This week we've got a special Whiteboard Friday double feature! As you've probably heard, we launched our new link checker and backlink analysis tool, Open Site Explorer, this week and it makes use of some exciting new metrics: Domain Authority and Page Authority. We asked our old chum, Will Critchlow, to talk to Rand about these metrics to help everyone understand what they are, what goes into them, how to use them, and why we created them.
In Part One, Will and Rand discuss how to use these metrics to gain insight and intelligence on your (and your competitors') pages, domains, and link profiles, as well as why these metrics can be a better predictor of ranking success than others that you may have used in the past.
In Part Two, the guys dive into detail about what exactly goes into Domain Authority & Page Authority: how they were modeled, how they compare to actual search results, why your DA & PA scores may change over time, and lots of other details to help you better understand how these metrics work.
Part I
Part II
These new metrics have already been quite popular among users of Open Site Explorer, and one of the big questions is, "When can I get them in the SEOmoz Firefox Toolbar?!" Well, surprise, surprise, we're on top of it! They'll be available in the new toolbar update coming out next month...here's a sneak peek :)
New scores, new features and much more are on their way in the February version of the mozbar
If you've got questions about Domain or Page Authority, please leave us feedback below. We're trying to make these metrics as useful and valuable as possible and would love your suggestions.
Also - well done to Will for getting "poppycock" on video number 2.
How many of our transatlantic cousins wondered what the heck that was!
;-)
Open Site Explorer is excellent, I have used it to compare our site against some competitors!
Great WBF Rand and Will. 27 minutes well spent. I'm looking forward to seeing the new metrics in the MozBar.
The metrics are of use to all seo's
- and are a superb way to present quick, accurate data to both clients and bosses' (for those "internals" amongst us!)
- but Ive noticed a few bits of what I suspect are data discrepancy, or at least some results that just "dont make sense" given serps, IBL's and dMR.
Who do I contact to discuss?
Also: looking forward to seeing these in the mozBar
We'd love to get that feedback - you can send it through the OSE feedback link here.
Can you speak in more detail about the specific metrics that are being used to calculate the domain/page authority?
You talked briefly about this in video 2, and it makes sense that you're using already existing metrics like mozRank, mozTrust, number of links and number of linking domains. But what are the other metrics you use (those "dozens or hundreds" of link metrics)?
Great tool SEOmozzers - looking forward to this getting more and more accurate!
Just a start, but things like:
I suspect there's a lot more in our formulas at this point, but you can basically think of it as us using every metric we can calculate and every metric that can be calculated off the relationship between 2, 3, 4+ metrics.As we noted in the video, the algorithms themselves are pretty hard to look at and find value from, but the concept behind it - that by mashing up metrics in ways that correlate with search rankings using machine learning you can get high value data - is what's important.Hope that helps!
I think you might be putting too much stock into raw number of links. For example, my own site has over 13,000 links, but they only come from only 138 root domains. A single site is providing more than 12,000 of those links because of a footer link I have there.
When I compare my site with a competitor that outrank me, it's clear that number of linking root domains is the reason they outrank me. They have 213 linking root domains compared to my 138.
When comparing homepages, my page scores a PA of 83, and they score a 69. In this case, I would think their PA should be higher, based on the weakness of my link profile. Perhaps if you could identify and filter out footer links (as I assume Google does) it can help you get a bit closer to perfect.
Yer but people say footer & sitewide are generally discounted, I believe this is untrue. Big sitewide links work, even in the footer.
Interesting. I have always thought that the first few count, but after that, Google's algorithm is like "ok ok, we get it" and stops counting the rest.
Do you have any case studies that show the value of sitewide links (even footer links), or is it just a hunch?
Yeah, I agree. By the end of the video, I still found myself wondering what metrics were actually being used to calculate your new domain/page authority numbers.
I am glad to see it's amazingly comprehensive. Not, just some generic attempt to rework mozRank.
It would be cool, however, to actually see the algorithm (crosses-fingers). :P
Well... I can see if we can produce something for the future post on the subject (probably mid-February as Ben needs to finish some other items first). The algorithms themselves make almost no sense to look at, but maybe we can do something that's at least somewhat user-friendly while still being transparent.
Thank you for talking about this! I had pulled up your Domain Authority video from last Spring just yesterday trying to get some more information on what it all entailed. From THAT video and other research, I gathered that it has a lot to do with link diversity, who you link to and so on, which I didn't hear a lot about in these videos today. Do those ideas still hold true?
Let's say I have a client with a well-established site - PR 2, 400+ inbound links with good, topical and varied anchor text, and a clean structure - and yet the Domain Authority is 0 and he doesn't rank well for his primary keywords. First, what should immediately come to mind as a potential problem, and second, how does one build DA?
I should add that this is a fairly small business and small site that's only expected to rank on a local level, not a huge national mega corp.
Hi Rebecca - great question, and definitely could be a source of confusion. In the SEO world for a long time, we've talked broadly about a concept of "domain authority." Now with Linkscape and the ranking models work, we're trying to build a quantative system for measuring that idea. The number of metrics and derivatives of those metrics that go into it and the complex computations coming out are challenging to explain (hence 20 minutes of video).
In terms of the specific case with newer domains with a few links getting a "0" in our scoring, I think that might actually be something we're a bit buggy with and will be working to improve. Obviously, those sites/pages can still rank for something, but if our training set includes none of those, it's going to look to us like those domains have no ability to rank whatsoever. Broader training sets with more long tail queries might help here.
Great to go back, check and review the original vids for Open Site Explorer.
These two definitely work well together. And its good to run back over just how important DA and PA are in evaluation sites. Thanks
Doesn't Will Critchlow slightly remind you of Hugh Laurie from House? Just add a few more years.
Panic sets in - running out of time - Can you please open the full up for 2 more hours?
(Can't hurt to ask can it?)
OK, but just because you asked so nicely :-)
We're keeping access for free members open until 10am Pacific (about 95 minutes from now). Enjoy!
Awesome!
Thank you, you're the best!
I didn't like these videos. Having 2 people in them is very annoying. You spent at least twice as long as you should have, and at the end I did not feel like I learned much. I was hoping to learn more about how exactly you are calculating your new metrics.
So sorry about that Dustin. We're going to try again with a written and illustrated post more like this one in the next few weeks. Hopefully that will help.
Not trying to be contentious but had to chip in an opposing opinion.
I really like watching Rand and Will together. It makes for a warmer experience and I can kinda sorta imagine that it's just the three of us standing around the board shooting the bull.
It was also weird (a cool kind of weird) as the sound from each person corresponded to my headphones. Will came in through the left channel and Rand through the right.
Your avatar is pretty memorable too ;)
It would be great to have some bullet point take-aways from these videos.
I agree, would be very useful for referring to at a later date, saves us having to watch the videos over and over, not that I have anything against the videos ;)
Good suggestion! We're planning a more written/illustrated post on this subject in the next few weeks, and I'll try to make that one more digestible. In the meantime, I'll update this post as well with a few big takeaways for those who like to skim.
thanks rand, i look forward to it =)
Is there any way you can make these videos show up in Google Reader? (please)
Great video guide. Getting good domain and page authority is a little slow process.
Good evening!
I have one question about improve my domain authority. I read about this in many blogs and I listen them and after I apply the typical tips for improve my domain authority results. But I only get a better results in my page authority but not in my domain authority (my DA not change anything).
Do you know more effective tips for improve the DA results?
Thank you!
All your questions are very interesting Mr. SolaireAltea! About this i know some tips. The most important is the CONTENT. The content is the king for Google. So remove or change the duplicate content, and give to your visitors different, quality an exclusive content in all of your pages in your web. I take a look and I see that more properties that you have in english and norwegian, you have a copy. So If you don't speak norwegian change some words or use the translator. You will see that your DA, PA and your positions in Google... improve.
Has this changed since 2010 ?
Video does not load in IE8, well not on my pc.
I like the concept, and the videos explained it very well. It seems like this information will allow me to be more targeted in my link building efforts.
However, I have been comparing PA/DA for various web sites, and I see some of apparent breakdowns in the calculation of Domain Authority. For instance, in my toolbar, I see that SEOMoz.com has a DA of only 45. Matt Cutts blog (https://www.mattcutts.com/blog) has a DA of 37. The LDS Church has a DA of 51, even though there are 3.5 Million links pointed to it from 2,300 different domains. On the other hand, this web site: https://prohealthcareproducts.com has a Domain Authority of 65, with only 70,000 links from 32 domains. How can this be? Maybe I'm missing something in understanding how Domain Authority is calculated.
From my research, it does seem like Page Authority is much more accurate.
thanks for the information. I do have a related question. How long does it take for Google to rerank your website to its former position, after you change your website's URL? Same website, different name. Also, how long for Google to recognize all the redirects for your hundreds of backlinks to your old website name to the new URL? Good question? www.HomeArchitects.com thanks for your assistance.
Hi Gang...
We're looking over our site's Page Authority and the SEOMOZ campaign mamager/dashboard - and for numerous pages the 'status' for our 'page authority' is marked as pending.
Now this seems to be the case for most of our newly 301'd pages - i.e. the new URL has the pending page authority.
The 301's were placed a month or so ago, prior to your PA update.
How long does it take for PA to come out of pending ?
A buddy of mine recommended SEOMoz to me and I have learned so much the last 2 days that I've spent looking through the sites videos and guides!! So much to learn!!! I just set up my first campaign for the company I work for and am going to try the authority toolbar. Good stuff!
Thank you for talking about this!.i look forward to it.
Totally new to the world of SEO so my long journey starts now, delighted that I discovered your SEOmoz toolbar it's been a great insight so far. Our home page is ranking quite well PA 52 DA 53, however, some of the pages are only showing PA of 1, is there anything obvious I'm missing?
Cool post. But i really wanna know whether the da or pa look thing the same with google? And how much should we trusted that, and whether they can show us the right insight?
I wonder if pay per use of OSE would be a good in between ground for non-pro members?
So much is available in OSE for registered (free) members. I hope that fills a lot of the need before people are ready to pay. But this is great feedback if you would like to expand.
Please make sure there's a hide/show button for the toolbar I can put in FF (the lack of therof made me unistall the mozrank toolbar, not sure if it's been fixed). Great tool though
Also, would be very cool if you could do like SeoQuake so the authority scores and # links gets displayed right in the search results
Whenever I reply to you, I just so badly want it to be with one line:
Seriously, though... Yes! We are planning to have a SERPs overlay feature in the next toolbar release (and one that's much less intrusive than some of the ones out there). As for a show/hide - I just called the product guy for the mozbar over to my desk and we talked about it. He'll try to get it in the next 1-2 releases.
Open site explorer is a great way to quickly get this data, but my question is, how up to date is the data?
Is it based on the same data as linkscape, and therefore the 'freshness' of the data being the same?
Also how often is the data refreshed?
Sorry, actually found the answer and for anyone else who is interested it says on the open site explorer page:
Open Site Explorer is Powered by SEOmoz's Linkscape Web Index.
Last Index Update: Jan 18th, 2010 Next Index Update: Feb 2010
I like how you started talking about Will's skin and got sidetracked -- to where you needed the camera guy to tell you what was up next. Well, I chuckled anyway.
Anywho... This is great because it's going to promote a new way for looking at a page's or domain's importance. Other methods, such as pure toolbar PR and/or MOZRank were just not good enough.
It's also very smart, in that it will generate a lot more interest in your PRO memberships. I like it.
am i the only one that has 2 instances of the video embedded on the page? i use chrome...
Shows twice for me in Chrome, once in FF. You're not alone! ;)
I can also confirm this.
For me:
once in Firefox w/ no problems
once in IE with a space below it big enough for another player
twice in Chrome and Safari (which both use the same rendering engine I believe so no surprise that they do the same thing.)
PS. Also shows up twice in Opera.
(prob not related, but my draggable comment window won't drag on this post, although it will on other SEOmoz posts.)
FTFY :)
Rand, I think the concept and commoditization of domain and page authority, as your're now doing with OSE, is really going to open up a new door for SEO consultants. I know that in the past many people in the industry may have known that pages and domains have their own assigned "trust" values but now having an intelligent way of calculating and displaying those values (without the end user doing much work) - well that's just brilliant.
One feedback point, I noticed a few days ago that OSE's anchor text distribution tab was displaying what appeared to be internal anchor text phrases... "Home" for example. Would be nice to have a filter for external and internal anchor text (or both) similar to how the "Linking Pages" tab has it.
Yeah - excellent suggestion. That's actually something we've got in the works for the next update :-)
Great Post and video,
Thanks for explaining everything, it gives me a better understanding. :)
I am getting an error message in Safari, Firefax and Chrome?
The video is not working.
I can't see the videos... Not in Safari and not FF- is there a problem? I only get the message Error inside the video-window. Others worked in the past.
I can't watch the video either, "ERROR" appears on the video.
I was having problems watching the videos as well, kept coming up with an error, then I refreshed the page and it worked.
For me, I found Part 1 more interesting than Part 2. I think Part 2 became a tad bit too technical for me and I'm not very good concentrating on a video when things start to get complex. So it would be really nice if there could be an article for this.. But part 1 was really great though, picked up lots of tips on how to use PA and DA.
Thanks!
Thanks for explaining this guys, its helped me alot. I spent the last two days trying to work this out, In the end I just about got it right but now the loose ends have been tied up =)