Difference on full and partial URLs in Open Site Explorer?

[plovski]

Hi, I am pretty new to SEO and it might show. Here is my question, regarding the difference on "full and partial" urls in Open Site Explorer (OSP). That is, the difference on http://www.mywebsite.com and http://mywebsite.com.

I get very similar results for the two variations, but not exactly the same. That suggest to me that OSP most of the time find the same links regardless of whether the url put into the search field is full or partial. But not all the time.

Can anyone clarify?

Thx in advance

[tawnycase]

Hi there! Tawny from Moz's Help Team here.

This is a great question! The reason you might be seeing different inbound link information for mywebsite.com and www.mywebsite.com is because of the way other sites link back to yours. Some folks might link directly to the root domain, mywebsite.com, while others might link to the www subdomain. In that way, the two links might have slightly different backlink profiles, and could turn up different results in Open Site Explorer.

Typically if a site has both a www subdomain and a root domain page for their homepage, they'll redirect from one to the other so that visitors only see one version of the page, and so that link equity gets passed along to the correct page. In those cases, Open Site Explorer will see the redirect and offer to analyze the main page instead.

Hope that helps explain! If you've still got questions or need some clarification, feel free to drop us a line at help@moz.com and we'll do our best to sort you out!

[plovski]

Thank you, very much for the quick response.

Just for clarification.

Is it correct to assume that the search for links including the "www" will produce pretty much the same results as the search without?

Best wishes, Lars

[tawnycase]

A search for the www subdomain will likely pull up very similar results to searching for the non-www root domain, but it's still possible that the results will be different, depending on how other sites are linking back to yours.

You can always use the filters to see links pointing at the root domain level!