Website domain authority dropped from 55 to 1 in two months

[jimz8070]

Hi all! Our website DA dropped from 55 to 1 in a matter of two months. Last time I checked, it was two months ago and the website DA was 55. When I checked today, it is 1. Needless to day, I am shocked.

The website has been around since 1995 and has always had pretty decent DA and PA. We made a couple of important changes during past 3-4 months. One is to support HTTPS and another is to implement the responsive web design to support browsing by mobile devices.

What could be the reason for such a dramatic drop of DA in a short period of time? Where would you suggest me to look for it? How can we get the problem fixed?

Here is the website URL: www.infohub.com

Thank you!

[A Former User]

Thanks Gaston for your comments!

Hey Jim,

First of all, apologies for the wrong timeframe, it was in fact updated on 8th January and the next expected update will be  February 26th.

The Mozscape index, which powers Open Site Explorer, is still growing, and while it is large, our index doesn't cover the entire web.

When we collect this data, we’re looking specifically for the most valuable links and, rather than crawling your entire site or every site, we collect this by starting our crawler on a few highest ranking sites and letting it perform a breadth first search to see what it finds.

It is also possible that we found your links again, but that they did not meet our relevancy threshold and were excluded from the index. Because the Index is an automated process, there isn't one single 'technique' you can use to get picked up. The best thing you can do to help your links become re-indexed in OSE is to work on building links from sites with high Mozrank.

We do recommend using a wide variety of backlink tools to get the most illustrative picture of how your site's backlink profile looks, as Gaston mentioned. OSE and Ahrefs index differently and have different purposes. Ahrefs is good for quantity while OSE is great for finding higher quality links.

You can read more about how we build our index in our guide here.

On a positive note we do have plans in the works to improve and broaden out the data we have in the index, keep an eye out!

I hope this helps - let me know if you have any further questions!

Eli

[jimz8070]

Hope someone from Moz will respond.  I posted the original thread on Dec 20.  I was told to wait until next Moz update - it was said to happen on Jan 15th.  I waited and the problem is still there after the update.  It is hard to continue to wait without knowing if the problem will be fixed or not.  At the same time, the situation we are in is very serious.

Jim

[GastonRiera]

My suggestion is to wait a little longer.
Its possible that Moz's staff can't help you directly, because they dont manage the websites that are crawled in every update. At least that is what i know.

Best luck.
GR.

[jimz8070]

Hi Gaston,

You are right that we don't see any correlation between our website DA and website traffic.  After our website DA dropped from 50's to 1, the website traffic has remained unchanged.

HOWEVER, as I mentioned in my previous post, we work with many writers (mostly bloggers) on content development.  Most bloggers will check a site's domain authority before they agree to write for the site because they will ask for a back link to their own website from article's author bio section.  When a site's DA is 1, it is very difficult (almost impossible) to find blogger to work with us.  Hope you now understand the situation we are in.   I hope someone from Moz will respond and help get this issue resolved soon.

Jim

[GastonRiera]

Hi!

Remember, that lowering in Moz's metrics doesn't mean that you will lose rankings.
Also, you can check here: https://moz.com/products/api/updates the current mozscape index. The actual was updated on January 8, 2018.

I'd sauggest you to be patient and back your metrics with oter tools too, like SEMrush, Majestic and/or ahrefs.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR

[jimz8070]

Hi Eli,

The next update to our index is January 15th 2018.

Today is January 16th.   I have just checked our site DA and it is still 1.   Any suggestion on how we can get our site DA and PA back?   We work with outside writers on content development and the writers usually check a site's DA before agreeing working for us.  So when our site's DA drops to 1, it puts us in a major dilemma.   So we would like to this issue resolved as soon as possible.  Thank you.

[VeroBrain]

Hi Jim,

Forgot to mention the bad news on regard a migration to https, due to Google considers the https a new website, it will crawl all as "a new website".
That is great at first, though any failure from old times will appear with "red flags" because the 2017 algorithms will work. I mean broken links, 404s and so, that you didn´t know those were there, will be shown up.

That is why it is highly advisable to perform an SEO audit and fix up all, before the migration.
Although, in many years of SEO practice, only one client came before the migration.

Hope you recover your website's great DA soon

oEQREK

[VeroBrain]

Hi Jim,

Did you upload a "disavow all" file?
No
Great

Did you add the new property - https - to the Google Search Console?
how to add https to Google Search Console? Should we do it or not?

Yes you ought to!
You have to add all versions of the website (if you did not add the http versions in the past to Google Search Console, formerly known as Google Webmasters).

Where?:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

How to do it?:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6332964?

What properties?:
http://infohub.com/
https:/infohub.com/
http://www.infohub.com/
https://www.infohub.com/

After all those were done:
Into this property only: https://www.infohub.com/
veryfy the robot texts
upload a site map
fetch as google
You will see data starts to be shown and index within a few days.

Did you inadverted deleted the Google Analytics code?
Don't think so. We still see site traffic stats in our GA account. That means the GA code is in place, right?
Yes.

Good luck!

Mª Verónica

[jimz8070]

Hi Veronica,

Did you upload a "disavow all" file?
  No

Did you add the new property - https - to the Google Search Console?
  how to add https to Google Search Console?  Should we do it or not?

Did you inadverted deleted the Google Analytics code?
  Don't think so.  We still see site traffic stats in our GA account.  That means the GA code is in place, right?

Jim

[VeroBrain]

Hi Jim,
Besides Gaston and Eli's responses, I truly think that is weird.
I mean that you have not a single inbound link after 22 years!
Did you upload a "disavow all" file?
Did you add the new property - https - to the Google Search Console?
Did you inadverted deleted the Google Analytics code?
Good luck!
Mª Verónica

[A Former User]

In addition to Gaston's answer

In the case of a URL switch, especially an HTTP to an HTTPS, remember that it is normal to see a bit of a drop in some of your stats just after the move.

We have a blog post about migrating to HTTPS: https://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl

There are also some great Q&A threads about the potential impact:
https://moz.com/community/q/our-homepage-url-has-been-301-d-to-the-new-https-version-as-our-md-wanted-us-to-have-the-secure-protocol
https://moz.com/community/q/will-switching-to-https-lower-my-domain-authority

The next update to our index is January 15th 2018.

Let me know if you have any other questions,

Eli

[GastonRiera]

Hi there!

Dont worry, there is nothing wrong with your site.
Wait a month or two, you might be crawled again and the PA/DA will be back.
The thing here is the Mozscape index, in where that site might have not been crawled for the last 6 month (Moz's index only stores data for 180 days).
I do highly recommend to use other backlink checker tools, such as Ahrefs.com or Majestic.com. Also in search console there is a part where Google tells you some of the backlinks pointing to your site.

I'll be attaching an image from ahrefs to show you that backlinks are there and are crawable.

Keep in mind that DA/PA or any other metric outthere does not tell the quality of any site. its just an approximation of what that tool understands about google algorithms.
More info here:
Mozscape API updates
Open Site Explorer Guide - Moz Help hub

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.

GgApe