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
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • 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.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • 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.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • 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.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • 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

          • rashedkhalaf1991

            Unsolved SEO Domain Authority

            domain authority

            https://aljoodservices.com
            I am working on improving this site now, but while searching, I found a site that allows me to create a blog and the site ranks high 77. If I create a blog for us and direct it to this site, will I get a high domain authority through this site? I don't know if the domains are spam or something like that.

            Moz Tools | | rashedkhalaf1991
            2
          • g3mmab

            Unsolved Huge Increase In Internal Links + Domain Authority Tanked

            internal linking domain authority

            Hey, I am very concerned about the link metrics I am seeing, really hoping someone can help. In October last year there were a total of 34.7K 'total links' attributed to my E-commerce website . This compared to 41.2k and 213k links attributed to my two main competitors. In November, my website had a forced update due to incompatibility issues my shopping cart version was having with the server on which it is hosted. (I was told by my web developers / hosting company that their server was upgraded.) This update created many problems such as checkout issues, page layout issues, sitemaps not automatically regenerating and the big one - it reverted back to http instead of https. Along with my developers, I spent 2 weeks fixing all of the issues until everything worked correctly and https was reinstated. After initial warnings from Moz, I have not received any critical crawler issues or warnings, big ranking drops etc since November. I was satisfied that all was ok. However, in November my 'total links' jumped to 81.5k and have since continued to balloon. December - 309.1k, January -335k, February - 665k, March - 716k, April - 719k, May - 742k, June - 751k. In the same period (November - June), my external links went from 5.3k - 8.7k. So it appears the huge increase in links are internal. In my latest report it states that 'internal follow links' are up by 8k and 'internal no follow links' are up by 1k. This is insane. I cannot understand why I have so many internal links and why they keep increasing. I maintain the website with updates, blog articles etc but no more than I have in the past several years. Worryingly, once this increase in links started being reported, my Domain Authority has also tanked. In October my DA was 37 (higher than my competitors) and has since dropped as low as 19. It has gone up to 21 this month (still significantly lower than my competitors). I have spent hours researching why this huge increase in internal links could be happening but have got nowhere. If anyone could advise what the issue could be and how I can fix it, I would be eternally grateful. Issues I have discovered along the way that may help with analysis:
            My site has many 404s (hundreds) - all relate to urls of old images that have been removed from the website. The 'Top Hits' on my website are from blogs (some spammy) to these deleted image urls that return a 404. I don't use any plugins. I do get 'duplicate content' notices as my blog posts archive themselves and generate new urls - as an example - 'blog post name' archived December 2023. It may be the case that the old http urls have been redirected to https but I have no warnings for 'redirect issues' in Moz. Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks in advance for any help.

            Link Explorer | | g3mmab
            0
          • getnoticedlocally

            PA and DA for Homepage

            page authority domain authority internal linking homepage

            I've been looking at the PA and DA scores for the homepage of websites we have built and have been comparing this to competitors. What I'm finding is that the PA score is always higher than the DA, however on competitors sites the PA is much higher in relation to the DA. What could be the reason for this? For example, some of our website homepages may have PA / DA scores such as the following: Website #1: PA37 DA25 (PA:DA = 1.48)
            Website #2: PA31 DA21 (PA:DA = 1.47) However competitors often have figures like this: Website #3: PA40 DA21 (PA:DA 1.9)
            Website #4: PA 25 DA 11 (PA:DA 2.27) I even saw one website with the following scores: Website #5: PA36 DA5 (PA:DA 7.2) How do you explain such a high Page Authority in relation to the domain authority for that site? When I look at the scores for our websites I often feel that the DA is at a good level, but the PA for the homepage doesn't seem as high as it could be compared to competitors. My initial thought was that maybe we had a lot of backlinks to other pages on the website (not the homepage) but this is not the case at all - pretty much all our backlinks are to the homepage. Could it be to do with internal linking structure? Any other ideas? Many thanks in advance for any help with this.

            Link Building | | getnoticedlocally
            0
          • startrek123

            Unsolved Moz doesn't find backlinks for months / link tracking list offline

            link tracking list link explorer backlinks domain authority

            Hi there
            I want to share a big problem with you. Moz tracking list seems to be offline or having trouble finding links. I have an example:
            The page where the backlink has been placed was created months ago. As you can see on the picture:
            Link to the page is http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/profile/tableauxdumonde
            Backlink on that page is https://ggongtime.com/ Picture shows clearly that the page of backlink (Microsoft) has been indexed and already has got it's own backlinks in Moz (8) but it is still not linking to the backlink website (ggongtime.com).
            I've also attached a picture of page source where you can clearly see that it is a html link and is dofollow.
            The problem remains since 3 months and I want to find out what is going on. This Microsoft page is one of example. There are hundreds of other pages being found, or not, and are still not showing up in Link Explorer on website's portfolio.
            I want to know if there is a technical problem with link explorer, or anything else, because this is a serious problem for me. moz problem.png

            Product Support | | startrek123
            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
          • agencepicnic

            Finding websites that don't have meta descriptions

            Hi everyone, as a way to find new business leads I thought about targeting websites that have poor meta descriptions or where they are simply missing. A quick look at SERPs shows this is still a major issue for many businesses. Is there any way I can quickly find pages for which meta description is lacking? Thank you! Best regards, Florian

            Technical SEO | | agencepicnic
            0
          • RG_SEO

            Does a subdomain benefit from being on a high authority domain?

            I think the title sums up the question, but does a new subdomain get any ranking benefits from being on a pre-existing high authority domain. Or does the new subdomain have to fend for itself in the SERPs?

            Technical SEO | | RG_SEO
            0
          • Technical_Contact

            Do or don't —forward a parked domain to a live website?

            Hi all, I'm new to SEO and excited to see the launch of this forum. I've searched for an answer to this question but haven't been able to find out. I  "attended" two webinars recently regarding SEO. The above subject was raised in each one and the speakers gave a polar opposite recommendations. So I'm completely at a loss as to what to do with some domains that are related to a domain used on a live website that I'm working to improve the SEO on. The scenario: Live website at (fictitious) www.digital-slr-camera-company.com. I also have 2 related domain names which are parked with the registrar: www.dslr.com, www.digitalslr.com. The question: Is there any SEO benefit to be gained by pointing the two parked domains to the website at www.digitalcamercompany.com? If so, what method of "pointing" should be used? Thanks to any and all input.

            Technical SEO | | Technical_Contact
            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
          • 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.