Open Site Explorer Missing URL's

[stats44]

I see a link to my site on a couple different url's, but they are not listed in OSE. The links have been active for a long time too.  Does OSE not track all inbound links from all sites?

Thanks,

Stephen

[RyanKent]

Does OSE not track all inbound links from all sites?

No, it does not.

OSE is based upon the Linkscape crawl of the web. In short, Linkscape crawls the top 25% of pages on the web. If a link is offered on one of those pages, it will be included in OSE. If a link does not appear in OSE, it probably has very little value.

You should also understand the process it takes for Linkscape to crawl the web and process the data takes 4-5 weeks. Depending on when a link was created, it can take 2 cycles for it to appear.

[texmeix]

Hi Stephen, I am experiencing the exact same issue. In fact I was about to post a new Q&A on this subject, but see that you already have, so I'll just try and help reinforce, with some examples and screenshots.

I am new to SEOMoz and OSE and wasn't sure if I was doing it right...

my site is www.rangeroffroad.com - in OSE it says that only 4 domains are linking to my site

http://screencast.com/t/pVfnMmtz

I've been using the SEOMoz Link Acquisition tool to discover links and I ran across this one:

http://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/3rd-generation-ram-forum-no-engine-transmission-discussions/218793-bumper-manufacturer-list.html

I assumed my site was not included in the results, and was preparing to submit my link to this forum like I've been doing with other links. But the site is already linking to me:

http://screencast.com/t/2X8tIPmCPMt

I thought maybe they were using a nofollow tag or something that would prohibit OSE from picking it up...but that doesn't appear to be the case, see source code here:

http://screencast.com/t/ghGzMOur

Am I correct or am I missing something? I have a couple other examples I've run across as well if needed, please let me know.

Thank you!

[RyanKent]

Hi texmeix.

As I shared above, OSE is not a complete list of every link to your site. It only shows valuable links. If a link does not appear on one of the top 25% of all web pages on the internet, it has little to no value.

In the example you shared, this site has a DA of 44 which is not great, but ok. The problem is the web page has a PA of 1. I noticed in your screenshot you are using the MOZbar and you can confirm this information. Basically this is a very low value page and a link from the page is not presently worth listing.

Another issue is I can't access the page without the link you provided. I clicked from the Home page > Forums > 3rd Generation Ram Forum. I see 5 pages of forum posts but was unable to locate this particular post. My guess is either this post is archived and therefore not visible naturally to unregistered members. If that is the case, then search engines cannot see the link. If I missed the page, I apologize but I checked twice.

[texmeix]

This is great feedback, thank you Ryan. I will start taking into account the PA of the page when linkbuilding (I've mainly been just focusing on the DA, but your advice makes sense)

I am not sure why that link did not work either? Here's one other way to try and navigate to it from the Google SERP

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ranch+hand+bumpers+%2B+"inurl%3Alist"

I think it's like the 8th listing down (just look for turbodieselregister.com in results) If you still can't get it, no big deal, this advice is helpful

thanks

[RyanKent]

The question is...how can a person find that page from the site?

Go to the main site: http://www.turbodieselregister.com. What is the least number of clicks by which you can get to the page with your link from the main page? The more clicks, the deeper the page, the less valuable the link.

An exception would be if there were links to the page directly, but we already determined there are not.