Tons of Crappy links in new OSE (Open Site Explorer)
-
I am starting to miss the old OSE. I've found that for a lot of the pages on our site, the new OSE is showing WAY more links and most of them are garbage nonsense links from China, Russia, and the rest of the internet Wild West.
For instance, in the old OSE, this page used to show 9 linking domains:
http://www.uncommongoods.com/gifts/by-recipient/gifts-for-him
It now shows 454 links. Some of the new links (about 5 of them) are legitimate. The other 400+ are garbage. Some are porn sites, most of them don't even open a web page, they just initiate some shady download. I've seen this for other sites as well (like Urban Outfitters) This is making it much harder for me to do backlink analysis on bc I have no clue how many "Normal" links they have. Is anyone else having this problem ? Any way to filter all this crap out ? See attached screenshot of the list of links I'm getting from OSE.
-
Ok thank you. I will email directly.
-
Hey Zack,
Sorry to hear you're still having problems - we've seen an improvement on most sites at this point. Would you want to send me info on the site you're searching and any filters you are using?
If you don't feel comfortable posting that info on this thread, feel free to email me directly: [email protected].
Thanks!
Carin
-
Hey Carin,
I just wanted to follow up on this...I'm still seeing these spammy binary files show up as links. Unfortunately it makes OSE quite useless for me in regards to exploring our own backlinks.
What is the status of this problem? Has there been any headway ? Why does our site have problems but most others don't?
Thanks!
-Zack
-
Hey Zack,
Thanks so much for understanding! We are doing everything we can to get the bug resolved. Binary files are the downloadable files you see as links - .pdf, .exe, .img, etc.
I'm really sorry, but we don't have a URL to the old OSE. I saw Steven's response as a workaround - is that possible or are there too many file types to filter out?
Our crawlers that provide the metrics to OSE are always crawling, but will take about a month for our fix to propagate through to all the pages we crawl. Once we have removed these links from our crawlers, then we'll have to process the metrics. This is why it's looking like late September for the fix to show up.
I really appreciate your patience and understanding, we're doing everything we can to fix it!!
Thanks,
Carin
-
Hey Carin-
Thank you so much for this in-depth response. Glad to hear that you guys are aware of it and trying to sort it out. Very interesting info...I'd never hear of "binary" links before but I hope you guys can figure out how to handle these. Seems like a tough task to tackle, just by looking at my CSV it looks like these come in several different forms and they could be hard to identify..I have a few questions:
1. Is there by chance a URL you could give me that points to the old OSE ?
2. How often does OSE crawl? Is it a constant process or are there scheduled crawls?
Thanks!!
-Zack
-
Hey Zack, I saw the ticket you filed was answered by Aaron, but I just wanted to follow up with you as well. We have made some really exciting changes to the crawler, but, unfortunately, there is a pretty obvious bug as well...
The reason for the “questionable” links coming from the Internet Wild West is due to the crawler reaching much deeper into sites where there are more download (i.e. binary) links. The first issue is the crawler is counting a binary file as a link, but the larger issue, is that the crawler doesn’t really know how to handle these types of files. This bug is causing some links to be improperly associated with certain domains. This is probably what you're seeing with all the crazy links from China and Russia which don't actually link to the site you're researching.
There are two steps to addressing this issue: changing how the crawler sees these file types and then fixing how the crawler handles these file types. We have made improvements to our algorithm so that we will be handle the majority of these files correctly, however, this update will need about a month to propagate. The fix for this issue probably won’t be seen for two more updates, meaning late September. Our improvements should catch most of the issues, but there still could be a few cases we haven't addressed. If this happens, don't hesitate to let us know; we love feedback since it helps us improve and make our index even better!
The next step is to fix how our crawlers handle binary file links and prevent them from being improperly associated with certain domains. We are in the process of working through that issue right now. We’re doing everything we can to resolve this bug as we know it is alarming to see these “questionable” links associated with your sites.I hope this helps and thanks so much for being patient :)Thanks,Carin
-
2 ways:
- Get as CSV and spend the time going through it
- Wait it out
-
OK cool good info, hope they fix it soon!! Any good ideas on how you can filter this crap[ out ?
-
Hello Zack,
That is an issue that they are working on, I know this because I already discussed this with one of their help desk people. Here is the page that describes the changes: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/brand-new-open-site-explorer-is-here
In addition to that, here is some additional information I can share with you:
you may see “questionable” links with weird file extensions. This is due to the crawler reaching much deeper into sites where there are more download links. We are looking into fixing this bug as soon as we can so these won’t be counted as links.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Working with Open Site Explorer
Hi everyone, I'm new to keyword analysis, and am in the process of consuming a lot of SEOmoz articles and resources on the subject. I wanted to see if I'm correct in my analysis of two compared sites, and hope you can shed some light on the matter. I've been to the Google Keyword Tool and looked for my informational keywords for the project I'm working on, since the user intent is all about information. A not-so-great keyword phrase I've found with 12,100 local monthly searches is: "programa de inglês" (english programme) I'm just using this as a quick example. I have performed a Google search query for the above phrase from google.com.br (Brazil), and I'm comparing the #2 and #4 results from the 1st page of the SERPs which are: #2) www.programa-ingles.net and #4) http://www.baixaki.com.br/categorias/educacao-e-diversao.htm. What's confusing me is that in Open Site Explorer, the #4 result gets a much higher page authority compared to the #2 result, and beats #2 on every category except for internal–external link ratio and all the social categories. Here's an image attached of the comparison. Is it the fact that the external links of #2 account for 100% of the links pointing to it, or that the #2 position beats (rather pitifully) #5 on social sharing, or is it something that I've not stumbled across yet? Thanks in advance for helping out a n00b. 6HU6hBi.png
Moz Pro | | featherseo0 -
Why would my site return an error when using Open Site Explorer to crawl it?
I have built several new sites over the last few months for others, but recently built a new one for myself. I have gone through most of the checklists from this site to address on-page SEO, and now I am looking at link building. When using Open Site Explorer, I receive an error saying that no information about the URL is available, even when I add competitor sites. Wondering if this is a common issue and if there is a convenient remedy? thanks!
Moz Pro | | MindSpark0 -
Why doesn't OSE show results from sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, etc.?
I know OSE used to provide link data from these domains. But I have been doing link profile lookups on sites that I know have links from these domains - and they don't show up in my results. Just to make sure, they don't even show up when I sort the sites by domain authority.
Moz Pro | | ProspectMX0 -
OSE http or htps
Hello, Is OSE making any difference when crawling the web between http or https links? Will OSE show all links that point to my website regardless of them being http or https? Thank you Cornel Note: The Label for the search bar is http.
Moz Pro | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
SEO Moz analysing US site when I want it to analyse UK site
Hi there, I am trying to analyse the UK version of my website. However as the website is set to redirect people to the most relevant site and SEO Moz is based in the US, it is redirecting all the pages your crawling and therefore analysing US pages. So I am trying to look at the UK homepage but all the factors relate to the US site... Is there a way around this?? Thanks
Moz Pro | | MyTights1 -
SEOMOZ Crawling Our Site
Hi there, We get a report from SEOMOZ every week which shows our performance within search. I noticed for our website www.unifor.com.au that it looks through over 10,000 pages, however our website sells less than 500 products so not sure why or how so many pages are trawled? If someone could let me know that would be great. It uses up a lot of bandwidth doing each of these searches so if the amount of pages being trawled reduced it would definitely assist. Thanks, Geoff
Moz Pro | | BeerCartel750 -
OSE Backlink results - reported link not actually there?
Not a complaint, but a question to understand how the research tool operates: When I run backlink checks on websites, often the reported link is not only not on the page, but it's not found anywhere on the site. I use several tools to search for the link url as well as for the keyword. Why does the tool report a link is there, but I cannot find the links in some cases? Is there a lag in the information the tool is using, making it not quite up to date, or is it something else? Thanks much!
Moz Pro | | AdamThompson0 -
Link from home page
I see an abundance of websites that don't link out at all, and there is no data available to seoMoz for the sites, some like http:// regal - diving dot com (trying not to get moderated AGAIN Innocent need to show which link and its a competitor kind of) are not linking to anyone else just internal links. How come they dont show info to SEOMOZ Should I link out from home page, is this detrimental does ANY single link from home page show google that I am not a PROPER web business. thanks
Moz Pro | | landed0