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The Mozscape Index update yesterday includes even fewer urls, root domains, subdomains and total links than the previous Index from May 5th. You can compare the size of the Indexes on the Mozscape API Updates page. Most likely, you've built additional quality/relevant links as you have mentioned, but with the smaller Index these new links, and even previously indexed links, are not being picked up. Therefore, less links are being used to calculate your domain authority score. I would say the drop in your Domain Authority is due to the size of the index. Try checking out your competitor's sites to see if their domain authority dropped as well. I know mine went down slightly yesterday. You don't have anything to worry about, just keep earning quality links. I know it is tough to see your domain authority drop when you work hard to earn/build links, but the data used from one Index to the next has not been consistent, so don't worry too much about the increase/drop in domain authority from one index release to the next. If anything, track your domain authority over time and compare it to the size of the index to get a better idea of how your link building is performing. Unfortunately, that is the best answer I can give at this time.

New year, same old problems...

Thanks for the heads up though. I don't think any of us actually thought the index would be released on time anyway, but it's good to know ahead of time there's going to be a delay. Hopefully the issues get sorted out before the 29th. You guys are going to run out of excuses here soon! J/K

I don't know if it is harming your rankings, but it looks like you've got two or three meta description and keyword tags on most of your pages, including your home page. Probably an easy fix worth doing using your site's CMS or template files to remove any unnecessary meta tags. Didn't really see anything else that stood out.

These options allow you to view backlink results from a single page level up to the entire domain level.

If you only want to see what backlinks OSE has for a specific page on your site, select "This Page"
ex: (yourdomain.com/single-page.html)

If you only want to see what backlinks OSE has for an entire subdomain on your site, select "This Subdomain"
ex: (**blog.**yourdomain.com)

If you want to see what backlinks OSE has for any page on your entire site, select "Root Domain"
ex: (yourdomain.com*)

Hope this helps.

I don't know if it is the reason but I noticed the sites that showed up as backlinks to my site after yesterday's update were much different than those from before the update. After the update my site showed fewer backlinks but my domain authority actually went up. It's possible the Mozscape index crawler visited different sites than it did previously and fewer/lower Domain Authority links were discovered for your site. Either that or your site lost some quality links since the last update.

Have you been monitoring your links with other tools? That could help determine if it's a loss of links or just different links being used to calculate your DA. Either way that seems like a big drop in DA.

It sounds like you may be better off targeting the long tail keywords that pertain to your online store. If you're looking at putting together a "complete guide to main keyword" and it's going to take you a few years, imagine where your already strong competition will be by then. Seems to me that writing shorter articles on a regular basis about the subkeywords would be more effective, especially if those keywords are not near as competitive. If topics are hard to come by, that means there should be less competition and you've got a chance to create unique content that provides value to your customers. Does your store have a blog? Would hate to see you put all your eggs into one keyword basket so to speak, and nothing happens.

It appears to be some issues with the Moz rankings tracker, although it hasn't been confirmed. It has happened on my site and I noticed another thread earlier where someone was having the same issue. Not 100% sure this is the case based on the screen shot you provided but since others are seeing similar issues I would say it's not an issue with your site.

http://moz.com/community/q/is-anyone-seeing-consistent-fluctuation-in-geolocated-search-rankings

Thanks for the information. I don't know how to and don't think I have access to change those settings on my sitemap with my current website provider. I'll send this information to them and see if they know what the problem is. Google seems to update daily, so there must be a setting that Bing doesn't like.

It says the data was updated on Dec 14th, but I don't see any changes for sites I'm tracking. However, I think they only pushed back the release date of the index two weeks this time, which, if you're looking for something positive, is an improvement. I think I'm going to start taking bets on how many times they push back the release date. I'd be willing to bet at least two times next month. My guess, next month's excuse is that the dog ate my computer. Hey, it worked for me in grade school too!

I seem to have the same issue on my site. I get a sudden influx of visitors within minutes all coming from direct traffic. How did you discover the traffic was from Miami? The only identifying factor I could find in GA was that the Network Domain for the traffic was 1e100.net. Not sure how sending direct traffic would benefit a spammer.

Have you experienced an overall drop in traffic on days you get the huge spike in direct traffic? I feel like I do, maybe the high bounce rate is a problem and signal to Google?

Would be nice to block the traffic but possibly just filter it from GA to avoid skewed data if it is not affecting your site.

BTW, it appears to be Geolocation results that are impacted. Notice in your screen shot the results that dropped were Woodbridge location results, not the national ones.

Have you checked your keyword rankings yet? Have they completely dropped off too? Hard to believe Google would completely drop your site overnight. Maybe there is an issue with your analytics tracking code being removed when you switched your website's theme. Are you seeing other traffic in GA?

Regardless, it looks like you've got a decent amount of broken links & 404 errors on your site. I doubt Google would kill your traffic over that, but it wouldn't hurt to fix these items so that once you're back online the Google Bot is not tripping over broken links.

The authority of the sites you are receiving links from will likely play a role in how long they take to show up, if they show up at all. If the pages sending you links are also well linked, those backlinks will probably show up first. If you're listed on a directory buried deep within the site, it's going to be tough for the Moz crawler (as well as other crawlers) to find the links to your site. I've noticed links to my site in OSE come and go depending on the size of the current Mozscape index. I see many more links in Google Webmaster tools, so you're probably best served using a variety of tools to discover backlinks and focus on earning quality links.

I know I focused too much on my backlinks in OSE and my DA & PA when I first started using MOZ. My advice would be to use the information as a general barometer to measure your efforts over time. Best of luck!

Thanks for the response Travis, it's only about 35 pages so far and the content in the iFrames does update automatically each month. Right now other than page title and description the pages are basically identical to each other, so was worried about it being seen as identical content, that's why I have already no indexed them, so they shouldn't be showing up in search engines. Just want to make sure I'm using the tags right as to not do more harm than I am benefiting the site. The majority of my site is made up of Real Estate listings (I'm a REALTOR) so most of those pages don't carry much link juice I'm assuming, since they change frequently.

My focus is on maximizing my core pages so they show up on search engines so trying to exclude content that does not add value to the site (in the eyes of search engines). Maybe I'm looking into it too deep but just trying to get started on the right path since my site just launched a few months ago.

I appreciate you taking the time to comment and yes, possibly down the road if I can add enough unique content to those pages I will remove the tags, that's probably what I should do.

Maybe try linking to the linked pages from your site you're trying to get links from. I think posting them on social media like Twitter could help too to let the SERPs know they're relevant links.

Other users have experienced similar things with the most recent MozScape index since it was smaller than previous ones. There should be a new update coming in about two weeks, that will be a good opportunity to measure results and compare with previous Indexes. Since your client's sites don't have many links to begin with, even small variations in the index could cause major shifts in the site's DA. Check out this thread below for an explanation, it sounds like you're experiencing a similar situation.

http://moz.com/community/q/domain-moztrust-domain-mozrank-dropped-down-to-zero-why-also-an-important-backlink-is-gone

Thanks for posting those sites. They charge a fee but hopefully worth the money if they can help with better rankings.

Sure thing, those posts from May were probably after the last release of the index (May 5th). Hopefully you will see your site's DA return to a similar level, or even higher with the next release of the Index (scheduled June 23rd). Here are a few additional threads with more explanation. Nothing to worry about, you're not alone.

http://moz.com/community/q/what-s-the-story-on-mozscape-updates
http://moz.com/community/q/what-causes-total-external-links-to-fluctuate-so-much
http://moz.com/community/q/significant-drop-in-external-followed-links