Opensite explorer issues still there
-
Hi
I asked a question a few weeks ago regarding the linkings being shown in opensite explorer showing crazy stuff like psds and odd file formats as being the source of the links.
I was told it was being repaired , the results were almost useless and I stopped using , I have just logged back in to check again and see even more random odd results with sites that would have no reason to link to us.
Is this tool ever going to be repaired ?
Is there a ETA for the fix ?
How come you are launching new tools when the existing ones dont work ?
Kind Regards
-
Hey LL - totally hear you on both fronts. With Linkscape, Ryan's precisely right. We went crawling deeper on large sites, and, as I noted in the blog posts around this issue, encountered these binary files. We attempted a fix for the past index using a blacklist of file types. It only caught about 40% of them. We were hoping that would be closer to 90%.
We've got two new indices running. One that launches mid-November that will have more of these files removed but not all, and another in December when we think we'll have them all cleaned out.
In terms of Google's search query data in Keyword Difficulty, that does suck. Google turned off our API access and we've been going back and forth with them to try to turn it on. We, along with a few hundred other tools, got shut off all together and trying to get back in has been a long, painful process. However, the tool does not rely on this data to get accurate reports (difficulty doesn't care how many times something's searched, just how competitive the top results are, which is what we look at). Thus, the tool's still fully operational, and you can still grab the KW data from Google's AdWords tool or your own API access (not as convenient, I agree).
TL;DR - We're fixing the OSE binary files issue by December (maybe sooner) and working with Google to try to get the Adwords API data back in KW Diff (but no guarantees).
Hope that helps and a million thanks to Ryan for jumping in and helping out on this. He's not an official rep or a Moz employee, but seriously appreciate him going above and beyond.
-
I'm so sorry about the frustration you're having. It's not quite 5:00 in the morning Seattle time, so it may be a few more hours before you can get a more complete response. I couldn't sleep and happened to be checking email and saw these replies. What I can offer you right now is Rand's post about this latest update at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/november-2011-linkscape-update. He says the following about the binary file issue:
As I noted in the September index update, we have had some serious issues when crawling deeper on large domains and encountering binary files that contain code our crawler recognizes and treats as a link. To help stop this problem, we applied a black list to this index to stop a large number of the files folks had reported to us (our estimate is that ~40% of binary files are now removed). However, we know there's still more than a few of these in the database of links so we'll continue cranking away on solutions to remove them all. Our hope is to have them reduced in the next index (November) and nearly eliminated by the December index. If you're ever curious about the next/previous updates, you can always see data for them on our Linkscape calendar.
-
The next OSE update is scheduled for Nov 15th, but the crawl is already a week in. The issue will likely be resolved, but the question is whether you reported it in time to be fixed for the Nov 15th update, or whether it will be in the December update.
Good luck.
-
Let's be clear on a couple things here. YOU came to the COMMUNITY Q&A and asked a question. I am a member of the community. I pay for the SEOmoz tools and service just like you. I am donating my time in an effort to help a fellow community member (you) with a problem they are facing. I am doing so without receiving any benefit other then possibly your appreciation. Your swearing and anger are completely misdirected. Lashing out at the people who are trying to help you, and getting upset at "the messenger" who is sharing accurate information wont help you either.
SEOmoz policies are clear. If you are experiencing an issue with a tool, contact the help desk! [email protected]. The Q&A is for general SEO questions, not for reporting bugs.
Your McDonald's analogy is horrible with no realistic comparison here. SEOmoz offers dozens of tools, blog, Q&A and more. You are mentioning a single bug which, while annoying, does not prevent you from compiling accurate data which is very informative and actionable. The tools are under constant development WHICH IS A GOOD THING! Trying to offer the latest and greatest has risks, and bugs are one of them.
Majestic SEO offers some nice tools. The overall feedback I have heard regarding comparisons between the two tools specific to backlinks is "OSE is better hands down". Opinions vary, and you are welcome to go try competing tools if you have the belief they are better or would otherwise solve your problems.
-
Tried option 1 holding breath
-
-
OK I just ran a check on site and the same crap I reported over 2 months ago i coming up
欢迎光临UPS www.ups.com/asia/cn/chsindex.html/route/board.php?bo_table=pds..
From the linking root domains page I get all these false results
| *.swsoft.com/ | 90 | 18,408 |
| *.ups.com/ | 90 | 39,423 |
| *.fcc.gov/ | 86 | 24,978 |
| *.spaceweather.com/| | |
| | || 80 | 8,182 |
| *.hostmonster.com/ | 75 | 44,325 |
| *.ndrc.gov.cn/ | 73 | 5,173 |
| *.bsplayer.org/ | 71 | 1,535 |
| *.rosettastone.com/ | 71 | 2,240 |
| *.iiasa.ac.at/ | 63 | 1,711 |
| *.echo-online.de/ | 61 | 3,020 |
| *.interwoven.com/ | 60 | 994 |
| *.hostingzoom.com/ | 47 | 398 |
| *.policyinnovations.org/ | 47 | 683 |
| *.gamania.co.jp/ | 46 | 771 |
| *.meijo-u.ac.jp/ | 45 | 733 |
| *.eon-mitte.com/ | 43 | 207 |
| *.circlecube.com/ | 42 | 175 |Add to this that the keyword research tool now gives no indication as to the search volume , google search data removed and this is now less of a service than was originally signed up for.
I wasnt aware that the service cost has gone down. If I go into a Mcdonalds and ask / pay for Big Mac and fries, I want big mac and fries not some crap lame excuse that the fry maker is down so I just get a big mac. I think sucking up and oh well blah blah blah blah excuses dont help myself or you anyone else. A definite fix date would be nice. If / when tools go down on our site we do NOT CHARGE CLIENTS for that month. I know of 2 other Moz users who have cancelled and gone to Majestic , I am wanting to stay with Moz but when I cannot trust the results I am seeing what choice do I have ?
PS It is a buyers RIGHT to be pissed off when said function /services dont work as promised, so please no more BULLSHIT arse licking replies.
-
In my experience you have two options:
1. Share specific examples of the issues you are facing by e-mailing [email protected]. If you do such the issues will be resolved in 1-2 crawl cycles, depending on where the current crawl is at when the issue is reported.
2. Do nothing which means you are relying on others to submit an example of an issue and hoping the fix for their issue resolves yours. Option 1 is highly recommended.
At this point you can correct me and add option 3 which is to use another tool. That is always your right but many SEOs feel OSE is an invaluable tool which they cannot work without.
-
Hmm I having to contain myself here
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for jumping in here with a quick and helpful response.
We do expect to see an improvement (though not a complete solution) with the release of this month's index. We use our own tools, so we encounter these problems as well, and understand your frustration. We are working as fast as we can to get this issue resolved, and do thank you for your patience.
-
The OSE results are based upon the Linkscape crawl of the web. They are updated about once a month.
The last update was Sept 13th. The next update is Oct 18th. The update schedule can be seen here: http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/w/page/25141119/Linkscape%20Schedule
We all want the tool to work better. The tool worked great for a long time, but it only captures a limited portion of the internet. Requests were made to adjust the crawl to go deeper. When the changes were made, the issues you refer to appeared. The problem is when the issue was discovered, the next crawl was already in progress.
The bottom line is with a 4-5 week period between updates, it will take a lot longer to resolve any issues then any of us will be happy with. We all hate this problem but even with it, OSE is still an outstanding tool.
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
-
Solving URL Too Long Issues
Moz.com is reporting that many URL's are to long, these particularly affect Product URL's where the URL is typically https://www.domainname.com/collections/category-name/products/product-name, (You guessed it we're using Shopify). However, we use Canonicals that ignore all most of the URL and are just structured https://www.domainname.com/product-name, so Google should be reading the Canonical and not the long-winded version. However, Moz cannot seem to spot this... does anyone else have this problem and how to solve so that we can satisfy the Moz.com crawl engine?
Moz Pro | | Tildenet0 -
Complex Rankings Issue For A Law Firm Site
Be warned, this is a complex issue that I have and will require someone who has some advanced knowledge about 301s and link penalty’s. I have a law firm client whose site is having some issues. There are some very complex details here so I'm going to articulate them in bullet points in hopes of making the issues easy to understand. So here's my root problem: We have poor organic rankings (4th, 5th, 6th page for most terms) despite Domain Authority of 32 (avg. 1st page competitor is 28) and some very strong white hat link building the last 60 days or so. How's their backlink profile look, you ask? When you look at their backlink profile in OSE, their spam score is a 1/17 (not sure if that's credible in any way). Lot's of links that score 5's on the spam score make up about 10% of their OSE links. Here’s where it gets tricky; those links are not directed the client's New URL, they are links that go to some old URLs the client used to have, for which they had an SEO guy who built all those crappy links. Those URLs with the crappy links (we'll call them The Crappy URLs) were 301'd (can we all agree 301'd is a verb?) to the NEW URL for just a couple of months. Shortly after that, NEW URL dropped almost completely out of Google, so the client turned off the 301s. So despite those 301s being turned off, OSE still shows all the links going to The Crappy URLs but is giving The New URL credit for them. Keep in mind, the 301s were turned off about 6 months ago so it’s a little strange that OSE still shows those 301s. This has led me to the conclusion that the Domain Authority that OSE shows of 32, is not a “real” number since it is seemingly based off links inherited from 301s that no longer exist. So now I’m trying to create an action plan for this client that will hopefully help us start to make some real progress in our rankings. This client does not have the budget to wait another 6 months for some sign of hope so time is of the essence. Here’s my theoretical action plans I’m choosing from and would like the communities input on which, if any, they feel is best (Also, if I’m missing something or you have an idea, I’m all ears): **Potential Action Plans: ** Do nothing, keep building quality links, creating quality content, monitor crawl reports/gwt for issues. That strategy is going to win long term. #1 + Create one page sites on The Crappy URLs, setup GWT for them, submit sitemaps thus forcing Google, OSE and other web crawlers to index them, thus removing any potential residual penalties from the 301s. NOTE: Currently The Crappy URLS are just landing on GoDaddy’s default landing page which is of course not being indexed by Google or OSE. #2 + Disavow all the bad links going to The Crappy URLS. Then once the bad links no longer appear in the OSE profile for each of The Crappy Sites, 301 them again, thus inheriting the good links but not the bad. #1 + 301 the Crappy URLS back to the New URL, while also disavow any links going to The Crappy URLs. The logic here is that if the road back to recovery is going to be a few months away no matter what, when the 301 knocked them back 6 months ago no reputable link building was being done. I am cautiously optimistic the linkbuilding we are doing will eventually off set any penalty’s coming from the 301s. Plus now we’ll know the 32 Domain Authority OSE is giving us is real. This is the one I’m leaning towards quite frankly because I think it will reduce the recovery time and we’ll know somewhat quickly (30-60 days) if it’s actually working. 1-3 could each take 90 days before we know if it’s working. So please, if you have any expertise with any of this, your help or advice would be appreciated. I’d rather not share The New URL for obvious reasons but if you must know, simply message me and as long as you’re legit, I’ll share it with you.
Moz Pro | | BrianJGomez0 -
Moz crawl duplicate pages issues
Hi According to the moz crawl on my website I have in the region of 800 pages which are considered internal duplicates. I'm a little puzzled by this, even more so as some of the pages it lists as being duplicate of another are not. For example, the moz crawler considers page B to be a duplicate of page A in the urls below: Not sure on the live link policy so ive put a space in the urls to 'unlive' them. Page A http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/jeans/straight-jeans.html?manufacturer=3751 Page B http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/catalog/category/view/s/accessories/id/92/?cat=97&manufacturer=3603 One is a filter page for Curvety Jeans and the other a filter page for Charles Clinkard Accessories. The page titles are different, the page content is different so Ive no idea why these would be considered duplicate. Thin maybe, but not duplicate. Like wise, pages B and C are considered a duplicate of page A in the following Page A http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/bags.html?dir=desc&manufacturer=4050&order=price Page B http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/catalog/category/view/s/purses/id/98/?manufacturer=4001 Page C http:// nuchic.co.uk/index.php/coats/waistcoats.html?manufacturer=4053 Again, these are product filter pages which the crawler would have found using the site filtering system, but, again, I cannot find what makes pages B and C a duplicate of A. Page A is a filtered result for Great Plains Bags (filtered from the general bags collection). Page B is the filtered results for Chic Look Purses from the Purses section and Page C is the filtered results for Apricot Waistcoats from the Waistcoat section. I'm keen to fix the duplicate content errors on the site before it goes properly live at the end of this month - that's why anyone kind enough to check the links will see a few design issues with the site - however in order to fix the problem I first need to work out what it is and I can't in this case. Can anyone else see how these pages could be considered a duplicate of each other please? Checking ive not gone mad!! Thanks, Carl
Moz Pro | | daedriccarl0 -
Backlink profile from Open Site Explorer does not seem to update
I have been monitoring our backlink profile on Open Site for over a year now and despite getting a number of new domains linking to us they are not reflected in the tool. Our URL is: www.BlueLinkERP.com Any thoughts on why this might be the case? The number of linking domains also seems very low compared with other tools we use (i.e. HubSpot)
Moz Pro | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Does Open Site Explorer purposefully not crawl some sites?
I use both SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer and Web Master Tools to find backlinks when conducting link audits. WMT always finds more links than OSE; I understand Google's database is bigger. But what is interesting to me is that it seems that a large percentage of the links WMT finds that OSE does not are real crappy links that I don't want. That makes me wonder if SEOmoz decides not to crawl certain, low quality, sites? Just curious.
Moz Pro | | ILM_Marketing0 -
Solution to "Exact Match Domain" issue?
My website bayjobs.com has done well for years, then virtually disappeared from google on September 28, which is the day of the emd (exact match domain) penalty. Meanwhile, similar sites like bajobs.com and bayareajobfinder.com have fared just fine for keywords "bay area jobs". I was previously around #5 for those keywords, but now not even in top 200. Does anyone have any solution for this? Thanks for any insight!
Moz Pro | | UhOh0 -
Inbound Link Discrepancy: Campaign vs Open Site Explorer
Hello, I am getting starkly different inbound link amounts from Open Site Explorer and my Campaigns tab. Domain 1
Moz Pro | | truckguy77
Campaigns: Total links = 10,895,942 Open Site Explorer - Links = 224,000 Domain 2
Campaigns: Total links = 25,670,287
Open Site Explorer - Links = 157,000 Why would these be so different? For reference, the "Historical Domain Analysis" shows these sites getting exponentially more links starting in February. This is of concern to me. I didn't do anything different in February to get so many more links (especially not in the millions). If anything, I am hoping the "Campaigns" section is simply wrong about this.0 -
Trying to boost Backlinks but OSE still shows same figures for past month
I often check Open site explorer to see if I increased in linking root domains to my site after getting some backlinks on it. I have a concern about the number it is displaying: How does this statistic get updated? If I spread backlinks on some sites do i have to do anything else like ping it so google can crawl it so OSE sees it and counts it towards my linking root domain statistic? Is this current figure OSE is reading from cache and giving me an outdated number? NNzAn.jpg
Moz Pro | | lafurniturestore0