Moz Domain Authority 2.0 has landed
Moz 2.0 has arrived
I have secretly been fearing this day.
As the day grew closer, I found myself anxiously checking my Moz scores more frequently. I thought my scores would change come 1st March.
Just when I was breathing a sigh of relief, thinking I had escaped unscathed...
Nooooo...
my fears have been confirmed.
Moz 2.0 has arrived and it looks like I'm back to the drawing board.
Moz Scores have dropped on all 3 of my Niche Sites
Inspiring Mompreneurs has dropped a whopping 8 points from a DA of 32 to 24.
It's like the clock just dialed back a year.
Happy Human Pacifier had much less of a drop, only 2 points from a DA of 23 to 21.
Lauren Kinghorn has dropped 5 points, from a DA of 23 to 18.
Page Authority's are looking encouraging but clearly I have my work cut out for me this year.
Maybe it's time to accept some of those link exchange requests in my inbox.
Anyone else stressing about their Domain Authority this week?
Are your Moz scores up or down? Hope they're up for you!
Are some of you going...
Huh?
What's Domain Authority?
Israel Olatunji answers that question in this helpful tutorial:
What is Your Domain Authority?
PJ Germain explains how to download the Free Moz Toolbar in this popular tutorial:
Moz Toolbar - Page Authority, Domain Authority
Gotta go. I'm off to work through Israel's Tutorial on:
How to Increase Your Domain Authority
I bet you are too!
To Your Success
Recent Comments
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Thanks for sharing this. I guess, I won't be doing the sponsored posts like you suggested as quickly as I expected. My site's fell from 20 something down to 18.
Oh well, as you said - back to the drawing board.
Hi Sondra, totally up to you. A small drop in DA shouldn't affect you starting with sponsored posts if you feel that's a route you want to take.
1.) Nothing has changed. Moz just measures sites differently now. Anything that has resulted in your score dropping just means that either Moz measures it differently, or it is something you did months ago and therefore it's not like your site is suddenly worse than you thought it was.
2.) Moz scores are notoriously outdated (even though they've just updated them) and mean almost nothing. They don't accurately reflect how Google scores a website.
3.) I haven't checked my Moz scores in 3 years and all that happens is I make more money.
4.) Forget about Moz and just keep working on your site.
Thanks Dominic. That's somewhat reassuring.
While it's great to hear that Domain Authority has no bearing on your income, unfortunately, it may affect mine. I have clients who base what they pay me on Domain Authority.
For some it's a simple equation, they will pay me $20 when I publish their post on a site with a DA of 20, $30 for a site with a DA of 30 and so on. So a change in DA directly impacts my income. Not sure to what extent.
I know, I know, my income model needs work. I'm working on creating some online courses and other digital products this year.
I read an article today on Search Engine Land stating that MOZ scores are irrelevant for Google rankings! I don't know much else about it than that!
Thanks Mark. I'm not really looking at Moz to have any bearing on Google rankings but as an indicator my clients are interested in as some of them pay me based on Domain Authority.
Hello Laurenjean,
ahh that's a revelation! Hopefully they will take these changes into consideration, then. After all, it must be affecting a large range of sites, one would think.
Pleasure Matthew. Go for it but don't get too hung up on these things. They can give you sleepless nights (unnecessarily).
I am very interested to know if this has affected your traffic and by about what kind of %, would you share?
Hi Mark, I can't think my DA would affect my traffic - I rather think it was the other way around. My traffic stats have always been on the low side and they took another hit when StumbleUpon closed down. This was the main reason I was kind of expecting a lower score with this Moz update.
From what I understand, search engines do not use the Moz DA score to determine rankings. They have their own ways of analyzing sites. Many people will see a drop in DA but continue to get steady traffic.
Rather, the Moz DA gives you a metric to show how likely you are to rank among competitors. So it's a great tool to see how your site is coming along and the likelihood it will rank, and it tries to show you what Google may think of your site, but Google isn't going to use this score because they have their own algorithms to determine this.
Edited to add: So basically, this Moz update shouldn't impact your traffic because it's a tweak to their own algorithm, not Google's algorithm. Rather it's supposed to be a more realistic view of how things actually were before. If I'm wrong, hopefully someone corrects me! But this is how I understand it.
Moz score is based on backlinks. I wouldn't worry to much if you're still ranking for low hanging fruit. Mine dropped but rankings are the same.
Thanks, Steven. I'm pretty sure my keyword rankings would be unaffected. I have noticed I've lost a few links lately, not sure why. Maybe just because I've been distracted by my day job. Don't have that excuse anymore though.
Woohoo! Wrote my first blog post - took a couple tries that I had to totally scrap before I found my way. Hopefully, it gets easier and easier the more I do it. Now back to training!
My site is only a little over 5 months old, but I had a DA of 14 and now I'm down to 5. It honestly feels emotionally like I lost the last 5 months of work! :'(
I know that's not really how all this works, though, so that's what I'm using to give myself a pep talk. I was reading the Moz info on the updates and it said not to consider it a drop or increase, but rather a whole new score. So it's not a reflection that things suddenly went downhill. They said to compare it relative to competitors, not your previous score.
But it does seem like my competitors did not have as steep of a drop as me. :(
I hear you, Holly! That's exactly how I feel too. I've never really looked into who my competitors are so I can't really compare
Thanks for the pep talk, I needed it too. :) Commiserating with you.
Let's turn it all around this year, shall we? If we find a magic cure, I'll definitely blog about it here.
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Thank you for sharing Laurenjean but I don't know what Moz score is let alone what my score is. That sounds like a newbie but there is still alot of stuff that I don't know about.
Great post and I am sorry that your scores drop is there anything you can do to raise them again? I am hoping that they increase for you.
Mary
Thanks for caring, Mary. Don't stress about Domain Authority for now. See Dom's response below.
Thank you Laurenjean I read Dom's response and I won't worry about it. Thank you
Mary