Does "Disallow: /xmlrpc.php" in robots.txt affect moz tools ability to fetch DA?
-
Just checked a website for Domain Authority using Moz' tool, however it returned 1 for DA, which should be unlikely. I have been trying to find the problem and found "Disallow: /xmlrpc.php" in robots.txt. Could this affect Moz' tools ability to get the required data?
-
I see. Thanks for the info, Tawny.
-
It's not necessarily that those links you're seeing with other tools but not with Moz's tools aren't relevant; it could just be that we haven't crawled and indexed the sites linking back to yours recently enough to include links from them in our index. If you're seeing 0 internal links reported, then that definitely means we haven't fully indexed your site, or if we have it was long enough ago that the linking data is no longer stored in the index, and we'll need to re-crawl and re-index.
The best thing you can do to get your site indexed by our tools is to search for it and the sites linking to it in Open Site Explorer. That should prompt our tools to visit your site and crawl and index it within the next few index updates.
-
Thank you for the breakdown of how the DA calculation works. The dilemma here is that with other tools, such as Raven Tools, it finds almost 300 backlinks for the website where Moz states it found none. Does this imply that none of those backlinks are relevant? The webpage is also linked internally, and moz returns a value of 0 for that also.
-
Hey there, Tawny from Moz's Help Team here.
That Disallow command shouldn't be affecting your DA score; that's calculated based on our own metrics and your backlink profile.
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.
I think you've already pinpointed the reason we don't have a DA score of higher than 1 for your site — you're not seeing any link information in our index. If we don't have any linking data for your site, your DA will naturally drop, as a big part of our calculation is unavailable.
Just a few points on how we compile our index:
- We grab the most recent index.
- We take the top 10 billion URLs with the highest MozRank (with a fixed limit on some of the larger domains).
- We start crawling from the top down until we've crawled ~130 billion URLs
The idea here is that we're focusing on the highest-quality links we can find, coming from the most prominent pages of authoritative sites. So, while you may not see every link for a site within our index, we're aiming to report the most valuable ones available!
Most new sites and links will be indexed by our spiders and available in Mozscape and Open Site Explorer within 60 days, but some take even longer for many reasons - including the crawl-ability of sites, the number of inbound links to them, and the depth of pages in subdirectories. This also has the effect of slightly biasing our index in favor of newer links. Links are only cached in the index for around 180 days. After that, unless the tools have a compelling reason to return to your site and the sites linking to yours, re-crawl, and re-index them, those links can fall back out of our index. That doesn't mean they don't exist and aren't out there on the web, just that our tools don't see them anymore.
You can see our most recently updated schedule here as well as some more technical metrics on our Mozscape API Updates page. You can also see when the last and next updates happened on the Open Site Explorer (OSE) homepage at any time.
Since Moz focuses on quality of links over quantity, we are always focused on the most relevant links to display to our users. It's possible that Moz's index will leave out some of the lower-quality (non-link juice providing) links out of our index because of this. So, that might explain why you may see some discrepancies with what other tools may be showing.
You can read more about how we build our index in our guide here.
I know that's a ton of information, so if you've still got questions, feel free to drop us a line at help@moz.com and we'll do our best to sort things out for ya.
-
its a .fi domain. I have tried with many .fi domains and it works. Also Moz shows that it is getting 0 link data from the webpage, which means something might be blocking moz's tool from crawling.
-
What type of TLD is it, i.e. co.uk or .com etc? There are some that aren't supported by Moz and for those you'll see a DA of 1.
-
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
The website is not new, and the domain was created 4.2014.
I doubted it would be that, but cant figure out what else it could be...Perhaps I have to accept the fate offered by moz tool?...
-
Hi,
I don’t think that’s the reason of a low DA, xmlrpc.php it’s a file that for security lots of websites block even in htaccess for prevent access.
Do you check the domain age? It's a new website?
Regards
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
-
Moz is only crawling 2 pages
Hi, I found a similar thread, but it did not provide a clear-cut answer. We have had this campaign running for over a year, and we are always adding content to the website, but Moz is only ever able to crawl 2 pages, Screaming Frog only picks up 12, but I know there is a lot more than that. None of our pages are set to no-index, so I do not know what is causing this. Welcoming any ideas/solutions. Thanks
Moz Bar | | GavinAdv0 -
Is there a way to export all your crawl errors for multiple Moz campaigns at once?
We're looking for a simple way to export all crawl errors for our Moz campaigns. More than likely we could use the API, but was wondering if there was any functionality already built into Moz for exporting all crawl errors.
Moz Bar | | ReunionMarketing0 -
On page grader tool - ip address
Does anyone know Moz's IP address for the above tool so I can give it access to a staging area of our site?
Moz Bar | | Jennie050 -
Need to solve "Oops our crawlers were unable to access" url for new campaign
I'm putting the url designfirstkitchenandbath.com and getting the "oops! our crawlers were unable to access the site. Since this site is a potential client, which shows up online, I can't get access to fix the code, plus while I can write a little html I don't feel comfortable working with hard, live code on someonelse's site. Anyone have a simple solution?
Moz Bar | | alisacromer0 -
Moz Pro Question: Does the amount of keywords you are allowed to search reset each month?
I am a Moz Pro subscriber and I really love the new Keyword Explorer tool. One question I have that I couldn't find a clear answer was regarding the number of monthly keyword queries. Do they reset each month? I hope they do.
Moz Bar | | joemaclean0 -
605 : Page banned by robots.txt
Hello everyone, I need experts help here, Please suggest, I am receiving crawl errors for my site that is , X-Robots-Tag: header, or tag. my robots.txt file is: User-agent: * Disallow:
Moz Bar | | bhomes0 -
New Spam Analysis Tool Results Questions
First off, I am incredibly excited about this tool. Secondly, I have a slew of questions, but the ones that are lingering for me are as follows. There are a few URLS that we used to control which are showing up in our list as spammy. The websites no longer exist as of roughly a week ago and I presume they still show up simply because of the last indexing. That being said, if a website doesn't exist anymore, yet the link is showing up in our GWMT or MOZ, is it still necessary to disavow? Is that overkill? http://alcoholdrugrehablosangeles.com/ is an example of a website we used to control and I have removed. My second lingering question is if there are a handful of links that are registering as spammy, and I presume it is due to lack of content/duplicate content, and I move that content to its appropriate place on another website and 301 that domain to its new home, will the "spam score" carry over?
Moz Bar | | HashtagHustler0