Moz's new Link Explorer, including our revamped index and DA/PA scores is now open to everyone!

[IanWatson]

Hey Moz Community,

Link Explorer is now open to the public! Everyone can access it via a subscription or a free Moz ‘Community’ account.

As you may know by now, the brand-new Link Explorer tool is primed to replace Open Site Explorer as Moz’s link building and analysis tool. The Link Explorer project is the result of an incredible amount of perseverance and hard work by the team, and we’re proud to be able to finally share it with you — we know it’s going to revolutionize how you approach link building and make your job easier.

You can read more about the tool here in Sarah Bird’s announcement post.

Because Link Explorer improves on almost every aspect of Open Site Explorer, the metrics have improved, too. That means you’re likely going to see some Domain Authority and Page Authority discrepancies between OSE’s index and Link Explorer’s index. We definitely suggest you use the new DA/PA from Link Explorer, as they’re more accurate and refresh daily rather than monthly, as was the case with OSE’s index. However, we also realize that many of you use these metrics to report to your clients and colleagues, and a sudden change or fluctuation could potentially make your job harder.

Which DA is the real DA?

The new DA is based on a much larger index that has many improvements, several of which are designed to make the index more like Google’s than ever before. You should consider moving towards the new DA (and the old DA won’t be updated after April 26th 2018, so the sooner the better). While there will be fluctuations as we improve the model and add features to the index, we expect it to remain largely stable and to be a far more accurate picture of a site’s authority according to how it’s seen by Google.

Why is Link Explorer’s DA/PA considered better than OSE’s, and which should I trust?

The larger link index with improved crawl selection allows us to produce a stronger model that includes a much larger proportion of the web. That being said, DA and PA should always be considered in the context of your competitors. A drop in PA or DA relative to the old OSE is of little concern if your competitors saw similar movement.

Is Domain Authority/Page Authority an absolute score or a relative one?

Both DA and PA are relative to the Internet as a whole. If Facebook acquired a billion new links, everyone’s PA and DA would drop relative to Facebook. Because of this, it’s always best to look at PA and DA in comparison to your competitors.

What does a drop/raise in DA mean in Link Explorer vs OSE? How can I explain this to my clients when I’m reporting it?

DA and PA should always be considered in the context of your competitors. A drop or raise in PA or DA relative to the old OSE is of little concern if your competitors saw similar movement. Reporting that your site has moved from a DA of 45 to a DA of 42 doesn’t tell the whole story, but reporting that your site has a DA of 42 while your main competitor moved from a 43 to a 37 shows that, relative to the sites you’re competing against in the SERPs, your site has significantly more authority and ranking power.

What’s happening to MozTrust and MozRank and why, and what should I replace those with?

The improvements to our DA/PA and Spam Score metrics now now account for more important nuances in helping you determine one site’s ability to rank higher than another. Because they no longer correlate with Google’s ranking model as well as they used to, MozRank and MozTrust are being deprecated for better metrics. Users should rely on Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score to determine the importance and quality of pages, domains, and links.

I have historical data I use to help my clients benchmark their progress. What do I do now that DA is calculated differently?

You should annotate any KPI changes referencing the change in DA and PA. However, most importantly, you should compare those changes to your competitors, as this will best show how strong your site’s authority is relative to the sites you’re competing against in the SERPs.

We take updating our metrics very seriously, and our last major update to the model was 7 years ago. Users of Domain Authority and Page Authority can expect us to continue to produce steady, reliable metrics for the long haul, and only make changes to these metrics when we believe the benefits dramatically outweigh the stability of the metric.

Do you have any questions about the new metrics? Anticipating a tough time reporting changes to clients or bosses? Metrics, features or functionality missing that you would want to see? Let us know in the thread, and we’ll work to find a good answer for you.

Hope you enjoy the new Link Explorer product and the amazing new link index powering it. We are very excited to provide this valuable data to our community and customers.

[martinxm]

Thanks to all the Moz team. I've been using it for some time and this graphic for me is pure magic.

Thanks again.

Sin_t_tulo.jpg

[IanWatson]

Very happy to hear that!

Is there anything missing on this page that you would like to see when you are doing this type of comparison?

[martinxm]

Hi Ian.

Right now, I can't think of anything to improve it. It's fascinating to have everything like that on the same screen. Visually, it is very complete and powerful.

Thanks again.

[APH]

Hi Ian,

This is a much-improved tool now - well done! it will be good to see a pie chart with the domains which are linking to you and your competitors and unique one.

Thanks

Tahir

[jtammany]

This post is deleted!

[Jacob.Redfin]

Hello!

Is your API pulling from the old OSE index or the new link explorer index? If the old index, will/when do you plan to switch the API to the new index?

Thanks!

[ianeahref]

Love the site and the updates.  I noticed that when I use the Linking domains, I can view all the Linking domains on the page, but when I export the results for my reports, the Linking domains, don't export like they did with OSE.

[m.gallagher]

Whilst I appreciate this will be better in the long term, we've seen a 27 point drop on DA whilst our competitors haven't changed! Will be digging though all the data but there's no obvious reason for this huge change.

[IanWatson]

Hey Jacob,

The API is currently pulling from the old index, but we plan on making the switch over very soon. If you are eager, you can update your calls to use lsapi-beta.seomoz.com to get the new data through the API.

Cheers!

[IanWatson]

Would you mind following up with me at ianw@moz.com so I can get some more details about the expected functionality of this export? Thanks!

[IanWatson]

I am sure that must be a frustrating event to see the drop in DA, and I agree that nothing majorly obvious stands out.

Could you let me know how long this site has been around? It does appear to me that we may not have picked up all of the linking domains to this site as of now, which could be a factor in this DA change. I will dig in a bit more.

[m.gallagher]

That's a good point, we changed domains on October 9th last year and redirected all pages from the old site over. Link Explorer seems to be picking up all these though. Could there be a delay on the linking domains to the old site being passed through?

[IanWatson]

We are still hard at work on passing links via redirect. That paired with not picking up all of the Linking Domains to your site just yet is more than likely the culprit here.

[Libra_Photographic]

Love the new graphic, far easier to follow.

It would be nice to click through from the graphic to a breakdown of competitors stats too.

[IanWatson]

Hey Nathan - Great to hear that you are digging the new visual. Could you please give a bit more detail about your request for clicking through to view competitors stats?

[jessential]

Thanks to the Moz Team for your dedicated work creating the new Link Explorer. I find it does help to uncover a better overall story to understand DA changes and to compare competitor metrics. It is nice to see Moz consider how Google ranks a site and attributes greater trust, authority, and ranking power to one over the other

I will use this information to update our Healthy Backlink Profiles are Critical to Build Site Authority.

Thanks for the article Ian Watson.

 

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[Guest]

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[erude]

When looking at Inbound links, why is there such a discrepancy between Moz and Google Webmaster Tools.

Moz: 10.3 million
Google: 217,833

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[NickW816]

Yasss! So the past few years I have been a die-hard Ahrefs fan to be honest. However, the new Moz Link Explorer is my new favorite tool for link analysis by far. Well done on this tool and the stout index as well Moz team!