Need help understanding/analyzing big mozRank, links jump | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Over just the past 7 days, Money Counselor's mozRank jumped from 3.94 to 4.87 and the number of external links increased something like 20-fold to over 15,000 (according to Open Site Explorer). I've taken a quick look at 'Links to Your Site' through Google Webmaster Tools and see nothing especially suspicious (at least to my untrained eye).

Any ideas on what's going on here? And any suggestions please for how I might better analyze and follow-up? I'm concerned something undesirable has happened or is happening that I need to counter.

Thanks for your help!

retireby40 said:

Hi Kurt,

I think they update the metric only once in a while. So you'll see Mozrank stuck at 3.94 for months and then jump to 4.87 suddenly. When was the last time you saw an update? I don't know about external links, maybe you had a lot of incoming links over the last few months? 

Thanks Joe. Unfortunately I don't recall when the mozRank last updated. Why I'm suspicious though is the gigantic jump in external links over just seven days, from something like 600 external links to 15,000+. I don't know much about this stuff, but maybe the mozRank increased largely because of the external link increase? And I'm concerned that huge jump in external links over a week signals something nefarious going on…

sooverdebt said:

Have you checked your trackbacks/pings? I got hit with a TON of trackback spam a few months ago – definitely several thousand – and had to go through and delete them all manually. I disabled trackbacks completely to keep it from happening again.

That's a good thought, thanks. I haven't seen anything unusual so far, but will keep monitoring.

Seems to me very weird that right now Open Site Explorer reports 17,636 "Total Links" (I'm guessing this includes internal) to Money Counselor, apparently all from only 90 "Linking Root Domains". Or maybe I'm jumping to an incorrect conclusion there. Meanwhile, and again at this moment, Google Webmaster Tools reports 4,178 "total links" to Money Counselor. I'm not sure if this number has similarly and mysteriously jumped in the past week…

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to think about this and post.