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    How to get backlinks with the API

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    • DavidLee
      DavidLee last edited by

      Hi Dinom

      Keep in mind this is not a number of ALL of your backlinks as our tool is not a complete index of all of your links. Our link discovery methods are based on Domain Authority to only show you quality links to a domain. There isn't a single call to fetch all of the links as there is a limit of 25 rows of data you can return for each call and there is a rate limit.

      The options you have can be found here:

      http://apiwiki.moz.com/link-metrics

      silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • silvacarl
        silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

        what is the specific API call to show backlinks on my URL?

        silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • silvacarl
          silvacarl @silvacarl last edited by

          in other words, does someone have an example of the API parameters for the backlink API call?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • DavidLee
            DavidLee last edited by

            Hey Carl!

            We do provide examples in the documentation. They can be filtered in many ways.

            Here is a very basic call that will return the first 25 links to all pages going to moz.com which will provide the linking page and the page being link to

            http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/moz.com?AccessID=member-xxxxxxxx&Expires=xxxxxxxx&Signature=xxxxxxxx&Scope=page_to_domain&Filter=external&Sort=page_authority&SourceCols=4&TargetCols=4&LinkCols=4&Limit=25

            The first result will look like this:

            [0] => Array
            (
            [lrid] => 460538186303
            [lsrc] => 131443324666
            [lt] => "Google Algorithm Change History"
            [ltgt] => 68767261786
            [luuu] => moz.com/google-algorithm-change
            [uu] => en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Panda

            Hope this helps!

            silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • silvacarl
              silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

              THIS IS AWESOME!  If i am checking a subdomain, like 10.billing.callmydoc.com, do I need to do something different?

              As usual, I will repost my findings once completed.  8-)

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • DavidLee
                DavidLee last edited by

                You would only need to adjust the scope to be &Scope=page_to_subdomain

                as the above example would only give you results to any page at callmydoc.com

                silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • DavidLee
                  DavidLee last edited by

                  Also to test your results, you can cross-reference by filtering page/sub-domain/root-domain directly on OSE https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=10.billing.callmydoc.com&filter=&source=external&target=domain&group=0&page=1&sort=page_authority&anchor_id=&anchor_type=&anchor_text=&from_site=

                  silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • silvacarl
                    silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

                    all i did was change that one parameter but now i am getting:

                    {
                    "status" : "403",
                    "error_message" : "Permission denied: blepcoehcjeidmfpcleoaigbaahfafhgbo"
                    }

                    DavidLee 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • DavidLee
                      DavidLee @silvacarl last edited by

                      Can you paste the full URL call your app generated minus credentials so I can take a look?

                      silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • silvacarl
                        silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

                        this is for my wife's practice: http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/solimancare.schedulemypatient.com?AccessID=mozscape-xx&Expires=xx&Signature=xx%3D&Scope=&Scope=page_to_subdomain&Filter=external&Sort=page_authority&SourceCols=4&TargetCols=4&LinkCols=4&Limit=50&Offset=0

                        returns:

                        {
                        "status" : "403",
                        "error_message" : "Permission denied: naieofimocidphjeoaifmdkkmllomolnnf"
                        }

                        DavidLee 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • DavidLee
                          DavidLee @silvacarl last edited by

                          Hi Carl

                          The call is malformed with an additional scope parameter: http://www.screencast.com/t/zTqfBb0NuAO

                          If you remove the extra &Scope=

                          The call should work

                          silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • silvacarl
                            silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

                            jeez.  8-(  Ok, got it.  wow, sorry.  fixed.  Now: http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/solimancare.schedulemypatient.com?AccessID=mozscape-xx&Expires=xx&Signature=xx%3D&Scope=page_to_subdomain&Filter=external&Sort=page_authority&SourceCols=4&TargetCols=4&LinkCols=4&Limit=50&Offset=0

                            does not return anything, just [].  It should show at least one of cal.callmydoc.com, solimancare.com, shantiquesparoom.com

                            should I tune up the parameters to be more specific?

                            DavidLee 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • silvacarl
                              silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

                              so I would take the json returned from the http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links call and feed it back into this to cross reference, corect?

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • DavidLee
                                DavidLee last edited by

                                You would only need to enter the domain in the search field on OSE to return metrics you can compare against API results.

                                OSE is our web app which calls our API.

                                silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • DavidLee
                                  DavidLee @silvacarl last edited by

                                  This will mean we have not discovered links from external sites to pages at those domains

                                  https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=shantiquesparoom.com&filter=&source=external&target=domain&group=0&page=1&sort=page_authority&anchor_id=&anchor_type=&anchor_text=&from_site=

                                  silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • silvacarl
                                    silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

                                    so the call would be like: url="https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=$searchurl?AccessID=${access_id}&Expires=${timeend}&Signature=${signature}"?

                                    DavidLee 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • DavidLee
                                      DavidLee @silvacarl last edited by

                                      That URL is not an API call as it is a direct link to our online web app via web browser.

                                      silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • silvacarl
                                        silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

                                        got it!  really really appreciate your help!

                                        DavidLee 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • silvacarl
                                          silvacarl @DavidLee last edited by

                                          see below curl bash examples for Moz API:

                                          #!/bin/bash

                                          Usage: ./moz-test.sh callmydoc.com or ./moz-test.sh solimancare.schedulemypatient.com

                                          Note: backlinks for subdomains does not return results yet.

                                          access_id="mozscape-xx"
                                          secret_key="xx"

                                          searchurl=$1
                                          echo "Checking backlinks for ["$searchurl"]"
                                          endpoint="lsapi.seomoz.com"

                                          timenow=$(date +%s)
                                          timeend=$(( ${timenow} + (606024) ))
                                          stringToSign=${access_id}$'\n'${timeend}
                                          signature=$(echo -n "${stringToSign}" | openssl dgst -sha1 -hmac "${secret_key}" -binary | base64)
                                          signature=$(echo ${signature} | sed 's/+/%2B/g;s/=/%3D/g')

                                          start=0
                                          end=300
                                          echo "Checking for practices from $start to $end"
                                          rm found_urls.txt
                                          touch found_urls.txt
                                          for (( i=$start; i<$end; i++ )); do
                                          numberofdots=$(echo $searchurl | grep -o "." | wc -l)
                                          echo "number of dots ["$numberofdots"]"
                                          if [ "$numberofdots" == "1" ]; then
                                          url="http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/$searchurl?AccessID=${access_id}&Expires=${timeend}&Signature=${signature}&Scope=page_to_domain&Filter=external&Sort=page_authority&SourceCols=4&TargetCols=4&LinkCols=4&Limit=25"

                                          url2="http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/$searchurl?Cols=4&AccessID=${access_id}&Expires=${timeend}&Signature=${signature}"
                                          echo "Calling Moz url-metrics API with ["$url2"]"
                                          curl $url
                                          echo
                                          read -n 1 -p "Press any key to continue . . ."
                                          echo
                                          else
                                          url="http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/$searchurl?AccessID=${access_id}&Expires=${timeend}&Signature=${signature}&Scope=page_to_subdomain&Filter=external&Sort=page_authority&SourceCols=4&TargetCols=4&LinkCols=4&Limit=25"
                                          fi
                                          echo "Calling Moz API with ["$url"]"
                                          curl $url > backlink-results.json
                                          echo
                                          jq -r '.[].uu' < backlink-results.json >> found_urls.txt
                                          read -n 1 -p "Press any key to continue . . ."
                                          echo

                                          sleep a random amount between 1 and 30 seconds to not crush moz API

                                          sleep $[ ( $RANDOM % 50 ) + 1 ]s
                                          (( i + 50 ))
                                          done

                                          silvacarl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • DavidLee
                                            DavidLee @silvacarl last edited by

                                            Anytime!

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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