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    How to get backlinks with the API

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    • dinom
      dinom last edited by

      Hi David,

      What i want is to use the API to give me the list of backlinks for my website. Something like the webapp u already have. But i want to know the API call which can be used to achieve that. The link you gave...that can only be used to find out the number of links (all including backlink, external, no follow foloow etc)..what i am requesting is that is there a API call which would list down the backlink urls for me?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • 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
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