Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Domain Authority dropped 10 points and I don't know why

    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.

    Domain Authority dropped 10 points and I don't know why

    Technical SEO
    domain authority optimization
    3
    3
    2333
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • LisaBabblebird
      LisaBabblebird Subscriber last edited by

      In my latest site crawl, the domain authority dropped 10 points for no apparent reason. There have been no changes to the site. The only change I have made this month is to block referral spam to the site. My competitors' DAs have stayed the same too.

      website name: https://knowledgefront.co.uk/

      Any ideas?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RaviKumarRana
        RaviKumarRana last edited by

        Check for incoming links and see if there's any pattern. Check referral traffic and see if any bot traffic is landing on your website or not. Try the following steps:

        1. Create a filter in analytics
        2. Block spam IPs
        3. Block bot traffic to land on your website.
        4. Create quality backlinks
        5. Find out pages that are performing lower in SERP i.e. 5,6,7 or 8,9th positions. Optimize them and push them for better CTR.

        Once you are done, submit sitemap and wait for some time, I hope this will help you out recovering the lost DA as it works for me.

        Regards,
        Ravi Kumar Rana
        TheSEOGuy

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • PaintedBrickDigital
          PaintedBrickDigital last edited by

          @lisababblebird said in Domain Authority dropped 10 points and I don't know why:

          https://knowledgefront.co.uk/

          With just a quick look, you've got 53ish links and many of them are questionable at best, or directory links.

          So, link quality may be an issue, also, did you manually disavow links? If so, you probably just brought unwanted attention to your site.

          We never tell clients to disavow on their own... only if they receive a manual penalty do we take that step.

          Instead, focus on building actual valuable links as Google and other search engines have gotten pretty good at recognizing and ignoring spam links on their own.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • Skites2

            Unsolved DA dropping after spam attack

            moz pro da domain authority spam backlink attack spam backlinks

            Hello. Our DA has dropped from 40 to 28. Why does moz take into account clear spam links. Not all links are created by website owners. Popular websites also see a lot of unknown spam linking. Any solutions to over-ride these issues? It seems very futile to see the DA dropping without any apparent reason or help towards actionable data.

            Moz Pro | | Skites2
            0
          • Arek_W

            Unsolved Why Did My Site's DA Go Down After Adding New Links?

            domain authority link building website optimization

            Hi Moz Community, I've noticed my website's DA https://clean4u.org fell from 12 to 11 after adding a few links. I thought these were quality links, so I'm puzzled about the drop. Has anyone experienced something similar or knows why this could happen? Any advice or insight would be great! Thanks!

            Link Building | | Arek_W
            0
          • HimalayanInstitute

            WordPress Sub-directory for SEO

            wordpress subdirectory domain authority

            Hi There, I'm working on a WordPress site that includes a premium content blog with approx 900 posts. As part of the project, those 900 posts and other membership functionality will be moved from the main site to another site built specifically for content/membership. Ideally, we want the existing posts to remain on the root domain to avoid a loss in link juice/domain authority. We initially began setting up a WordPress Multisite using the sub-directory option. This allows for the main site to be at www.website.com and the secondary site to be at www.website.com/secondary. Unfortunately, the themes and plugins we need for the platform do not play nicely with WordPress Multisite, so we started seeking a new solution, and, discovered that a second instance of WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory on the server. This would give us the same subdirectory structure while bypassing WordPress Multisite and instead, having two separate single-site installs. Do you foresee any issues with this WordPress subdirectory install? Does Google care/know these are two separate WordPress installs and do we risk losing any link juice/domain authority?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HimalayanInstitute
            0
          • HayleyBowyer

            Moz Domain Authority [Megathread]

            domain authority da

            Hey Moz Community, We've noticed that there are questions about Domain Authority, what it is, and how to positively impact it. We're here to answer your questions! For a full overview, please see our help hub article here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority First, it's important to keep in mind that Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). It is not a Google ranking factor. Domain Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater likelihood of ranking. Since DA is based on machine learning calculations, your site's score will often fluctuate as more, fewer, or different data points become available and are incorporated into those calculations. For instance, if facebook.com were to acquire a billion new links, every other site’s DA would drop relative to Facebook’s. Because more established and authoritative domains like Facebook will have increasingly larger link profiles, they take up more of the high-DA slots, leaving less room at the higher end of the scale for other domains with less robust link profiles. Therefore, it's significantly easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it is to grow it from 70 to 80. For this reason, it’s important to use Domain Authority as a comparative metric rather than an absolute one. The best way to influence your DA is to improve your overall site health with a focus on the quality and quantity of external links pointing to your site. Check out this video for more details on how to impact DA Happy analyzing!

            Moz Pro | | HayleyBowyer
            0
          • startrek123

            Solved Link tracking list is not working

            link tracking list domain authority link explorer

            Hi there
            Ive been using link tracking list to add links for my website for 2 years now and it always worked the same Way - - > up to 1 week and the links were added to website's portfolio. The problem occurs since 2 months and links placed in link tracking list simply arent being added to website's portfolio. Are there any updates going on in background? Anyone knows something about this issue?

            Product Support | | startrek123
            0
          • RoxBrock

            Product schema GSC Error 'offers, review, or aggregateRating should be specified'

            I do not have a sku, global identifier, rating or offer for my product. Nonetheless it is my product. The price is variable (as it's insurance) so it would be inappropriate to provide a high or low price. Therefore, these items were not included in my product schema. SD Testing tool showed 2 warnings, for missing sku and global identifier. Google Search Console gave me an error today that said:  'offers, review, or aggregateRating should be specified' I don't want to be dishonest in supplying any of these, but I also don't want to have my page deprecated in the search results. BUT I DO want my item to show up as a product. Should I forget the product schema? Advice/suggestions? Thanks in advance.

            Technical SEO | | RoxBrock
            1
          • nathangdavidson2

            How can you promote a sub-domain ahead of a domain on the SERPs?

            I have a new client that wants to promote their subdomain uk.imagemcs.com and have their main domain imagemcs.com fall off the SERPs. Objective? Get uk.imagemcs.com to rank first for UK 'brand' searches. Do a search for 'imagem creative services' and you should see the issue (it looks like rules have been applied to the robots.txt on the main domain to exclude any bots from crawling - but since they've been indexed previously I need to take action as it doesn't look great!). I think I can do this by applying a permanent redirect from the main domain to the subdomain at domain level and then no-indexing the site - and then resubmit the sitemap. My slight concern is that this no-indexing of the main domain may impact on the visibility of the subdomains (I'm dealing with uk.imagemcs.com, but there is us.imagemcs.com and de.imagemcs.com) and was looking for some assurance that this would not be the case. My understanding is that subdomains are completely distinct from domains and as such this action should have no impact on the subdomains. I asked the question on the Webmasters Forum but haven't really got anywhere
            https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/1Avupy3Uw_o/hu6oLQntCAAJ Can anyone suggest a course of action? many thanks, Nathan

            Technical SEO | | nathangdavidson2
            0
          • rhoadesjohn

            The word 'shop' in a page title

            I'm reworking most of the page titles on our site and I'm considering the use of the word 'Shop' before a product category. ex.  Shop 'keyword' | Brand Name As opposed to just using the keyword sans 'Shop.'  Some of the keywords are very generic, especially for a top level category page. Question: Is the word 'Shop' damaging my SEO efforts in any way?

            Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.