Why did my DA and Links go down?

[Sika22]

How could I begin to research this to find out why we have less total links and a lower domain authority.

Our DA has gone down two points and our total links dropped by a few thousand.  I'd like to find out why that happened but I'm just not sure where to start.  Thanks!

[DonnaDuncan]

Well I'm glad to hear you've had a traffic increase at least!

We're seeing different things at Majestic. I'm seeing 124 different domains with deleted links. Examples include:

<colgroup><col width="470"></colgroup>
| http://blog.sellingpower[dot]com/ |
| http://www.honeywellaidc[dot]com/en-US/partners/Pages/find-a-partner.aspx |
| http://www.sellingpower.typepad[dot]com/ |
| http://www.dcvelocity[dot]com/whitepapers/ |
| http://spectrumsuppliermarketplace[dot]com/Listing/Index/Printing__Surface_Treatment/Bar_Coding/3497/681 |
| http://www.thomasnet[dot]com/products/barcode-labels-42422006-1.html |
| http://www.business[dot]com/technology/electronics/ |
| http://www.supplychain247[dot]com/company/supply_chain_services |
| http://fc.webmasterpro.de/stat.php?name=hotelab&source=referer |

I agree the purchasingandsupplysourcingguide link is active. I see that as well.

"A_nd I run my report against the same competitors every month but theirs actually increased_."  Sorry, here I don't know what report you're referencing. Are you saying you run Moz reports each month that tells you the number of links you and your competitors have? I thought Moz used Open Site Explorer data for that - the same data we're talking about so can't speak to that.

Lastly, yes - none of the tools are 100% accurate. They're all based on sampling and projections. Yes, I agree Moz estimates tend to be lower than other sources of link data.  I really think the reason you're seeing such a huge variation in link counts is because of the small number of sources you have for incoming links and the relatively small sample size Moz uses to make it's projections. I agree 80% is huge, but from what I can see in Majestic, you've lost 60% (124 of 198) of your link sources recently so that would explain it, at least partially.

That's the best I can come up with Ken.

[keboydjr]

I agree there are many factors. But I have worked tirelessly over the last year to add links. Actual traffic to our site has increased by 100% in that time.

Interestingly Google Webmaster Tools gives me 7021 total links. MajesticSEO gives me 4898 and the deleted links are actually not deleted, but probably changed/moved. And the 211 links listed as deleted in MajesticSEO are all duplicates of one site. The one that is listed as a lost link (211 times) in MajesticSEO is actually live at: http://purchasingandsupplysourcingguide.com/Guide/SearchListing?searchTerm=supply+chain+services&PageSize=10&PageNo=1&IsBasicSearch=True§ionType=&categoryId=0&headingId=0&rbPhraseType=1&StateProvince=&CityOrZip=&Radius=100&video=false&exhibitor=false.

So that's not accurate either. So we haven't lost a single link. And I've added more than that since the last update. And if we're talking sample size it should not vary more than 5-10%.

And I run my report against the same competitors every month but theirs actually increased.

I guess I can't trust any of the tools to be accurate. But, with all the other data, I know MOZ is under reporting. And I am only comparing previous MOZ reports after multiple MOZ updates, so I know that isn't the problem. There's definitely something wrong with reporting 80% fewer links but nobody will give me a straight answer.

[DonnaDuncan]

I'm not trying to be slippery here Ken, there are just so many factors to consider.

If you're talking about supplychainservices.com, I plugged it into a third link tool (MajesticSEO) and was told you have 4,195 backlinks from 198 different source domains. 124 of those sources are reporting deleted links, so it would seem to make sense that your numbers are dropping.

Different tools are always going to give you different numbers because their methods, sampling tools and timings differ. I find Webmaster tools tends to report the highest numbers.

If you've been seeing 15,000+ total links to your website in Moz for months, it could be that there was only one update to the Moz metrics in that time period. Moz data only gets updated about every 4-8 weeks, so your numbers are going to be static in between updates. (Here's the update schedule and history.) Depending on the sample size, the numbers could drop dramatically between updates especially given the small number of source domains you have linking to you with active links.

If you want a download of the MajesticSEO links, private message me and I'll forward them to you.

[keboydjr]

I have been showing over 15000 total links to our web site in MOZ for months. I continue to add links so I would naturally think that number would go up. This month MOZ only shows 3000, an 80% drop. I could live with some fluctuation but not that much. Even sampling should be more consistent than that over time. I'm just getting non answers from MOZ support. Google webmaster tools is showing over 7000. So I have 3 numbers and don't know which one is valid.

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi there Sika,

As Ryan says, it's normal to see fluctuations in domain authority and the number of links each new update. That's because the sample size and sources fluctuate from update to update. I'd worry if I saw this pattern continue over several updates or if I saw warnings in Google Webmaster Tools.

Domain authority and link quantities also naturally end to diminish over time unless you're making an effort to bolster and sustain them. That means you need a strategy and plan to continue to grow inbound links from authoritative sources to your site. If you're not doing that, you should be.

Have you really lost links, or is it an outcome of the sampling? To answer that question you'd need to have a baseline of the number of inbound links to your site from a variety of sources including Moz and maybe Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO or Ahrefs, and a few others. Then you'd need to compare your baseline to whatever you have today. Just remember none of the tools are perfect. They all sample rather than inventory, so you're just checking for patterns.

Hope that helps.

[RyanPurkey]

Moz just recently pushed their latest update: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/products/api/updates which tends to affect these numbers. The important thing is to check how you're comparing to your competition. Often they see fluctuations as well. With the previous update, Rand put out this post regarding fluctuations: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/have-questions-about-the-jan-27th-mozscape-index-update-get-answers-here:

...we crawled a massively more diverse set of root domains than ever before. Whereas our previous index topped out at 192 million root domains, this latest one has 362 million (almost 1.9X as many unique, new domains we haven't crawled before). This means that DA and PA scores may fluctuate more than usual, as link diversity are big parts of those calculations and we've crawled a much larger swath of the deep, dark corners of the web (and non-US/non-.com domains, too). It also means that, for many of the big, more important sites on the web, we are crawling a little less deeply than we have in the past (the index grew by ~31% while the root domains grew by ~88%). Often, those deep pages on large sites do more internal than external linking, so this might not have a big impact, but it could depend on your field/niche and where your links come from.

Cheers!