Earlier this week we launched our brand-new link building tool, and we're happy to say that Link Explorer addresses and improves upon a lot of the big problems that have plagued our legacy link tool, Open Site Explorer. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand transparently lists out many of the biggest complaints we've heard about OSE over the years and explains the vast improvements Link Explorer provides, from DA scores updated daily to historic link data to a huge index of almost five trillion URLs.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I'm very excited to say that Moz's Open Site Explorer product, which had a lot of challenges with it, is finally being retired, and we have a new product, Link Explorer, that's taking its place. So let me walk you through why and how Moz's link data for the last few years has really kind of sucked. There's no two ways about it.
If you heard me here on Whiteboard Friday, if you watched me at conferences, if you saw me blogging, you'd probably see me saying, "Hey, I personally use Ahrefs, or I use Majestic for my link research." Moz has a lot of other good tools. The crawler is excellent. Moz Pro is good. But Open Site Explorer was really lagging, and today, that's not the case. Let me walk you through this.
The big complaints about OSE/Mozscape
1. The index was just too small
Mozscape was probably about a fifth to a tenth the size of its competitors. While it got a lot of the quality good links of the web, it just didn't get enough. As SEOs, we need to know all of the links, the good ones and the bad ones.
2. The data was just too old
So, in Mozscape, a link that you built on November 1st, you got a link added to a website, you're very proud of yourself. That's excellent. You should expect that a link tool should pick that up within maybe a couple weeks, maybe three weeks at the outside. Google is probably picking it up within just a few days, sometimes hours.
Yet, when Mozscape would crawl that, it would often be a month or more later, and by the time Mozscape processed its index, it could be another 40 days after that, meaning that you could see a 60- to 80-day delay, sometimes even longer, between when your link was built and when Mozscape actually found it. That sucks.
3. PA/DA scores took forever to update
PA/DA scores, likewise, took forever to update because of this link problem. So the index would say, oh, your DA is over here. You're at 25, and now maybe you're at 30. But in reality, you're probably far ahead of that, because you've been building a lot of links that Mozscape just hasn't picked up yet. So this is this lagging indicator. Sometimes there would be links that it just didn't even know about. So PA and DA just wouldn't be as accurate or precise as you'd want them to be.
4. Some scores were really confusing and out of date
MozRank and MozTrust relied on essentially the original Google PageRank paper from 1997, which there's no way that's what's being used today. Google certainly uses some view of link equity that's passed between links that is similar to PageRank, and I think they probably internally call that PageRank, but it looks nothing like what MozRank was called.
Likewise, MozTrust, way out of date, from a paper in I think 2002 or 2003. Much more advancements in search have happened since then.
Spam score was also out of date. It used a system that was correlated with what spam looked like three, four years ago, so much more up to date than these two, but really not nearly as sophisticated as what Google is doing today. So we needed to toss those out and find their replacements as well.
5. There was no way to see links gained and lost over time
Mozscape had no way to see gained and lost links over time, and folks thought, "Gosh, these other tools in the SEO space give me this ability to show me links that their index has discovered or links they've seen that we've lost. I really want that."
6. DA didn't correlate as well as it should have
So over time, DA became a less and less indicative measure of how well you were performing in Google's rankings. That needed to change as well. The new DA, by the way, much, much better on this front.
7. Bulk metrics checking and link reporting was too hard and manual
So folks would say, "Hey, I have this giant spreadsheet with all my link data. I want to upload that. I want you guys to crawl it. I want to go fetch all your metrics. I want to get DA scores for these hundreds or thousands of websites that I've got. How do I do that?" We didn't provide a good way for you to do that either unless you were willing to write code and loop in our API.
8. People wanted distribution of their links by DA
They wanted distributions of their links by domain authority. Show me where my links come from, yes, but also what sorts of buckets of DA do I have versus my competition? That was also missing.
So, let me show you what the new Link Explorer has.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Wow, look at that magical board change, and it only took a fraction of a second. Amazing.
What Link Explorer has done, as compared to the old Open Site Explorer, is pretty exciting. I'm actually very proud of the team. If you know me, you know I am a picky SOB. I usually don't even like most of the stuff that we put out here, but oh my god, this is quite an incredible product.
1. Link Explorer has a GIANT index
So I mentioned index size was a big problem. Link Explorer has got a giant index. Frankly, it's about 20 times larger than what Open Site Explorer had and, as you can see, very, very competitive with the other services out there. Majestic Fresh says they have about a trillion URLs from their I think it's the last 60 days. Ahrefs, about 3 trillion. Majestic's historic, which goes all time, has about 7 trillion, and Moz, just in the last 90 days, which I think is our index — maybe it's a little shorter than that, 60 days — 4.7 trillion, so almost 5 trillion URLs. Just really, really big. It covers a huge swath of the web, which is great.
2. All data updates every 24 hours
So, unlike the old index, it is very fresh. Every time it finds a new link, it updates PA scores and DA scores. The whole interface can show you all the links that it found just yesterday every morning.
3. DA and PA are tracked daily for every site
You don't have to track them yourself. You don't have to put them into your campaigns. Every time you go and visit a domain, you will see this graph showing you domain authority over time, which has been awesome.
For my new company, I've been tracking all the links that come in to SparkToro, and I can see my DA rising. It's really exciting. I put out a good blog post, I get a bunch of links, and my DA goes up the next day. How cool is that?
4. Old scores are gone, and new scores are polished and high quality
So we got rid of MozRank and MozTrust, which were very old metrics and, frankly, very few people were using them, and most folks who were using them didn't really know how to use them. PA basically takes care of both of them. It includes the weight of links that come to you and the trustworthiness. So that makes more sense as a metric.
Spam score is now on a 0 to 100% risk model instead of the old 0 to 17 flags and the flags correlate to some percentage. So 0 to 100 risk model. Spam score is basically just a machine learning built model against sites that Google penalized or banned.
So we took a huge amount of domains. We ran their names through Google. If they couldn't rank for their own name, we said they were penalized. If we did a site: the domain.com and Google had de-indexed them, we said they were banned. Then we built this risk model. So in the 90% that means 90% of sites that had these qualities were penalized or banned. 2% means only 2% did. If you have a 30% spam score, that's not too bad. If you have a 75% spam score, it's getting a little sketchy.
5. Discovered and lost links are available for every site, every day
So again, for this new startup that I'm doing, I've been watching as I get new links and I see where they come from, and then sometimes I'll reach out on Twitter and say thank you to those folks who are linking to my blog posts and stuff. But it's very, very cool to see links that I gain and links that I lose every single day. This is a feature that Ahrefs and Majestic have had for a long time, and frankly Moz was behind on this. So I'm very glad that we have it now.
6. DA is back as a high-quality leading indicator of ranking ability
So, a note that is important: everyone's DA has changed. Your DA has changed. My DA has changed. Moz's DA changed. Google's DA changed. I think it went from a 98 to a 97. My advice is take a look at yourself versus all your competitors that you're trying to rank against and use that to benchmark yourself. The old DA was an old model on old data on an old, tiny index. The new one is based on this 4.7 trillion size index. It is much bigger. It is much fresher. It is much more accurate. You can see that in the correlations.
7. Building link lists, tracking links that you want to acquire, and bulk metrics checking is now easy
Building link lists, tracking links that you want to acquire, and bulk metrics checking, which we never had before and, in fact, not a lot of the other tools have this link tracking ability, is now available through possibly my favorite feature in the tool called Link Tracking Lists. If you've used Keyword Explorer and you've set up your keywords to watch those over time and to build a keyword research set, very, very similar. If you have links you want to acquire, you add them to this list. If you have links that you want to check on, you add them to this list. It will give you all the metrics, and it will tell you: Does this link to your website that you can associate with a list, or does it not? Or does it link to some page on the domain, but maybe not exactly the page that you want? It will tell that too. Pretty cool.
8. Link distribution by DA
Finally, we do now have link distribution by DA. You can find that right on the Overview page at the bottom.
Look, I'm not saying Link Explorer is the absolute perfect, best product out there, but it's really, really damn good. I'm incredibly proud of the team. I'm very proud to have this product out there.
If you'd like, I'll be writing some more about how we went about building this product and a bunch of agency folks that we spent time with to develop this, and I would like to thank all of them of course. A huge thank you to the Moz team.
I hope you'll do me a favor. Check out Link Explorer. I think, very frankly, this team has earned 30 seconds of your time to go check it out.
All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you again for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
You know when you start to get older, and start getting excited about different things like picking out appliances or comparing strollers with your friends. It’s a weird feeling at first, but then you embrace the heck out of it? This is how I feel about this. I’ve been doing SEO for about 5 years now, and this is the most exciting thing I’ve come across since updating my dishwasher
I know exactly what you mean :-) Side note - any recommendations on great dishwashers?
Do you know "L’Increvable" (means indestructable in French) (concept of a washing machine whose lifespan is fifty years.) This low tech idea is impossible for SEO :p
You're right, everything that's happening is exciting and enjoyable. In addition, all the members of "this forum" feel part of the project.
I agree. This is a major upgrade. Basically they improved in every single aspect and came back from a very limited tool to become a top of the line one! Good job guys!
So no one said bad words about this? Let me try it:
I have to say Moz did a really really impressive step forward to catch up others here, no one can complain. But wait, no one?!
I just compared with the new index and old OSE and found an interesting reality:
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In old version: you can basically check a lot of competitors backlinks for free! Even you are out of your subscription. It's very helpful for those who have no money to pay for the fees of those paid tools.
And new Index, although its really good, but for those who have no money to start, those third-party countries, those .... they can no longer get the data which OSE can get freely, before.
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Ok, so I know some guys will say, hell, its worth, just pay! It's worth the money blah blah, well I 100% agree with this, but I still feel sorry for those starter, those poor IM.
Moz new update made those people more harder to start.
Great Improvement, I have been waiting for this update almost a year, I use Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush, and Majestic and sometimes you need to make a quick research and it is a little bit uncomfortable jump from one tool to another trying to get some useful information, the main reason to keep in Moz is the strength of the community that Ahrefs, Semrush, and Majestic does not have.
Right now with the new link explorer thing becomes equals no need to jump from Moz to Ahrefs vs Semrush at least for the basics researches
This tool is excellent, I've put it to the test and I totally agree, I notice an improvement looks great. Thank you to MOZ and the community!.
I would like to talk a little more about this Mr. Rand
Hi Rand!
Thanks for the quick run through of the new Link Explorer elements, especially excited that Moz will pick up our new links a lot quicker than before so we can streamline our processes.
Holly from Funktion.
Thanks Holly - I'm excited too. This has been a long time coming, and it's a huge relief to finally have a product I can be proud of out in the market.
I haven't used Moz tools for a while - they just didn't stack up against Ahrefs.
However - I am tempted to come back and trial it, will speak with the guys and thank them at Mozcon in a few months.
Hi Fishkin,
Much obliged for the fast gone through of the new Link Explorer components, particularly energized that Moz will get our new connections a great deal faster than before so we can streamline our procedures.
I really like your shirts.
Thank you.
Thanks for the quick run through Rand. The changes are definitely warmly welcomed. Loving the updates to DA especially. Well done Moz team
Hi Rand, nice work! It is a very intuitive tool. Graphically and visually it is spectacular
Already been playing with Link Explorer and it is really good! The team did a great job with this. Will definitely be using this more now
Hello Rand,
I checked out the tool and it is interesting, i must say. Will discuss with my team to unlock pro version :)
Hi Rand, I just signed up for the trial period to see how things have changed. I am impressed with the link explorer's link data power. However, I believe there are some questions about processing the link data. Both sites have way more ranking keywords than the ones below. While the first one only have local keyword rankings, the second one has more global keywords. xxxxxxxxxxx.com DA60, PA49, Linking Domains 8.2k, Inbound Links 104.4k, Ranking Keywords 2.3k Linking Domains by DA: DA 91-100: 76 DA 81-90: 63 DA 71-80: 97 DA 61-70: 203 DA 51-60: 335 DA 41-50: 533 DA 31-40: 1.2K xxxxxxxxxxx.com DA60, PA55, Linking Domains 8.6k, Inbound Links 117.8k, Ranking Keywords 618 Linking Domains by DA: DA 91-100: 174 DA 81-90: 172 DA 71-80: 241 DA 61-70: 373 DA 51-60: 633 DA 41-50: 1K DA 31-40: 1.6 Can you guys tell how they end up with the same DA while the latter has more powerful links from high authority domains? I believe the new link explorer focuses on the number of linking root domains. If that is the case, can we correlate the Google rankings according to the number of linking root domains rather than the quality of the backlinks from those domains? Thanks, Murat EDIT: I edited the domain names cause the system does not allow domain names I guess.
I'm about to go and try this sucka out right now, i can't wait. Looks awesome, good job Moz Team.
Wow Rand, nice work!
Main reason I abandoned Moz for Majestic was due to the very poor coverage of non-English-based backlinks (half our clients are Romanian) in OSE. Just tested Link Explorer now, I'm quite impressed! I'm getting equal or even better results in terms of Referring Domains vs Majestic's 'Fresh Index' for .ro domains :D
Two questions:
1. Will Link Explorer ever be available as a separate subscription from the other Moz tools (similar to Moz Local)? We're currently (happily) using other tools for keyword research & performance monitoring, on-page site audits and custom reporting. I'm looking for a solution dedicated solely for link research (which is why Majestic has worked well for us so far).
2. Will Link Intersect be available soon? Not that I'm complaining, my Excel alternative (https://moz.com/blog/competitive-link-analysis-lin...) is still very handy :)
Cheers!
1) No. My understanding is that Moz is committed to keeping all the tools together. Plus side, the cost of the full subscription is the same price as most of the other one-off SEO tools.
2) Yeah - I was hoping we could launch with it, but instead it should be coming in the next few months (maybe weeks if we're lucky).
Contgrats for new link explorer.
loving the in-depth stuff on this new link section, already scored a few directory listings off competitors - thanks moz!
Hi Rand,
Great work Team Moz! This new "Link Explorer" is much better than the old version, results look more promising! But has this something to do with Moz Bar in terms of performance?
Cheers
That must've taken some serious development time.
Great news for everyone in the industry, the more competition the better. I have lots of respect for Rand, and Moz but have been frustrated with the Pro sub for a few years now (and stopped using it..sorry!).
I've always said if the tools were as good as the content and community, Moz would be exceptionally hard to beat. Hopefully this will become true once again :-)
Yes, I'm 100% completely agree with you, I usually came here to MOZ, mainly for the strength of the community but for research purpose always went to Ahrefs or Semrush. So will give it a try because of Ahref and Semruhs lack of a community
Thank you. A very interesting article. I will try to implement some of your advice. The moz bar is one of the most interesting tools for seo.
Hi Rand,
Kudos for the great work. I have been using Ahrefs for a while because of the link index. But I see you guys have done a great job in terms of links.
I see that ranking keywords count is still not a match comparing to Ahrefs. Are you guys planning to do something about it?
One more thing; there is a huge drop in DA and PA for most of the sites. Will you fix that too? because spammy sites have higher DA's while quality sites have lower.
I'm not sure if that's something Moz plans to invest in, but I certainly hope so. Like you, I'd urge them to :-)
Thanks Rand, this is really something I would love to see at Moz.
Sorry, I updated my message right after your answered but I hope you answer this too :)
One more thing; there is a huge drop in DA and PA for most of the sites. Will you fix that too? because spammy sites have higher DA's while quality sites have lower.
DA and PA will continue to change and improve, but they won't get "fixed" (if by that, you mean, made artificially higher). DA and PA now are more accurate (meaning they correlate better with Google's rankings). A site's own spam score won't really affect DA/PA too much (unless it's very high). DA/PA will, however, be looking at how spammy a site's links are, which means that if a site has a lot of spam links, the DA/PA won't be counted as highly. I believe that's currently a pretty small input, but will be larger over time as DA/PA get refined.
Thanks Rand and yes, I meant that. Some people try to artificially make it higher. And it works for Google rankings too sometimes.
I also see that PA is higher than DA, which was just the opposite with OSE. Can you say that it is just because of SSL and Link Explorer hasn't picked https links instead of http yet?
Ditto on the rankings data being useful. Seeing various pages' rankings is an extremely useful data set for just about everything in SEO. It's a layer of data that you guys should absolutely look into providing.
This looks great, I'll be signing up to give it a proper test run when my current subscription ends! (Oh, and I'm very much enjoying reading your book Rand - a very interesting insight.)
Hi Rand, I've already been playing with this new tool and I it is pretty awesome. I am really happy that moz is updating the links so much faster, it is so encouraging!
Congratulations on such a great work!
Great post -- really helps with some of the background of these changes. I still have some question on Spam Score. Under the old system we were 0/17. Under the new system we have shot up to 32%. What is the rough contribution to the new Moz Spam Score from poor backlink quality vs. the contribution from on-site factors (words per title tag, words per page, anchor tag density, etc.) ? Hard to tell whether my first order of business should be disavowing links or something else...
Re: Spam Score - The new spam score uses a whole new algorithm and different inputs to calculate spam risk. I'd still note that 32% means that fewer than 2/3rds of websites we saw with your site's characteristics were penalized or banned by Google. And secondly, if you know your site isn't spam, I'd urge you not to worry about your own spam score -- it's most helpful to look at the spam scores of sites linking to you! That's where the real value in that data is.
Re: Disavowing links - sadly, Moz won't know if you have or if you do disavow links, so if you think most of your spam issues are just from links pointing to you and you've already taken care of those, great. We won't be able to see that because we can't access your GSC data (and they don't make that available in the API even if we could), but it doesn't matter much because Moz's spam score won't affect how you're ranked in Google -- only Google's interpretation of your site will!
Thanks for the quick informative answer Rand - Gave me exactly what I needed to know !
Oh - and MOZ, consider allowing users to self-report that links have been disavowed so a more accurate spam score can be calculated.
Interesting but what i saw even before update was it shown all the strong links. Thank you for all the stuff Rand.
Hi Rand,
The new Link Explorer is friggin' ace :-)
Q. When using the Link Tracking Lists, and I populate the list with target URLs, does Moz send out a crawler to those pages immediately to see if the pages link back or does it happen on a cycle?
For example, I have just started experimenting with it after watch this Whiteboard Friday and put in 2 target URLS I know already link back to my website, expecting to get the immediate gratification of a job well done - yet I have the red circles.
Not immediately, but within ~24 hours (which is pretty fast) :-)
Actually, I just conferred with the team, and 24-hour updates for link lists aren't in place yet. However, this is actively in development and should be available very soon.
Great tool, I already checked it and I have to agree, it looks and feels so much better. Well done Moz!
I really like your shirts Rand :)
Thanks! That's one of my favorites :-)
Is this data going to integrate into the Moz Bar or is it still based on the older open site explorer?
Yes - the new data from Link Explorer is now in the Mozbar. Only OSE itself (which will be sunsetting soon) has the old data.
Hi Rand,
I've noticed that a site I put through ranks #1 in Google (UK) for a particular keyword and gets roughly 1.5k - 2.5k visits to that one page every month, yet the new Open Site Explorer says they're #5 and the monthly volume is 201 - 500 (I'm assuming this is total user searches and not estimated visits?). That's a large disparity in data. Is it still early days?
Sounds like you're using Keyword Explorer's keywords by site feature? My best guess is your page gets traffic for a lot of different keywords (not just one) and KWE isn't going to get them all. The estimates are for the KWs it does know about, not all the keywords that can send traffic. Hope that helps!
Kudos to Moz for it's new tool. Thank you to Rand for the explanation in this WBF.
PS (Rand) Nice Shirt
Thanks! I got the shirt in London a few years ago, and now I wear it regularly on stage when I speak :-)
When you left Moz, you mentioned that you are still working with one Moz team on the product you are excited about. Taking into account your excitement on this video, I guess Link Explorer is that product.
And I see why. Huge improvements and corrections have been made.
Problems who needed 40-60 days to be solved earlier, now are done in 24 hours. Huge link index, building link lists, tracking links, bulk metrics checking, link distribution by DA and so on. Impressing job.
DA changed. In fact, for all sites I knew DA, now it have lower value. You mentioned that, even Google now have lower DA, so no worries.
Then, flag system for spam score. It had score 0-17 flags, where 14 was 100% (a theoretical maximum). So it had 3 flags greater than maximum. Yes, you had an explanation for that, but regardless of the explanation—it was weird and confusing. New percentage system is much better. No confusion, easy to comprehend instantly (and maximum spam score is 100% (kinda logical)).
MozRank used 1997 Stanford PageRank algorithm? You were among firsts SEO's claiming the original algorithm no longer represent the algorithm Google is actually using for calculating PR few years ago. And among firsts SEO toolbars who removed PR was MozBar. And yet, MozRank relied on it until now?
Hi Rand,
The new link explorer is great. And I like the feature that compares with competitor sites by showing their scores for easy understanding. Is there any update to the API for DA/PA which is associated with the new link explorer?
Thank you.
Yup! The API now has data that comes from the link index powering Link Explorer, so you'll see the same PA/DA numbers in there that you see in here.
Great News Rand! That shirt is just effing terrible, however. Just want you to know. Even though OSE was not the greatest, I still used it a lot. Looking forward to this new tool. I already love it! Thanks!
Huh. I think it's one of the best shirts I own :-) Glad to hear the tool is working well for you!
Can I put a question out there - why does Moz's DA score seem to rely so heavily on the AMOUNT of links rather than the QUALITY of the links? Is that honestly how Google ranks sites?
I'm seeing this very very clearly when comparing link quality among my competitors - the competitor that clearly has the absolute majority of spammy, low-quality links, is soaring high since it has the most overall link count, while the domain with a majority of high-quality links is scoring a lot lower. This has been true in the past, too - as I've watched the DAs of my competitors over the last 2-3 years, the rankings were always directly correlating to the amount of links each competitor had recently acquired, with zero consideration of how spammy those links were. (I have the data charted to back me up on this.)
If Google truly measures links on a logarithmic scale, the numbers on Link Explorer are very much off. And if it only goes by numbers, why on earth do we even bother with white-hat SEO if black-hat SEO works so well?
Any input would be appreciated!
Hey,
That is a great question. DA is trained against SERPs, meaning we take our metrics and measurements and use a machine learned algorithm to determine what factors predict rankings the most and generate a formula for turning those metrics into DA. Unfortunately, a score like DA can only be as good as the metrics used to generate it. We had metrics like MozTrust but they didn't seem to catch add any predictive power to DA.
All of that being said, I am excited to say that we are working on a new model for DA right now that will be far superior than any we have introduced in the past. We just have bigger and better data to work with than ever before. We are still in Beta with Link Explorer and likely won't come out of Beta until we have released this improved DA. I am confident you will be happier with this score than those in past.
Thanks Moz for it! This is the big evolution in SEO industry now days. Even Moz have been grab traffic from Google keyword planner by launching keyword explorer with Link explorer.
Good download on the old vs. new state of affairs. Test driving it now. Question - is the Moz Chrome Extension scheduled to follow suit and discontinue use of MozRank and MozTrust in favor of new PA/DA metrics instead?
I believe that's the plan, yes! Should be coming pretty soon.
Will there be any chance of introducing a paid service for those starting out and with very, very small businesses that require more than ten but fewer than 5,000 searches a month? I simply cannot justify paying $99 a month and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Another price band for say, even 500 searches a month, would be great and popular also.
Good job Rand. Loving the updates to DA especially.
I really, really, really like MOZ and actively use the data for 4-12 new projects every month. In these projects we research 5-10 companies at a time and use MOZ to try to understand the on-site, structural issues each site has. This has been me using MOZ in a very on-site centric way vs. multiple sites.
This last update has, IMO, shifted the focus of the MOZ platform from an on-site centric tool to one that looks off-site to provide value in the data. In an ideal scenario, I would have loved to see Link Explorer added to the reporting tools but I was not pleased to see that OSE and the on-site SPAM Signals were both deprecated. Now we have a list of SPAM signals that was grown by 10, but no way to see which of the 27 signals were detected - maybe an oversight (please fix it!!!).
Lastly, these recent changes are great, if you're using MOZ for a single company but some of us (*raises hand*) use it more for client work that involves looking at mostly other sites - the changes moves vital capabilities to the back of the bus, or even out the back Emergency door, in favor of data that points mostly to the bus itself... not happy with the changes yet.
Hi Steven - this was actually a very intentional move, because those spam signals SHOULD NOT be used for analyzing your own domain (or your clients). They're helpful to see if links that point to you might be coming from spammy/sketchy sites, but worrying about any of the individual factors as it pertains to your own domain (or a client's) is folly. These aren't things Google uses in their spam detection (at least, not necessarily, even if some might be); they're merely features that *correlate* with sites Google has penalized and banned.
You'll know if your site or your client's site is doing sketchy things that violate Google's guidelines, and Moz's spam score is great for sorting potentially spammy links that point to you. But I strongly, strongly recommend (and noted in the video here and in others that cover spam score) that you don't use it for on-site analysis. There's much better tools for that in Moz Pro (the site crawl, keyword analysis, etc). Hope that helps!
Hey Steven,
I think Rand answered the Spam Score question perfectly, but I wanted to follow up on your last point. Could you give some further details about what vital capabilities you feel are missing, or moved back?
Is it only me who thinks:
1. Yes, it's a much better tool than before.
2. No, it's not better than competitors like Ahrefs
I have tested a few domains and Ahrefs shows a much more accurate result. More exact amount of linking root domains etc. Also I mainly work in the Swedish market and Ahrefs can show data for that (SERP positions) while Moz can't.
My honest thoughts after trying it out with a few domain names.
I started working on my link building two months ago, When I compared Moz with other tools I decided to sign up with a competitor. I'll keep tracking those new features, if they really deliver what is in this post, I might very gladly change my signature and use Moz!
Hello Rand,
Thank you for sharing such wonderful contents time and again. Yes, love the new Moz Link Explorer, one great application and awesome in every aspect of link analysis. This time Moz nailed it to bring the best out of the lot as compared to other link analysis tools available in the market. My website received a better domain authority score with a terrific amount of linking domain which I was unable to find using Google Webmasters Tools. Love the daily backlink analysis as well.
Thank you again and expecting another wonderful post in days to come.
I use Moz bar since years ago. Yes, the Moz result in current Moz bar is automatically updated to new Link Explorer, not to old OSE.
Nice Tool Rand. Great experience. Top Ranking Keywords this looks little similar to SEMRush's Top Ranking Keywords. But i like the new interface, Its detailed site metrics with more analytic options.
This is so cool!! Congratulations on the great job ;)
Amazing Post Rand! Thanks a lot :D
Really link explorer is excellent tool. Thanks Rand for your information.
Hi, Rand.
Great improvement I am hallucinating with the speed at which the application works. It is amazingly fast!
I love the new Link Explorer. Congratulations :)
Kind Regards
Always good to see Rand in whiteboard friday!
Hi, I have question, I totally confused about My DA/ PA MozBar is showing: 19/19 and open site explorer is showing: DA - 28 PA: 39 which is correct can you help me : My website is deepfocus.in
I love it! I am happy that Moz is a leader again!
So awesome, i've been exploring the new Link Explorer this afternoon and am very impressed. I am actually showing it pull in more data than Ahrefs, which I was shocked on. Well done Moz! This is probably the best tool improvement in the SEO business this year by far.
Hi Rand,
Can you check internal links with link explorer as well?
Thank you
Hi Rand, Thanks for this amazing tool. I bet this will be the one-stop solution for all SEO experts out there for backlink monitoring and other competitive analysis. I shared the new tool within an SEO group and everyone says 'WOW' this is really a good tool.
I am little bit confused after trying the new tool and comparing my data with OSE. I checked the tool with some of my sites.
For Edufar the data seems to be same on both OSE & Link Explorer. But for Techlog, the DA seems to be 24 on OSE & 33 on Link Explorer. Hope your team will fix if this is an error.
Once again, hat off to your development and UI team for creating this great tool
Hai Rand,
I checked for the beta version of Link explorer...Can you please tel me how it is unique with its features