MozRank

What is MozRank?

MozRank quantifies link popularity and is Moz’s version of Google’s classic PageRank algorithm. Pages earn MozRank based on the other pages on the web that link to them and the MozRank of those linking pages. The higher the MozRank of the linking pages, the higher the MozRank of the page receiving those links. In this way, it reflects a type of raw link equity for any given webpage on the Internet.

How is MozRank scored?

Similar to the way that Google’s original PageRank is calculated, we base MozRank on a logarithmic scale between 0 and 10. Thus, it's much easier to improve from a MozRank of 3 to 4 than it is to improve from 8 to 9.

The “average” web page actually has a MozRank that’s only a tiny fraction (~0.05). Thus, if you have a MozRank of 1 or 2, you’re way more “important” (from a raw link equity standpoint) than the average. That said, “average” on the web can be a bit of a misnomer — the vast majority of pages you’ll find ranking in Google or on webpages you visit in a normal surfing session are likely to be MozRank 2, 3, 4 or higher. But because the web is so vast, there are many unimportant, barely linked-to pages on billions of websites that drag down the overall average.

What is a “good” MozRank?

There’s no specific “good” or “bad” MozRank score, but higher generally means more — and more important — links point to the page, subdomain, or root domain.

Where can you find MozRank?

MozRank is a metric that lives in Moz’s SEO tools. Specifically, you can find MozRank in:

Open Site Explorer

The “Compare Link Metrics” section of Open Site Explorer compares any site's backlinks, top pages, and other metrics using the Mozscape web index. It can help you find link opportunities, research anchor text, discover popular content, perform competitive research, and more.

MozBar

Moz's SEO toolbar provides easy access to powerful SEO tools and data while you browse the web. The MozBar allows you to quickly diagnose SEO problems and discover opportunities without opening a new page or interrupting your workflow.

Technical definition of MozRank (mR)

MozRank refers to Moz’s logarithmically scaled 10-point measure of global, raw link equity, colloquially referred to as link “popularity.” MozRank is very similar in purpose to the measures of static importance (link importance independent of a specific query) that are used by search engines, such as Google's PageRank. Because measures like MozRank are global and static, this ranking power applies to a broad range of search queries rather than pages optimized specifically for a particular keyword.

The idea behind MozRank is to leverage the democratic nature of the web to quantify a page’s popularity. Every page has the ability to “vote” and they can cast a vote by linking out to other web pages. Each time they link out to another webpage, all of the other links (votes) on the linking page are slightly diluted. Thus, pages that link out to many other pages aren’t able to overwhelm the votes from pages that only link out to a few other pages. Otherwise, if one page contained 1,000 links, it would unfairly have more votes than a page with only 10 links.

To calculate MozRank (mR), Moz’s algorithm evaluates the “votes” (links) on every page, then runs an iterative algorithm to create the MozRank scores for each URL.

The takeaway is that a given web page has only a quantifiable amount of link equity (MozRank, PageRank, or other similar iterative, graph-based calculations) to spread via links (votes). Pages that receive a lot of links (votes) are considered more important and are able to pass more importance to the pages they link to.

External MozRank

Where MozRank measures the link equity (ranking power) of both internal and external links, external MozRank measures only the amount of MozRank flowing to a site from external links (links located on a separate domain). Because external links can play an important role as independent endorsements, external MozRank is an important metric for predicting search engine rankings.

Domain-Level MozRank (DmR)

Domain-level MozRank (DmR) quantifies the popularity (raw link equity) of a given domain compared to all other domains on the web. DmR is computed for both subdomains and root domains. This metric uses the same algorithm as MozRank, but applies it to the "domain-level link graph" — a view of the web that only looks at domains as a whole, ignoring individual pages. Viewing the web from this perspective offers additional insight about the general authority of a domain. Just as pages can endorse other pages, a link which crosses domain boundaries (e.g., from some page on searchengineland.com to a page on moz.com) can be seen as endorsement of one domain by another.

To calculate domain-level MozRank, Moz’s algorithm compresses all the pages on a domain (treating every page on the site as one giant page, with all the inbound and outbound links of the entire domain) to evaluate only the links that point from one unique domain to another.

MozRank passed

MozRank passed is the measurement of the amount of link equity (ranking power) a given link passes. Where MozRank is the measurement of the link value of an individual web page, MozRank passed is the measurement of the value of an individual link.

Assessing MozRank passed by an individual link is similar to dividing the amount of MozRank on a given page by the total amount of links on the same page, though MozRank passed takes into account some subtleties (duplicate links, link dampening, etc.) in order to increase accuracy.

MozRank passed helps SEOs interested in the technical aspects of link equity inheritance understand where and how link equity is flowing, and what pages pass higher or lower amounts.

How can MozRank be improved?

A web page's MozRank can be improved either by creating internal links between or obtaining external links from pages higher MozRank. (Between these two linking options, external links tend to give more weight in other link metrics like Page Authority, and tend to provide a higher boost to rankings in Google.) More links from higher MozRank pages will tend to boost MozRank by a larger amount.

Keep learning

• MozTrust
• Page Authority
• Domain Authority

Put your skills to work