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Linking Root Domains is pretty good as a raw metric. I actually did a whole whiteboard Friday on uses for link metrics specifically for link analysis - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-link-metrics-should-i-use-part-2-of-2-whiteboard-friday

Honestly, in addition to Moz metrics, I'd be looking at where and whether the site/page links out (if they link to crappy spots, it could be trouble) and whether the page ranks well for the keywords it targets (pages that don't rank in the top 5 for obvious title match KW searches might be trouble).

Wow! You caught that fast Thanks Sha - glad we can keep in close touch with everyone around this issue.

Not too big a problem to have slightly longer title. Just be aware that how they display in SERPs can affect CTR, which can affect rankings. You can use https://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool to get a good view of that.

Weird. KW Difficulty should be functioning as of yesterday afternoon. Can you try again and if you encounter an issue, send it to help@seomoz.org with your account info?

Yeah - I've seen numerous examples of scraper-type sites like this that change up their content and/or have dynamic flux that means a crawler might see a word/phrase/sentence/link that later disappears. Frustrating, but hard to account for. Long term, we'll try to work on ways to exclude sites like it from the index.

Bing's linkfromdomain: command might be useful just to get a sense of what the site links to generally. But, I'd probably only do that if you have a sense that you should be worried (e.g. there's weird sitewides or they run a spammy reciprocal links directory or sell links somewhere, etc).

Hi Dustin - so sorry about that. You can also email our help team and they may be able to check into what's preventing the Google Analytics connection from fully disconnecting. You can reach them at help@moz.com.

Hi Olivier - sorry the responses to date haven't been to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, there's not a ton I can do to provide more detail/color. Metrics are going to change every index, sometimes substantially when we change what we're crawling or how we calculate metrics. The relative comparison between self/competitors/broader field should remain fairly useful/usable as a way to think about data between indices, but I can't argue the point that right now, comparing/thinking historically about Linkscape metrics is rarely useful.

We do hope that as we get more stable, make greater improvements and achieve wider/larger indices, the historical comparisons will become more useful and usable, but that's still many months off.

Hi Kyle - yes, we had to change to individually fetching the top 10, then 11-20, then 21-30, etc. This could have changed ranking positions in the 11+ range more significantly, though we haven't seen widespread reports of this. I would note that results past 20 are usually far more volatile than those on the first page.

Yes indeed! Check out https://moz.com/help/guides/getting-started/campaign-setup

This is very similar to a lot of reputation management campaign work. There's a small section of the blog devoted to this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/19 with some great posts like http://www.seomoz.org/blog/our-online-reputation-management-playbook and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/reputation-management-seo-6-advanced-tactics

Hope those help!

Hi Nima - that seems like a big swing for a move. I might double-check that all the redirects are correct and that engines are indexing the new pages properly. Google Webmaster Tools may be helpful there, too.

As far as timeframes for seeing traffic dip and recover, yes, we have observed that - it ranges from 1-4 months. You can see more about that here: https://moz.com/blog/rebrand-or-redirect-my-site-consolidate-multiple-sites-whiteboard-friday and in the comments.

Wish you all the best!

There's been a long debate about links in the footers of websites you create. My best suggestion here is - instead of a link on every page of the site, just put a link on the about page of the website indicating that you built the site. It's a more obvious link for human users, the about page is linked to by every other page on the site, and it's unlikely to get into any trouble with filters that Google might build around sitewide footer links (many of which are often manipulative).

Hi James - this change won't impact SEOmoz rankings. We're planning to maintain that data long term (as many other companies do. You might be interested to read my previous responses to this question a couple times at the URLs below:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/are-seomoz-ranking-in-jeopardy

http://www.seomoz.org/q/so-apparently-seo-moz-will-get-us-de-indexed-according-to-a-seo-company

Let me know if I can answer any other questions about this for you!

Thanks Matt I'm proud of the team's work on growing the index thus far. I think we've reached the top of where we can go with the current index's infrastructure, so I'd expect sizes will stay in this range for the next 5-6 updates at least.

For the last 4 years, we have been working on a new infrastructure for our indices - something closer to what Google does with real-time processing via caffeine (though not quite as robust), and we're planning to launch that in Q4 of this year, at which time, our index can grow much bigger and much faster (it'll also be fresher, included lots more kinds of data, etc). That system also won't be limited by software (which holds us back today), but rather by hardware (which we can and will buy more of). I really can't wait for that

Our scores for DA are only calculated on the root domain, but that doesn't mean different subdomains inherit all the ranking abilities of the root domain they're on. In fact, quite the opposite is true, which is why we still strongly suggest using a single subdomain on your root domain to host all the content, rather than splitting things up on multiple subdomains.

We used to have some stuff for sale on Cafepress, and I think once we get new stuff with the Moz brand, we'll re-create that.

Also, very flattered that you're interested!

Hi Jason - we do have some continual improvement plans for OSE and for our metrics. Obviously, the Just Discovered links feature was one of the most recent and valuable ones. We also do refactor and recalculate Page Authority/Domain Authority on a regular basis to make them better correlated with changes to Google.

On the longer-term horizon, we're planning a webspam metric, and we may be using more data from social and fresh web to improve PA/DA.

Yup - I'm seeing the same team. Have let our engineers know - hopefully they can sort it out and fix soon.

Hi Shop-Sq,

A) I think merging the domains is almost definitely the right move, so long as you do it right (get the redirects nailed, don't have any performance issues, update the links correctly, etc).

B) I don't believe there's any penalty coming for shopping sites that also happen to host forum content or blog content. The only risk is if a lot of the site becomes (or is) cruft, meaning low-engagement/low-value content Google doesn't want in its index or searchers never click on/stay on.

C) We have not seen what your developers describe. Some forums haven't done well, others have done quite well (e.g. Moz's Q+A has benefited a lot over the last few years). I don't believe any hiccups you encounter will be because the types of content are unique, but rather because of technical issues, missteps, or content that doesn't help searchers and doesn't perform in Google (and all three should be avoidable).

D) Yes. We/I still recommend subfolders over subdomains. More strongly than ever actually. We've got some new evidence that Google judges content on a subfolder level, hence subdomains may not inherit all the rankings abilities of subfolders/other subdomains on the same domain.