Just discovered Increase in Domain Authority

[gandmaindanda]

Hi everyone

I saw a hike in my Domain Authority(from 36 to 39) and decrease in no of links as showed in webmasters tools from 19,427 to 18,518 . And my domain is going through a Big URL restructure, thousands of URL's are in the process of redirecting. I thought DA is increased on a quarterly basis(or in 4-5 months). Could someone elaborate about this. Thanks in advance

[Planet13]

What are you using to measure domain authority?

If it is some third-party tool (as in, not an official google tool), then it is probably irrelevant.

[aristotle]

Many years ago there was an idea floating around for a method that a search engine could use to determine domain authority, although I think it might have been called "trust rank".

The idea was to have a human committee select a large number of high-authority sites using human judgement, and then manually assign a numerical authority value to each one. This would be the "seed set". Then any links from these initial sites would distribute some of their authority to other sites, which would then distribute it to more sites, and so on, in the same way that pagerank is transferred from site to site.

That was before the introduction of nofollow links, but it seems to me that even nofollow links should be allowed to transfer authority too. Of course all of this is hypothetical.

[EditorialGuy]

Here's an abstract from an academic paper about TrustRank (click the PDF link on the page below for the full version):

[ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090...]

The "PageRank vs. TrustRank" section of the full paper hits the high points for those who prefer text to math.

[Sand]

I'm assuming that you're using a third party tool to get the domain authority metric.

Remember that there is a team of people behind that tool, and they're tweaking things to make metrics better all the time. So it's also possible that they simply made a tweak, which rose your DA, even though nothing changed.

[gandmaindanda]

@Planet13 & @ Sand

Thanks for reply guys although i am using MOZ toolbar to measure my DA. And i would like to add that recently many national & Local News websites(& Few News TV Channels) had published news about my domain recently but most of them haven't given any link to my website(3 out of 8 sites has given me a "nofollow" link). Could this be a reason for my overnight increased DA.

[gandmaindanda]

@aristotle thanks buddy for this precious information.

[gandmaindanda]

@EditorialGuy Thanks for this amazing pdf, i appreciate your effort.

[Clay_More]

You might want to look at publication dates, things sometimes change every half decade or so.

[gandmaindanda]

@Clay More- These had been published recently , all of them within last 2 months

[Planet13]

Sticking my nose where it doesn't belong...

I beleive that Clay_More was referring to the PDF that EditorialGuy had posted, which are from 2004.

On the other hand, I believe gandmaindanda was referring to the mentions in the national news media.

Just saying this to help head off any possible further confusionment.

~~~~~

The bottom line, for me, anyway, is that the MOZ DA rank has always been one of the least useful metrics out there. Its accuracy is probably somewhere between the accuracy of Ms. Cleo and a Magic 8 Ball.

[elguiri]

The bottom line, for me, anyway, is that the MOZ DA rank has always been one of the least useful metrics out there. Its accuracy is probably somewhere between the accuracy of Ms. Cleo and a Magic 8 Ball.

LOL.

Not sure that that tool provider deserves all of its near messianic following.

[cptops]

@Planet13 is there a tool you recommend. I use moz pro to measure changes month to month more then I use it as a ruler. But I would love any recommendations to gauge url quality.

[EditorialGuy]

I beleive that Clay_More was referring to the PDF that EditorialGuy had posted, which are from 2004.

Yes, and my post was in response to Aristotle's comment that:

Many years ago there was an idea floating around for a method that a search engine could use to determine domain authority, although I think it might have been called "trust rank".

I'd say the PDF was a perfect match for what Aristotle was describing. Those who don't like history probably should have ignored both the PDF and Aristotle's post. :-)

[Planet13]

Well, so much for my attempts to "defuse" the situation ;)

[EditorialGuy]

Re TrustRank: Didn't Google file a patent a number of years ago based on the "seed site" idea? (I can't be sure, but I think so.)

In any case, Google may or may not be using "seed sites, " but it's been using human evaluators for QC purposes over the years, and it's certainly possible that examples of high-scoring sites are used in refining or training algorithms:

[searchengineland.com...]

[aristotle]

The way I remember it is that Yahoo was the first search engine to work on the trust rank and "seed sites" ideas. Whether they, or anyone else, has ever actually incorporated some version of the concept into a live ranking algorithm, I don't know.

[elguiri]

But I would love any recommendations to gauge url quality.

cptops, I use a couple of tools to gauge URL quality. I don't think it's within the TOS to name them so I'll explain the functions.

I look at the number of keywords for which a domain ranks in organic search. I then look at the total number of indexed pages in Google. Comparing these 2 things gives me a decent idea (no more than that) of the search engine visibility of a domain, which is better information than any tool's guess as to authority based on backlink lists. Take into account that no backlink tool can determine which linking domains are being ignored by search engines for link juice purposes (think most link directories, disavowed links, manually identified link sellers). Also, backlink tools are often excluded from indexing links on PBNs, and are blind to know how to value juice from redirected domains. One can imagine they'll get better over time, but at the moment they get it wrong a lot. It's better to try to measure a site's overall SEO visibility as a *guestimate* of quality - IMHO.