How to analyse a big drop in external links

[KerryK]

Hi!

Can someone tell me the best way to determine what caused a big drop in External Followed Links? I have used tools like remove em in the past to try and get rid of exact match keyword links but I'm unsure if this was the root cause.

Our rankings went up the 3 months after this period, but this year they have dropped back to levels from 2015. I'm wondering if this drop has anything to do with this decline.

See attached.

EHyIy

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi,

Really you want to be looking at something like Ahrefs where it will show you lost and found links. I don't know offhand if OSE has that facility.

You might find that your drop is because of sitewide links that have been removed, but without thorough investigation, I could just be guessing. It could be a coincidence that the drop is related to the removal of the links.

Has anything else been done to the site that could account for this? Do any date drops coincide with a Google algorithm tweak?

-Andy

[LSIversen]

As Andy mentioned, Ahrefs is a very good tool to use here. I don't know if you can do it in OSE, but in Ahrefs you can see lost domains and the last date that it was seen in their index.

I looked at your screenshots and I don't know if this is a coincidence - but if it's not the links, then it might be the Phantom 3 update, that there was a lot of chatter about (e.g. http://searchengineland.com/evidence-of-an-unconfirmed-google-update-happening-on-november-19th-237452). The fall in the curve does seem to match the date of this update - but again it's hard to know without looking at it any further. But it might be a plausible explanation as well.

[Deacyde]

Another good practice to take into effect is to start going to Google Webmaster Tools and going to:
Search Traffic > Links to your site

Goto full view and download / export a copy to cvs, open in either google sheets or excel and date it, next time you have an issue, you can repeat the above process and then using a compare feature ( plugin / extension ) in google sheets ( not sure if there is one for excel ) and figure out what links were removed much faster.

Ahrefs can do a good job, but since it doesn't have all your backlinks, can also be just as much frustrating.