Can Open Site Explorer Do This?

[N5c]

Is there any way to set up Open Site Explorer to show these things for competitor external backlinks:

Google Page Rank of the page the backlink is on

Google Page Rank of the domain the backlink is on

Whether the backlink is a follow or no follow

Is this possible in OSE? If not, are there any other SEOMOZ Tools that will do this?

Thanks.

[RyanKent]

Is there any way to set up Open Site Explorer to show

Whether the backlink is a follow or no follow

OSE does show whether a link is followed or not. The text (nofollow) appears in purple above any links which are marked as nofollow. You can also use the first filter in OSE to display only follow'd or nofollow'd links.

Google Page Rank of the domain the backlink is on

There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding PR. A few things you should know:

• The actual PR which Google uses for ranking is updated internally within Google on a daily basis. The PR we can see is "Toolbar PR" which is only updated once every 3-4 months.

• Web pages have a PR value, but a domain does not. Many sites selling links advertise themselves as a "PR 7 domain" but it is a misuse of the term. You can have a website with a home page that has a PR of 3 (as an example) but that site can contain a popular web page with a PR of 6. For example I could put up a random SEO site and quickly earn a PR of 3 for the home page. Then I could perform an interview with Matt Cutts of Google and that article could earn thousands of links causing the particular page to have a PR of 6.

• Toolbar PR can vary based on the tool which displays the data. Some may use a blind formula whereby they take the home page's PR value and subtract one level for each click away from the home page. Using the example above the interview with Matt Cutts may show as a PR of 1 (being two clicks away from the home page) where it's actual PR is 6.

Generally speaking PR is a bad metric to use in the manner you are suggesting. It can be helpful for determining if a site is penalized (within a 3-4 month time frame) and whether a site has a lot of links which OSE shows but Google devalues. A quick glance at the links will often offer a SEO an idea of whether either is the case.

Personally, I would like to see PR added because I would find the information helpful. The problem is a large percentage of people will misinterpret the PR data so I can understand why SEOmoz would choose not to display that information.

[N5c]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I knew that domains have no PR but I worded it wrong in my post..I meant to say page rank of the domain home page.

Thanks again Ryan, you posted some excellent info!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

I've endorsed Ryan's answer but just a quick note about PageRank.

We encourage folks not to use PageRank as an indicator of ranking strenght, as "PageRank has a relatively low correlation to how well things actually rank." - Rand Fishkin

PageRank is good for a couple of things, such as a raw indication of link popularity, or as Ryan mentioned to determine a penalty.

PageRank data is historically inaccurate, Google doesn't update it regularly enough to be useful and finally Google has asked us politely not to scrape PageRank data, and SEOmoz honors that request. So those are a few of the reasons we don't include it in the MozBar (SEO Toolbar) and other places.

Rand discusses the subject in depth in this WBF

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-googles-pagerank-good-for-whiteboard-friday