O.S.E. vs Webmaster Tools

[jonnyholt]

Webmaster tools is telling me I have a bunch of websites pointing to my website, and I have been adding links as of the last 3 weeks which WM Tools is already seeing.  Open Site Explorer isn't really showing any of them?  My site has gone from bottom of page 5 to page 2 in just 3 weeks so I'm happy about that but can anyone explain this to me?

[MichaelYork]

Hi Jonathon,

WMT is always going to show a far larger index of links compared to OSE or Ahrefs or any other backlink database. OSE and any other tools like that are only every going to give you a picture of your link profile, never the whole picture. We use these tools mainly for competitor research and to support WMT for our own sites.

[jonnyholt]

So WMT is the best place to see whats actually pointing at the site?  I actually see a few domains on WMT that I know for a fact have 301 redirects on them so there is literally no way it could be pointing to my website anymore.

Also its much different.  WMT is saying I have 65 domains linking and OSE is saying like 18.

[MichaelYork]

Yes WMT is going to have the most detailed list of all domains pointing. OSE and others could show anywhere between 5-20 or 30% of a link profile. I believe that WMT may show 50%+. Bear in mind these numbers are just indicative of what I have seen on our numerous websites and also what I have read. You are never going to have 100% of all links reported anywhere, it is all about getting the best possible picture you can and working from there.

[MattAntonino]

I would suggest the issue is in the title.

It's not OSE vs. WMT

It's OSE + WMT.

OSE, Ahrefs, Majestic, WMT, and all the other backlink check methods will always produce less than 100% of your links. OSE seems to purposely ignore some lower-quality ones, Majestic seems to find a lot of duplicate links on other pages and AHrefs seems to give me the "best" results.  If you put Ahrefs + OSE + WMT + Majestic, you get the best results, though.

WMT also seems to discover most links fastest. But I use OSE for much of our backlink research currently.

[jonnyholt]

I ran AHrefs and got ahref rank of 99.1.  Ive never used the site before, is that good?

[Esaky]

In Google Webmaster Tool, While Checking for Traffic Source for My Blog ! 
Get a Top place always "/" and "Not Mentioned" in terms of Keyword !
What Does it Mean !

[MichaelYork]

Hi there,

Top place "/" will be your homepage.

"Not mentioned" or "not provided" or "not set" are increasingly prevalent and based on users being logged in to a Google account when searching.