this topic: https://moz.com/community/q/is-everybody-seeing-da-pa-drops-after-last-moz-api-update You'll find a few more in the Q&A section but this one has a really helpful reply from Rand Fishkin.
We also saw one domain drop from 10 to 1 and I have seen someone else here mention a drop from 12 to 1. I for one am not going to worry about it for now, fairly certain it will get fixed with the next update which is expected in a little over two weeks.
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
-
Seem to have dropped completely out of the rankings
Hello there, I have a site that seems to have totally dropped out of the rankings i.e. it is now not even ranking for the name, at which it has been number 2 forever! In Moz Pro it is at 0% visibility and no keywords being ranked. No big changes in terms of the site, the pages appear to be being indexed and as far as I'm aware no dodgy backlinks. The only change lately is that we have linked it to Google Console, added 2 content pages and done a Google Adwords campaign. These pages have been used as the landing pages for this campaign - could that have had this effect? Could this be a RAG (Random Act of Google) or something else??? The site is homefarmlogs.co.uk. The is also a homefarmlogs.com - could this be causing a problem??? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Best wishes, Sarah.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Frog-Marketing1 -
Migrated Domain, 90% Drop in Organic Traffic, HELP!!!!
One week ago we migrated our old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com to https://www.metro-manhattan.com/. Our organic search traffic from Google has dropped about 90%. Is this normal? If so, how long should it take to recover? We filed a submitted a domain change request on Webmaster tools one week ago. We are noticing that many of the www.nyc-officespace-leader.com pages are still indexed which seems strange after a week. To complicate things, we filed a disavow file on April 9th for spammy links that pointed the NYC site. We filed the identical disavow of those links to the new Metro domain to ensure low quality links don't point to the new domain. Prior to making the domain change request, we migrated 30-40 non critical pages from NYC to Metro domains. Webmaster Tools indicated that the traffic was normal on the migrated pages. We then migrated remaining pages and filed the domain change request on April 4th. It is after April 4th that traffic and ranking declined. I would like to mention that there was no change in content; identical content was migrated from Metro to NYC This does not seem normal. Research prior to the migration indicated that if proper steps were taken it should proceed with limited disruption in traffic and ranking. Any ideas on how to remedy this situation? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
How to handle multiple domains?
Hello, We are working on migrating a website to a new web server. In addition to the primary website domain, there are several other variations that are owned. Is okay if we point all of our domains to the same IP address as our primary domain, and then setup 301 redirects to the primary domain? Are there any risks in doing this? There may be about 100 domains. Many of them are different country TLD for same primary .com domain, others including misspellings of primary .com, and some that are not so related to primary domain. Thank you in advance for your response!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | srbello1 -
Ranking Above sub-domains
So I work for a company that has a very successful affiliate that operates under a third level domain name such as "region.company.com". Their SEO practices are very good and they rank highly in keyword searches. However "company.com" does not even though it is not a subdomain. Even after optimizing the company.com's pages etc, the regional sub domain ranks much higher for keywords and the main company fails to rank at all. Is Google discounting the main company's page? Is it a matter of trust or time? or is it something else? How can I get Google to prioritize the main company website rather than a lower level domain affiliate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Resolute0 -
How does authorship work for two authors?
How does Google's version of authorship work for 2 authors?: support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986 https://plus.google.com/authorship
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Domain name Length
How many characters max per domain name ,is that important factor ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
How do i redirect www.domain.com/ to www.domain.com/index.php
I keep getting in my analytics www.domain.com/ and www.domain.com/index.php how do i make it consistently redirect to one version and not to both. I know about htaccess redirect and am already using this so am puzzle to which is the best one to use. below is the example .htaccess file im using. Options +FollowSymlinks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattmillen
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.co.uk [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.co.uk/index.php$1 [r=301,nc] which is better for SEO should i forward to www.domain.com/ or www.domain.com/index.php0 -
SEO friendlier domain name
Hi, I just have a doubt. I am building a site I want to optimize for the keyword "slot machine gratis". I have bought two domains: slot-machines-gratis.it and slotmachine-gratis.it. Which domain do you recommend that I use to target the keyword "slot machine gratis"? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0