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.
Backlinks on Moz not on Google Search Console
-
Moz is showing thousands of backlinks to my site that are not showing up on Google Search Console - which is good because those links were created by some spammer in Pakistan somewhere.
I haven't yet submitted a disavow report to Google of well over 10K links because the list keeps growing every day with new backlinks that have been rerouted to a 404 page.
I have asked Google to clarify and they put my question on their forum for an answer, which I'm still waiting for - so I thought I'd try my luck here.
My question...
If Moz does not match Google Search Console, and backlinks are important to results, how valid is the ranking that Moz creates to let me know how I'm doing in this competition and if I'm improving or not.
If the goal is to get Google to pay attention and I use Moz to help me figure out how to do this, how can I do that if the backlink information isn't the same - by literally over 10 000 backlinks created by some spammer doing odd things...
They've included the url from their deleted profile on my site with 100s of other urls, including Moz.com and are posting them everywhere with their preferred anchor text.
Moz ranking considers the thousands of spam backlinks I can't get rid of and Google ignores them or disavows them. So isn't the rankings, data, and graphs apples and bananas?
How can I know what my site's strength really is and if I'm improving or not if the data doesn't match?
Complete SEO Novice
Shannon Peel
Brand Storyteller
MarketAPeel -
@BlueprintMarketing said in Backlinks on Moz not on Google Search Console:
Google's John Mueller was answering questions around an old topic of Google showing only a sample of links in the link report in Google Search Console on Reddit. He said that generally, if the links are not shown in the tool, then they are "pretty irrelevant overall."
The part "pretty irrelevant overall." is surprising. In my case I have links from German newspapers DR 60 , 43,42,58,67,74 to my website.
There seems to be something else playing as news websites make sure theyre articles and pages get crawled all the time.
I used Pingler, ping-omatic and prepostseo and pinged the Newswebsites that relate to my article. As well I made a [BS blogpage](link url) for a couple days where I link to all relevant websites where I have backlinks.
At the moment I am waiting the see the results and will come back here to share. -
@BlueprintMarketing
Thank you for this... it is helpful.I use the link list from Moz and others to help me find out which profiles and forum posts are spammers then I delete and 301 to a 404 page to ensure that URL is 404ed.
I get too many a day and it is a waste of my time.
-
Moz & other third-party tools have a much better method of displaying your actual backlinks going to a domain or URL.
Google search console only displays a sample of known links, so remember it is not showing you all your backlinks or even. all of your data.
Here are some helpful URLs
"Google Search Console only displays a sample of known links, they update infrequently, and no preference to priority or weight is given."
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-tool-sample-data-13636.html
Google's John Mueller was answering questions around an old topic of Google showing only a sample of links in the link report in Google Search Console on Reddit. He said that generally, if the links are not shown in the tool, then they are "pretty irrelevant overall."
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-search-console-irrelevant-27342.html
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-console-guide/209318/
-
Having just launched a new site, a couple of spam sites (xxx .pw sites - used to try to extract your passwords) are already on Google's radar. When I click the link in my Moz backlink profile the website instantly redirected to app.private-check.com tool. Quickly, I got a message from Google that said something to the effect "Aren't you glad we blocked them from your passwords". These links are not in my GSC for this domain.
What would be really great is if Moz and other tool providers, could find these spam sites and filter them out based on what is and is not showing up in GSC. That would be worth paying for, yes?
-
@marketapeel right now were seeing most of the rubbish not coming through into search console, which hopefully means the specialists are correct
However, there is a few that are clearly spam still making it into search console which does have me wonder if it's affecting us for now. Google Search console is more like a magician's magic ball than actually being fully useful.
-
@tyrerunner I have not found a solution. When I interviewed SEO specialists on my podcast, I asked them and they said Google would ignore them and not to worry - Which I can see when I look at the backlinks Google Search Console has.
The problem is all these SEO tools showing thousands of these backlinks and making it harder for me to use the tool efficiently.
I followed the backlinks and found I'm in good company in these lists of links, it's just too bad that the anchor text is wrong because some of those back links have a decent ranking.
I did go to some of the higher ranked sites and when appropriate, created my own content with links using the right anchor text in the hopes that the matching keywords would help make it clearer - but they have yet to show up on any of the SEO tools or Google.
I did have a few visits from Google looking for that service but I think they were from before I deleted the posts - so the keywords were there to match - I've since fixed that problem.
I deleted the posts on my site but the url doesn't disappear and the page it lands on was empty so I 301 the pages to a 404 telling visitors the site is about brand storytelling and linked to the different pages if they were interested. This 404 page was already developed for those times a page load messed up.
I asked Google - no one has answered me there.
I have offered to sell an ad page on my site to a company and 301 all the links to it. - Not sure if this is a good idea - but I'd like to benefit somehow
If you come up with a solution or a better way to deal with all this spam and still get good data out of Moz etc... please let me know.
-
@marketapeel We're having the exact same issue coming from India. Did you find a solution? my first thought was that google has perhaps registered these as known spam builders, but on the other hand Google Search Console isn't that great at the best of times and it could be it just takes weeks to show up.
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
-
Unsolved Link Tracking List Error
"I have been maintaining 5 directories of backlinks in the 'Link Tracking List' section for several months. However, I am unable to locate any of these links at this time. Additionally, the link from my MOZ profile is currently broken and redirects to an error page, no to Elche Se Mueve. Given the premium pricing of MOZ's services, these persistent errors are unacceptable."
Moz Pro | | Alberto D.1 -
Why MOZ just index some of the links?
hello everyone i've been using moz pro for a while and found a lot of backlink oppertunites as checking my competitor's backlink profile.
Link Building | | seogod123234
i'm doing the same way as my competitors but moz does not see and index lots of them, maybe just index 10% of them. though my backlinks are commenly from sites with +80 and +90 DA like Github, Pinterest, Tripadvisor and .... and the strange point is that 10% are almost from EDU sites with high DA. i go to EDU sites and place a comment and in lots of case, MOZ index them in just 2-3 days!! with maybe just 10 links like this, my DA is incresead from 15 to 19 in less than one month! so, how does this "SEO TOOL" work?? is there anyway to force it to crawl a page?0 -
Unsolved Google Search Console Still Reporting Errors After Fixes
Hello, I'm working on a website that was too bloated with content. We deleted many pages and set up redirects to newer pages. We also resolved an unreasonable amount of 400 errors on the site. I also removed several ancient sitemaps that listed content deleted years ago that Google was crawling. According to Moz and Screaming Frog, these errors have been resolved. We've submitted the fixes for validation in GSC, but the validation repeatedly fails. What could be going on here? How can we resolve these error in GSC.
Technical SEO | | tif-swedensky0 -
How to get rid of bad backlinks
So I noticed my rankings going down and spam score going up. So under my spam score there are over 100 links for different websites but ALL redirect to semalt.com I researched it and it says they hijacked a bunched of backlinks but don't know much more. How can I get rid of all those backlinks? I was told I could use the disavow tool but apparently that can hurt my ranking as well. The semalt.com site has no backlink to me - it looks like the pages that have/had my backlinks, they've redirected to them. For instance this is one of the links http://www.oxvideos.xyz/indianantyphotoxxx 422005fb-9240-40a4-8b65-f5b1f5079dea-image.png
Link Building | | landlwoof40 -
Rankings Dropped After New Backlinks.
I have a low-traffic website (under 100 unique visitors per day) and I've encountered a strange issue started yesterday morning. I acquired three back-links, one of these back-links is contextual and the other two are site-wide. The site-wide back-links are from PA 40+ blogs. It looks like the back-links are already indexed by Google. Despite these new back-links, my rankings across multiple keywords have dropped several positions. I'm new to SEO, but I would assume new back-links would improve my rankings. None of these back-links are low quality links, they are from real established blogs with high domain and page authority values. Could anyone give me insights into why my rankings may have dropped with new back-links?
Link Building | | poke11 -
How to identify spammy website before making backlinks on them
Hi, I search in google but didnt find a proper answer for this! maybe search an incorrect keyword! The question is, How can I find out a website that I'm going to make a backlink on is a spammy website? For example I did this guest bloging on this good website: Best Sure-Shot Organic Pest Control Approaches Every Gardener Should Know | Balcony Garden Web But it seems to be spammy because I use SEO POWERSUIT software that shows this backlink is 20% risk of google penalty! Is it right!? So how can we rest assured for making a quality backlink? I can not think any other way 😞
Link Building | | Shervin0 -
Is there a difference between .com backlinks and .co.uk?
(We are a UK based business) I am currently looking for sites for guest posting opportunities and I am not sure whether I should prioritize .co.uk sites or go for .com sites. Does it matter? Is more weight given to .co.uk sites if you are based in the UK?
Link Building | | JamesG0750