More link data. Fresher link data. Faster link data.
Today, I’m delighted to share that after eons of hard work, blood, sweat, tears, and love, Moz is taking a major step forward on our commitment to provide the best SEO tools money can buy.
We’ve rebuilt our link technology from the ground up and the data is now broadly available throughout Moz tools. It’s bigger, fresher, and much, much faster than our legacy link tech. And we’re just getting started! The best way to quickly understand the potential power of our revolutionary new link tech is to play with the beta of our Link Explorer.
Introducing Link Explorer, the newest addition to the Moz toolset!
We’ve heard your frustrations with Open Site Explorer and we know that you want more from Moz and your link building tools. OSE has done more than put in its time. Groundbreaking when it launched in 2008, it’s worked long and hard to bring link data to the masses. It deserves the honor of a graceful retirement.
OSE represents our past; the new Link Explorer is our fast, innovative, ambitious future.
Here are some of my favorite things about the Link Explorer beta:
- It’s 20x larger and 30x fresher than OSE (RIP)
- Despite its huge index size, the app is lightning fast! I can’t stand waiting so this might be my number-one fav improvement.
- We’re introducing Link Tracking Lists to make managing your link building efforts a breeze. Sometimes the simple things make the biggest difference, like when they started making vans with doors on each side. You’ll never go back.
- Link Explorer includes historic data, a painful gap in OSE. Studying your gained/lost linking domains is fast and easy.
- The new UX surfaces competitive insights much more quickly
- Increases the size and freshness of the index improved the quality of Domain Authority and Spam Score. Voilà.
All this, and we’re only in beta.
Here’s a deeper dive into my favorites:
#1: The sheer size, quality, and speed of it all
We’re committed to data quality. Here are some ways that shows up in the Moz tools:
- When we collect rankings, we evaluate the natural first page of rankings to ensure that the placement and content of featured snippets and other SERP features are correctly situated (as can happen when ranking are collected in 50- or 100-page batches). This is more expensive, but we think the tradeoff is worth it.
- We were the first to build a hybrid search volume model using clickstream data. We still believe our model is the most accurate.
- Our SERP corpus, which powers Keywords by Site, is completely refreshed every two weeks. We actively update up to 15 million of the keywords each month to remove keywords that are no longer being searched and replace them with trending keywords and terms. This helps keep our keyword data set fresh and relevant.
The new Link Explorer index extends this commitment to data quality. OSE wasn’t cutting it and we’re thrilled to unleash this new tech.
Link Explorer is over 20x larger and 30x fresher than our legacy link index. Bonus points: the underlying technology is very cost-efficient, making it much less expensive for us to scale over time. This frees up resources to focus on feature delivery. BOOM!
One of my top pet peeves is waiting. I feel physical pain while waiting in lines and for apps to load. I can’t stand growing old waiting for a page to load (amirite?).
The new Link Explorer app is delightfully, impossibly fast. It’s like magic. That’s how link research should be. Magical.
#2: Historical data showing discovered and lost linking domains
If you’re a visual person, this report gives you an immediate idea of how your link building efforts are going. A spike you weren't expecting could be a sign of spam network monkey business. Deep-dive effortlessly on the links you lost and gained so you can spend your valuable time doing thoughtful, human outreach.
#3: Link Tracking Lists
Folks, this is a big one. Throw out (at least one of... ha. ha.) those unwieldy spreadsheets and get on board with Link Tracking Lists, because these are the future. Have you been chasing a link from a particular site? Wondering if your outreach emails have borne fruit yet? Want to know if you’ve successfully placed a link, and how you’re linking? Link Tracking Lists cut out a huge time-suck when it comes to checking back on which of your target sites have actually linked back to you.
Why announce the beta today?
We’re sharing this now for a few reasons:
- The new Link Explorer data and app have been available in beta to a limited audience. Even with a quiet, narrow release, the SEO community has been talking about it and asking good questions about our plans. Now that the Link Explorer beta is in broad release throughout all of Moz products and the broader Moz audience can play with it, we’re expecting even more curiosity and excitement.
- If you’re relying on our legacy link technology, this is further notice to shift your applications and reporting to the new-and-improved tech. OSE will be retired soon! We’re making it easier for API customers to get the new data by providing a translation layer for the legacy API.
- We want and need your feedback. We are committed to building the very best link building tool on the planet. You can expect us to invest heavily here. We need your help to guide our efforts and help us make the most impactful tradeoffs. This is your invitation to shape our roadmap.
Today’s release of our new Link Explorer technology is a revolution in Moz tools, not an evolution. We’ve made a major leap forward in our link index technology that delivers a ton of immediate value to Moz customers and the broader Moz Community.
Even though there are impactful improvements around the corner, this ambitious beta stands on its own two feet. OSE wasn’t cutting it and we’re proud of this new, fledgling tech.
What’s on the horizon for Link Explorer?
We’ve got even more features coming in the weeks and months ahead. Please let us know if we’re on the right track.
- Link Building Assistant: a way to quickly identify new link acquisition opportunities
- A more accurate and useful Link Intersect feature
- Link Alerts to notify you when you get a link from a URL you were tracking in a list
- Changes to how we count redirects: Currently we don't count links to a redirect as links to the target of the redirect (that's a lot of redirects), but we have this planned for the future.
- Significantly scaling up our crawling to further improve freshness and size
Go forth, and explore:
Tomorrow Russ Jones will be sharing a post that discusses the importance of quality metrics when it comes to a link index, and don’t miss our pinned Q&A post answering questions about Domain Authority and Page Authority changes or our FAQ in the Help Hub.
We’ll be releasing early and often. Watch this space, and don’t hold back your feedback. Help us shape the future of Links at Moz. We’re listening!
So much effort went into bringing this back, not just effort from current Mozzers but those of years past too. To anyone who ever worked on this project, huzzah!
Great Russ, You and your team doing Great wor. Yeah it's not about the 1 man, it's a whole team that build this kind of Companies and keep doing the best to keep it up to date!
Hi Sarah, I tried the new link explorer, you're right. it does work fast,
I put in Quora.com with its huge number of links and it gave me information in less than 2 seconds, impressive.
Though I think I'll slightly miss the old OSE.
It's because it was the first tool that exposed me to link building as a concept and was my tool of choice for doing SERP analysis.
You see, before OSE, I was a firm believer that content is all that matters and that links are useless (yeah, I was clueless).
But then as I started reading and researching, I got more and more excited and somehow felt that I was on the right track;
And that it is possible to match great content and good links for truly amazing results.
That is what OSE did for me and I'm grateful that a lot of options were available for us who couldn't afford the pro version.
But it also had some frustrating issues.
For example, I would read a case study by Brian Dean, where he published great content, did targeted outreach and got a huge number of links, for example 2000 links from 800 referring domains.
And he'd show a screenshot form Ahrefs or some other tool.
And since I'm of curious disposition, I'd go and pop that same URL into OSE.
And there I would find something like- 300 links from 125 domains.
And that would confuse me since I thought the data had to match.
I understand now that OSE had a much smaller index back then.
But I am glad it's fixed.
Thank Moz team! I'm excited about what lies ahead with this new link checker
Be sure to check out my post tomorrow about comparative index metrics, it should be an eye opener.
Dear friend, it is totally normal for you to long for the old OSE, it also happens to me. But the truth is that the new application seems more graphic and fast. I am very excited about the new developments.
Best Regards :)
The new Link explorer looks great and the display of data is much more slick.. At first glance the amount of data displayed is much larger than the old ose. Congratulations to the Moz team on a job very well done.
By the way I also have noticed that the Moz bar displays the new DA and PA values since the last few days.
I find the ability to see spam scores with incoming links really handy compared to the free version of the OSE. I'm also happy to get more in-depth analytics.
I love the new tool, it's great, fast and very clear with the data, good job and thank you very much MOZ!!
I was checking DA for one of my site https://magnetoitsolutions.com why i found different DA for same domain.
IF I check DA here moz.com/researchtools/ose/ it shows 32 and if i Check with the new tool
https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overvi... then it shows 36, why it shows different, Seems moz is less trusted now, and compare to ahrefs it looks far behind.
OSE is still using our previous link index and corresponding technology, as is mentioned in the banner at the top of the tool. Link Explorer is powered by our new link indexing system and it's DA is now the one you will see throughout our tools (sans OSE and the legacy Links section of campaigns).
Any core reasons why you believe ahrefs is far ahead in regards to this? Happy to walk through any of your concerns.
I'm so glad to see Moz back in the link research tools game again. I've used the competition for many years to fill the gaps, but I've often longed for a more useful tool. Thank you, Moz team, past and present! I appreciate everything you do for the SEO and search marketing communities. See you at MozCon 2018!
Thats a good job. Visually it's wonderful to use it :)
Thank you! The team has worked hard to get feedback from folks and improve both the workflow and the visual quality of the design. We really want to make LE enjoyable to use. Always striving to make it better!
You’re right Sarah, it’s super fast, even on mobile. It’d be great if all the tools were a bit more mobile friendly however, just so that when I’m on the go I can easily and efficiently look stats up.
Looking forward to having more of a play with the new tool once I’m on my desktop.
Thanks
yep. Agree 1000%. Better mobile experience is important.
I'm already a big fan of the new Link Explorer and can honestly say it is 10x better than OSE, which when compared to Ahrefs or SEMrush, usually had the worst, most out-of-date data. With the link explorer I am seeing more links and referring domains than even Ahrefs is showing me. Super impressed by this update and excited on whats to come, well done Moz team!
Thanks Jeremy! We put a lot of love into this one!
Looks good but a bit concerned that there are only 10 free searches per month, and then the next pricing is $179 per month. As a solo business operator with small needs (but more than 10 searches per month), is there something priced for my budget?
There is a $99/month option you can downgrade to during your free trial. https://moz.com/products/pro/pricing
Enjoy
We actually have a $99/mo plan also, which offers 5,000 queries per month. The free trial is at the $179 level, but you can change your plan at the end of the free trial if you don't need the greater level of access offered at that tier.
Agree Jancy. The price is a bit to high, specially for people who have small sites or are just beginning their online journey. An even cheaper plan (less than $99/mo) could be very useful to bust the tools' users and allow Moz more money to develop better features in the future.
Absolutely agree. $99 is still too high an outlay for very small businesses that need more than 10 searches a month but not requiring as many as 5k. I would happily pay $10 a month for 500 searches. Any chance of incorporating a price plan more suited to the majority of smaller business like ours?
Just to add, high price plan aside, I have had a quick glimpse and, while I think it'll take a little getting used to after OSE, I do like how slick and thorough it appears to be. Looking forward to becoming a regular user (price plan permitting!)
Do you have plans to make Link Tracking Lists available from the API? Same question for the upcoming Link Building Assistant.
Asking for a friend. ;-)
Let's stay in contact about this, Paul!
How will this tie into the Mozbar? Can we expect to see the mozbar displaying the new authority values anytime soon?
The new data should be live as of this morning in all of our tools, including Mozbar. You shouldn't have to upgrade to the newest version, although we'd certainly encourage you to do so. If you're seeing a mismatch, let us know.
I am testing the Moz link explorer and it looks great. It is quite fast and has nothing to envy to companies like Ahrefs and SEMrush. Keep it up, guys!
So, logged in, non-Pro user. Firefox, Chrome, with or without uBlock Origin enabled... still says 0/10 and never shows any results. Just doesn't show... any results no matter the domain.
Hey Mario - Sorry to hear you are having issues accessing the data. Would you mind sending this info plus your account email over to [email protected]?
done.
Same issue than Mario; non-Pro users can't test right now :'(
We are digging into this now!
Thanks for confirming! This kind of bug-finding is really helpful. Community bug reports mean we can get Link Explorer out of beta faster! Keep the bug reports coming in!
Hey Erwan and Mario - This issue should be fixed and working for you now! Thanks again for bringing it to our attentnion.
Hey, thank you, sincerely, for bringing this up. It is in Beta and the way Beta products get better is people pointing out problems. I bet a dozen other people had the same problem and just turned away and left. We really do appreciate this kind of bug reporting!
For years, MOZ had been left in the dust by several competitors due to lack of depth in OSE's backlink intelligence. I just ran my site for a comparison VS my current tool of choice (Ahrefs) and you guys finally seem to be in the same ballpark. Glad to see the MOZ team finally stepped up in this area.
I have just tried the new link explorer and I liked it very much, it provides much more precise information than the old one.
Keep it up, guys, the Moz company has a lot of potential, and here's another proof of it.
Very excited to see the all new Link Explorer, I am sure this will be of great benefit to everybody around the globe who own a website.
Well, it's looks pretty cool with Graphs. Congrats and really Appreicate your work. All the Moz Team!
Another amazing toy! :) ... and fancy visuals for the executives. Thanks for the update.
A Moz link explorer is quite useful then other tools. I love to use this tool. Very easy interface to understand.
The best part of this tool is link explorer. I have got too many link which I was not get any other tools explore.
Great job!! Congratulations on the new release, I really love the new design :)
Congratulations of new launch, It's really awesome compare with OSE. my blog DA increased compare with OSE :)
New tool is awesome. It is very helpful for me. I am very satisfied with it.
I'm very excite to see this future feature: -> Link Building Assistant: a way to quickly identify new link acquisition opportunities. Anything than can help us get new insights and opportunities to get better and new links would be wonderful.
Honestly there were some loop in the previous versions, but no matter what it never stopped me using it! But this which makes me happy is the advancement of this new Link Explorer and the cool graphic interface I see!
Great job done by the entire Moz team, work people always make our job easy.
Lots of love!
amazing! Thanks for the update.
It is very obvious that if some one upgrading his previous tool he want make its faster with various useful features. And me know that still one sim-confusion not solved by MOZ that it is on the which parameter it included backlink in his database on specific website.
Moz saying in his blogs that google not calculated no-follow links but when see in webmaster every nofollow links are available there. So, much confusing in it. I have makes many link on a page since last two month,,,,,but my page PA and DA both are still same.
Great article Sarah! With you every day we are more experts.
Moz Pro Link Explorer is amazing and really huge which provides you a complete link profile as compared to other networks. According to me, they tend to show links which Google automatically does not count. The new domain authority score is completely different which seems to give you a better and higher score.
Thank you for sharing.
Awesome Changes Now all facility in one tool, no need to use other tools for link check. most of time need to use other tools for more analyse website link. Thanks
Can't wait to try out the Link Explorer!
Good work on the new version, it is massively overdue but also massively appreciated as looks like a real asset again finally :)
Its good to see that new tool provide more data. But for me Moz Link Explorer (DA) now less trust worthy in compare with Ahrefs and mejistic. I have check many domain metrics on both tools as well majestic.
For Example: thebalanceeveryday . com have DR 73, Root domain TF is 52. They have around 223k Organic Ahrefs Keyword. Now we will jump to Link Explorer data. This domain have DA 27 with no Ranking Keyword.
Similarly, I know few domains which have low authority. For example one of these domain have OSE DA (15) , TF 4 and Ahrefs DR 1. But Link Explorer DA is 32. Which is hard to believe. This site have no organic keyword or traffic.
I wish you will improve your tool specially DA.
Regarding the ranking keywords, we're showing 17,000 -- might've been a temporary bug. You can view more about that data in Keyword Explorer.
The link and authority difference with Ahrefs can be tougher to pin down. Although our new link index is much larger than the old one, we still tend to take a quality-over-quantity approach, and so a big difference in scores could indicate a possible issue with the site's link profile (namely, that there are a lot of links, but many are low quality).
In some cases, it's possible that Ahrefs is seeing links from very specific sites or countries that we're not seeing, although this would suggest that a large number of links are concentrated in a small number of sites.
The other possibility is that there are some temporary or old links that are no longer active.
Looking at the data, some of the site's links are coming from domains that have high DA but the pages themselves are long-tail pages with much lower PA. I'm seeing some article marketing links, for example, where the domain has high authority, but the article/post itself is buried pretty deep.
Of course, we could also be wrong. If there are specific links we're not seeing (especially high quality ones), please let us know. We are definitely looking to improve the index and our DA/PA metrics.
Very well done, Thanks for giving us all refresh data and regular DA updates, I am a webmaster and millions of webmasters like me using some DA tool's to reporting to their clients, My concern is, this tool is showing old DA data, When can we expect new index data in such free tool's?
Thanks again & good luck from all small wembaters.
It looks like they are using our API to power their metrics and we have just switched over the API backend for external customers today. I checked the data for a few sites and it does look like the tool is now showing the data from our Link Explorer index. Please give it another try and you should see the updated data come through.
Congratulations, great research work of the whole team, a new tool to work in search of links, thanks!
There are so many 3rd party tools still use an old OSE source for their matrics. How to tell them to use the new Moz Explorer source for their metrics?
Is there any idea on timeline for changing the way redirects are viewed
I'm not comfortable giving a timeline because I don't want to jinx it! I will say it is actively being worked on. More to come!
This almost sounds Googleesque ;)
Is their any new update in googel's new policy for link building....
Great Effort! But i want to improvement on keywords report like SEMRush, so that i can analyse onsite seo of any website perfectly.