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  4. Link Explorer Overview

Link Explorer Overview

Frequently Asked Questions

  • The index that powers Link Explorer is constantly updating to provide fresh link data. This does not mean that DA and PA will change with every data update; it will only change if we find new links to a respective site. Read more about how we index the web.
  • The Moz link index is built by crawling and indexing links. Our crawler, Dotbot, is built on a machine-learning based model that is trained to start with high-value links to gain a better understanding of how Google rankings work and calculate metrics like Page Authority and Domain Authority. Check out guide on how we index the web to learn more.
  • After being found, newly discovered links have the ability to be populated into our index in about 3 days. It may take longer for us to discover backlinks to your site based on factors like crawlability of the referring pages, as well as the quality of the links and the referring pages. It is a good idea to check to see if we've indexed the referring page on which that link is found. If we haven't indexed the referring page yet, you won't see your link in our index. You can use Link Tracking Lists to help monitor the discovery of your backlinks. Read more about how we index the web and how to investigate if we're not finding your links.
  • Once you’ve checked that the referring page can be indexed, we advise using Link Tracking Lists to help monitor the discovery of your backlinks. Be sure to check out our guide on how to investigate if we're not finding your links.
  • No, Moz does not have a way to see links on your site which point to other sites.

What's Covered?

Introduction to the Link Explorer Overview Page

Why Use the Link Explorer Tool?

Links (also called backlinks or inbound links) are created when one page links to another; you can think of them like votes that can pass visitors and link equity to your site from other pages on the web. Links are known to influence your rankings and are an important part of off-site SEO. There are many different flavors to earning or building backlinks. With tools like Link Explorer you can uncover valuable prospects, create a solid strategy, and track your progress.

Start Your Link Building

Start exploring links by entering the URL you want to research. You can select to see data for a root domain, subdomain, or exact page.

From the main Link Explorer page or from the overview section, enter the URL you'd like to research.

You can check your remaining query allowance, and the date it's due to be replenished, from under the search bar. This limit is based on your subscription level.

Your query balance will be noted below the search bar.

Link Metrics Overview Panel

Once you hit enter or click Analyze, you'll be taken to the Overview page. Here you'll see the Domain Authority, Linking Domains, Inbound Links, and Rankings Keywords. The Rankings Keywords count comes from our Keyword Explorer tool.

Domain Authority - Predicts a root domain's ranking potential in search engines based on an algorithm of link metrics

Page Authority - Predicts a page's ranking potential in search engines based on an algorithm of link metrics

Linking Domains - Number of unique root domains linking to a target. Two links from the same website will only be counted as one linking root domain

Inbound Links - (AKA, backlinks) A URL that links from a website back to your own site

Ranking Keywords - Number of keywords for which this site ranks within the top 50 positions. Defaults to Google US in Link Explorer, more locations are available in Keyword Explorer

The overview page offers various metrics at a quick glance right at the top of the page.

Quick Downloads

Under the Overview panel you'll see some Quick Download links so you can grab your data and start working on it in Excel. You can pick up your CSV from Export Notifications flag on the top right.

All Links - Export of inbound links

Inbound Links (backlinks) - An incoming link from a page on another website back to your own site

Follow Links - Links that do not have a nofollow tag, these are crawled and indexed by the search engines

Linking Domains - Number of unique root domains linking to a target. Two links from the same website will only be counted as one linking root domain

Follow Linking Domains - The number of domains with at least one follow link to any page on the root domain

Top Pages - Export of the Top Pages section of Link Explorer which compiles a site's most valuable pages based on key metrics

The quick downloads allow you to get data right away.

Discovered & Lost Linking Domains

Under Discovered and lost linking domains you can track when we found and lost linking domains over the last 60 days. This is handy for keeping track of the impact of your latest marketing campaign.

Discovered links indicates the date we found the link and it was added to the index — this doesn't always mean it's a brand new link, but rather it indicates when it was discovered by us. Similarly, lost links means our crawler was unable to find or crawl that link when it went back to that page.

To view which of your links were lost head to Inbound Links and filter the State by Lost.

Discovered and Lost linking domains shows you the count of links added to and lost from our index the last 60 days.

Metrics Over Time

Toggle between those all-important top level metrics like Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Linking Root Domains to view how they have changed over the 12 months.

Use the radio buttons to change the graph view.

Follow vs Nofollow

Next you'll see a breakdown of the number of follow and nofollow links for your site, internal and external.

The light blue portion of the bar illustrates follow links while the dark blue illustrated nofollow links.

Easily monitor follow vs nofollow links for your site.

Top Metrics

And finally, Top Metrics. Here you can get an overview of Top followed links to this site, Top pages on this site, Top anchor text for this site, and Linking Domains by DA.

Linking Domains by DA offers a visual representation of the distribution of this site's linking domains by ranges of Domain Authority. This can offer a quick way to see the quality of the Linking Domains pointing to your site.

Click on any of the headers in these modules to head to their specific section of the Link Explorer tool and dig further into this data.

The four modules at the bottom of the overview page are interactive. Click them to dig deeper into the data noted.

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