Freaked out over domain authority ranking drop.

[bewoldt]

Should I be freaked out that website's domain authority dropped 4 points? Is it normal for websites to fluctuate a couple of points or have I really screwed something up?

[ShaMenz]

Hi bewoldt,

If the change in domain authority has occurred with today's Mozscape Index update, it is most likely that the change is a result of the reduction in the number of links crawled this time around. This just means that the links are not calculated because they are not included in the crawl, but of course, they are most likely still there.

Rand has explained the difference in the latest Mozscape numbers in this post.

Something else that may impact your domain authority may be link removals as some people have undertaken in the wake of Penguin. If you haven't been actively removing links prior to June, then it is most likely just the change in index size.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[randfish]

A fluctuation of 4 points shouldn't be a concern at all. It could be that our machine learning algo for domain authority picked up on some new fluctuations, or that as we found new links, your overall authority dropped compared to the max. I'd recommend watching 4-5 of your key competitors and see if their numbers also dropped, stayed similar or rose. If you see your DA dropping over several indices while you competition rises or stays the same, you could infer that either the links you've acquired aren't as valuable or that you're losing ground in comparison to others.

Cheers!

[Boodreaux]

Seems like only 1/2 the url's were scanned this time but that they are fresher. While happy about the freshness and the gains starting in April I am also hoping for some CONSISTENCY so I can accurately measure my hard work and efforts each month.   Several of my good links were dropped off this last scan and my domain also dropped a little in rankings.  I was really looking forward to a good jump this month.  Now I am not sure if my domain dropped because of loss of links, because even though several are missing this month some new ones were added....or if my new URL structure caused the slight decrease.

Anyway I am in this for the long term so it is not that big a deal I guess.

[randfish]

Consistency is a hard thing to achieve in this world for three reasons:

• individual links fluctuate (new links appear, old ones go away)

• the size of the web as a whole changes (which moves the bar for link metrics like PR/mR/mT/etc)

• Google itself changes how it measures/counts links (and our PA/DA algos try to react to these changes through the machine learning process)

Because of these, the best recommendation I can give is to compare yourself to several competitors or cohorts in your space and watch the metrics for all of these sites in comparison to your own.

[Boodreaux]

oh well...ideal world.  I realize there are tons of variables.  I will print out competitors monthly rankings along with mine.  Now that I think about it that is really the ultimate measure I should concern myself with at the moment.  Thanks for response!