Huge Drop in External Links
-
Hello, My total external links dropped from 900 to zero on a site that I've had running for about 10 years. What could possibly cause this? Thanks, Joe
-
Exactly.
-
Hi Joe!
To reiterate what the other folks on this thread are saying, it's very, very likely that the drop to 1 is because we didn't end up indexing your site or the sites linking to it in the last index update (which isn't the same as a bug, for what it's worth, though if your data isn't there I realize the distinction is academic). This index was rather smaller than the previous one, with 161 billion URLs after the previous update's 193 billion. You can get all the details here.
I'm extra-inclined to believe this is the case because 1) the site's previous DA was 14, which is low enough to imply that linking domains are also of generally low DA and less likely to be crawled, and 2) DA/PA of 1 almost always means we simply don't have information on the URL.
We're always working to grow the index, and I'd say there's a very good chance the site will be back in the next one.
Rand has written about the affects of index changes on link metrics here.
-
GR,
Absolutely, there are no guarantees. That's why i measure head to head with our direct competitors.
Bottom Line: somebody's going to get the opportunity, and they probably rank in the top 10, I believe monitoring and adjusting will give us the best chance at that opportunity.
TY,
KJr -
Kevin,
You should know that measuring the PA/DA is not guarantee for better positions. You shold alway check other factors besides PA/DA and links.
PA/DA movements may be due to a lot of reasons. Here the official explanation and a question answered by Rand Fishkin.
Mozscape Link index update - Moz Domain authority get down significantly. Internal MOZ Issue? Google Algoritm Update?Regarding the updates, you can check them out here: Mozscape API Update
Best of luck.
GR. -
Joe, Gaston & Donna,
I track 11 competitors w/ a spreadsheet after every DA release, 8 lost a major amount of links, one lost 1,712,850 while we dropped 77,480. Last year I disavowed monthly for 6 months, now just quarterly, so I know it was not on my end. I also noticed a much higher rise in DA w/ this release than any other this year, we went up 3 (which is great) while a major competitor improved 7.
Gaston, if this is a minor bug as you indicated, do you foresee another DA release sooner than scheduled, or possibly an announcement from Moz?
KJr
-
No, none of those Gaston. Thanks for the information!
-
Hi Donna,
I see it in MOZ / Competitive Link Metrics.
My link data is fairly consistent over the years and then a huge drop off in the past 2 weeks from 900 to zero!
Thanks,
Joe -
Of course its related to the same bug.
just to clarify, you didn't change or redirect the main domain? Https, www to non-www, re-brand or checked a different URL?
-
Wow! That's great news Gaston!
My Domain Authority went from 14 down to 1. Can you tell me if that is bug related as well?
-
Hi Joe,
Not sure how you detected this problem. Was it on Moz Open Site Explorer? If that's the case, then Gaston has provided an answer. Especially if those 900 links were coming from very few sources, it's credible that Moz may not have picked them up in the last build of its backlink index.
If you detected it using another tool, or even with Moz, I'd use a few other sources to confirm whether you have a problem or not. Take a look at Search Console, MajesticSEO, and/or aHrefs. They will show you how many links you have. The last two will show you patterns of acquisition and loss. Most sites gain and lose links over time. You'd want to look for an abrupt change in pattern.
If that doesn't answer your question, let us know and we can pursue other possibilities.
-
Hi Joe,
It's know that from update to update the Backlink count may vary that much. It doesnt mean that all your external links have desapeared.. It's just a minor bug at mozscape.
Don't worry.
Best Luck.
GR.
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
-
Multilingual Sitewide Links
Multilingual links in the footer section is being counted as backlink and we are getting tons of backlinks from all the 7 lingual websites. Is there a solution where we eliminate these links and still having the option to navigate to other lingual pages? vr24NAv
Technical SEO | | comfortclick0 -
Confused on footer links (Which are best practices for footer links on other websites?)
Hello folks, We are eCommerce web design and Development Company and we give do follow links of our website to every projects which we have done with specific keywords. So now the concern is we are seeing huge amount of back-links are being generated from single root domain for particular keyword in webmaster tools. So what should be the best way to practice this? Should we give no follow attribute to it or can use our company logo with link? LtMjHER.png
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Internal Links
In OSE, it is reporting that i don't have any internal links to my homepage. In the header on every page is my logo in the top left hand corner which links back to my homepage. Shouldn't this mean then that every page should link to the home page? Similarly, internal pages which link from my main nav aren't showing up as having any internal links in OSE. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Too Many Internal Links?
Hi Guys, I'm completing a overhawl of our website at the moment have a certain penguin killed our site for our main keyword. I'm currently working on our internal linking as most of our blog posts have a link back to our home page with the main money keyword. At present we have 3,331 internal links and our site has only 1,000 pages. Can you get penalised for having too many internal links with exact match anchors. Thanks, Scott
Technical SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Too many external links?
Ok, so I am finally focusing more on SEO of my hobby website as I am notice the relavent keywords are not really onsite what I want, for example, according to analytics "post" is my most popular keyword which I assume is from the vbulletin forum. My question today is that according to the moz scan, my forum has too many external links, my question is what are some measures I can do whether within the vbulletin forum or custom coding to reduce the amount of links/increase power? www.rcnightmare.com
Technical SEO | | TheTippingPoint0 -
What should i do with the links for "Login", "Register", "My Trolley" links on every page.
My website ommrudraksha has 3 links on every page. 1. Login 2. Register 3. My trolley My doubt is i do not want to give any weightage to these links. does these links will be calculated when page links are calculated ? Should i remove these as links and place these as buttons ? ( with look a like of link visually ? )
Technical SEO | | Ommrudraksha0 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | | Aspedia0