Hello Michael Johnson and Mozzers,

I have seen Shopify do this a few times, though I do not have clients on that particular platform at the moment. It is frustrating. You're right to want to resolve this issue. Between duplicate content, authority conflicts, and an inflated crawl budget, one issue or another is bound to hold back site performance.

Is this what you would do? Not immediately, no. I want to see those pages canonicalized. That way, your preferred pages get all the juice back from their respective canonical link. Is this an option for you?

**Deindex request... and s_ide effects?**_ Canonical tags would make these part irrelevant (yay less work!). To be thorough though: I'd let Google figure it out unless you have strong evidence your crawl budget is maxed. And I don't see any negative side effects from noindexing duplicate content. If worse comes to worse, you have a good plan.

Shape that content,
CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

You are most welcome. And thank you for the followup.

You are right. More results are better. The point I meant to establish was that OSE is not bad even though it could be better. It, like the other tools, provides an accurate slice of a site's back links. The size of that slice depends on the tool's resources.

Equipped to Act Having back link profiles from these tools leaves us equipped to act. I said this in my answer as a blanket statement for link building, disavowing*, content development, and outreach. Here are some quick examples:

Link building — If OSE (or any tool) returns 4 domains for you and 150 for your competition, It's time to get some links. Plug in some competitors to see if there are any gaps you can target, hit up Fresh Web Mentions to focus your outreach, and explore content opportunities.

Disavow* — If your tool returns 4 root domains, 15 total links and one of those is complete spam level 10, I'd probably want to disavow* it and audit my site for more spammy links using GSC. I'd know from the slice of back links Moz provided that my site was likely to have more.

Footnote on Disavowing* Penguin 4.0 has presented some changes for us as to the when and what to disavow. I have not had a recent and significant enough experience with spammy back links to formulate my response yet. If you find yourself the victim of bad back links, do some research before you throw the SEO book at the issue. It might save time.

Cultivate those links,
CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

Hello Eric and fellow Mozers,

Yes, I believe you should... probably*. Even though you have invested your time to review all your business listings, Moz local goes a step further. It pushes your listing information out to the main data aggregators. Most businesses and SEOs (myself included) are not able to consistently influence this data for a few reasons, and consistency is key.

Moz Local helps keep the aggregators' data consistent. Without it or your continued time investment, aggregators like Infogroup and Localeze will eventually change your listing information. That bad data will then, in turn, be disseminated to your edited listings.

*Probably?
The effect data aggregators have on your listing varies. I believe this depends on your location and how many times that location's data has changed over time. You might be fairly far removed from these changes if you are well established or a new business in a newly developed area. Still, the cost is so negligible. Just do it and save yourself time.

Why Aggregators Change Our Listing Data
I've not had a unbiased answer to why this happens. The best answer I've heard (in my opinion because I've seen correlations that back it up) is from Vizergy's rep at Yext*. They say, aggregators switch or rollback listing info when they lack information or are presented with strong, conflicting data. Most often, the published data is reverted back to older, more verifiable data. This often winds up being a relatively data phone-book entry.

*Yext and a quick note on bias. I'm not personally bias to Yext or Moz Local. I like what works for my clients' needs. However, Yext is bias to their own product, and it is in their best interest to cast doubt on data aggregators.

Keep it consistent,
CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

Hello TaylorRHawkins and fellow Mozers,

I have had the pleasure of using all sorts of backlink tools, including OSE and RavenTools. In doing so, I've run into this issue. Clients notice this difference too and frequently bring it to my attention. Here's what I say: These are different tools with different limitations. They give different results because of these limitations, which always come down to resources. Whether it's the software, indexing process, or bots, all of these tools are limited by their resources.

Tools with larger resources typically return more results. However, even more well-funded tools, including Ahref's beefy bot and index, won't get them all. You can see this in action by comparing your site's links—as reported per your chosen tool—to Google Search Console, which Google has pinky-promised us is the full list. You'll see the difference right away.

So is this a bad thing? No, not at all.

The tools I've used (OSE, RavenTools, Ahrefs, SEM Rush, and Brightedge) all do a pretty great job of delivering an accurate slice of my competitor's backlinks across the internet. Take this data and extrapolate the backlink profile using other metrics like domain authority. You'll get a good picture of what they have—and be equipped to act on it—even if you can only see 1/20th of their backlink pie.

Keep crawling,
CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

Hello Eric and fellow Mozers,

Yes, I believe you should... probably*. Even though you have invested your time to review all your business listings, Moz local goes a step further. It pushes your listing information out to the main data aggregators. Most businesses and SEOs (myself included) are not able to consistently influence this data for a few reasons, and consistency is key.

Moz Local helps keep the aggregators' data consistent. Without it or your continued time investment, aggregators like Infogroup and Localeze will eventually change your listing information. That bad data will then, in turn, be disseminated to your edited listings.

*Probably?
The effect data aggregators have on your listing varies. I believe this depends on your location and how many times that location's data has changed over time. You might be fairly far removed from these changes if you are well established or a new business in a newly developed area. Still, the cost is so negligible. Just do it and save yourself time.

Why Aggregators Change Our Listing Data
I've not had a unbiased answer to why this happens. The best answer I've heard (in my opinion because I've seen correlations that back it up) is from Vizergy's rep at Yext*. They say, aggregators switch or rollback listing info when they lack information or are presented with strong, conflicting data. Most often, the published data is reverted back to older, more verifiable data. This often winds up being a relatively data phone-book entry.

*Yext and a quick note on bias. I'm not personally bias to Yext or Moz Local. I like what works for my clients' needs. However, Yext is bias to their own product, and it is in their best interest to cast doubt on data aggregators.

Keep it consistent,
CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

Hello TaylorRHawkins and fellow Mozers,

I have had the pleasure of using all sorts of backlink tools, including OSE and RavenTools. In doing so, I've run into this issue. Clients notice this difference too and frequently bring it to my attention. Here's what I say: These are different tools with different limitations. They give different results because of these limitations, which always come down to resources. Whether it's the software, indexing process, or bots, all of these tools are limited by their resources.

Tools with larger resources typically return more results. However, even more well-funded tools, including Ahref's beefy bot and index, won't get them all. You can see this in action by comparing your site's links—as reported per your chosen tool—to Google Search Console, which Google has pinky-promised us is the full list. You'll see the difference right away.

So is this a bad thing? No, not at all.

The tools I've used (OSE, RavenTools, Ahrefs, SEM Rush, and Brightedge) all do a pretty great job of delivering an accurate slice of my competitor's backlinks across the internet. Take this data and extrapolate the backlink profile using other metrics like domain authority. You'll get a good picture of what they have—and be equipped to act on it—even if you can only see 1/20th of their backlink pie.

Keep crawling,
CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

You are most welcome. And thank you for the followup.

You are right. More results are better. The point I meant to establish was that OSE is not bad even though it could be better. It, like the other tools, provides an accurate slice of a site's back links. The size of that slice depends on the tool's resources.

Equipped to Act Having back link profiles from these tools leaves us equipped to act. I said this in my answer as a blanket statement for link building, disavowing*, content development, and outreach. Here are some quick examples:

Link building — If OSE (or any tool) returns 4 domains for you and 150 for your competition, It's time to get some links. Plug in some competitors to see if there are any gaps you can target, hit up Fresh Web Mentions to focus your outreach, and explore content opportunities.

Disavow* — If your tool returns 4 root domains, 15 total links and one of those is complete spam level 10, I'd probably want to disavow* it and audit my site for more spammy links using GSC. I'd know from the slice of back links Moz provided that my site was likely to have more.

Footnote on Disavowing* Penguin 4.0 has presented some changes for us as to the when and what to disavow. I have not had a recent and significant enough experience with spammy back links to formulate my response yet. If you find yourself the victim of bad back links, do some research before you throw the SEO book at the issue. It might save time.

Cultivate those links,
CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team