Compare Link Profiles

In this guide you’ll learn how to compare the link profiles of up to five sites using the Compare Link Profiles section of the Link Explorer tool.

Quick Links

• Compare Link Profiles For Up To Five Sites
• Metrics Over Time Graph
• Understanding Link Explorer Terminology

With the Compare Link Profiles section in Link Explorer you can view competitive link metrics over time for up to five sites.

To get started, follow the steps below within the Compare Link Profiles section of Link Explorer:

1. Enter the site you'd like to compare into the search box and click Analyze
2. Enter a competitor in the additional search box
3. Click Add another URL to add additional competitor sites (up to 5)
4. Click Analyze again to refresh the data shown to include the chosen competitor sites
5. Select if you’d like to compare data for the Root Domain, Subdomain, or Exact Page entered

Please note: Community accounts will be limited to one competitor site.

In the chart below, if a cell is marked in green, this indicates that the site marked has the best score for that particular metric. Metrics which have an associated section in Link Explorer will be blue and hyperlinked. Click on the metric value to head to that section of the tool and dig deeper into the data noted.

Below the comparison chart, you will see 3 bar graphs which compare the Linking Domains, External Follow Links, and External Links counts for each of the sites entered. This allows you to quickly see how you stack up for these key metrics.

The Metrics Over Time graph allows you to see how you and your competitors have performed for key metrics over the last 12 months. The default view for this graph is Domain Authority over time with the options to view Page Authority and Linking Domains over time. Click the buttons below the graph to remove them from the graph.

More definitions are available in our Glossary.

Domain Authority (DA) - Domain Authority is a Moz proprietary metric from 1-100 which predicts how well a domain will rank in Google based on a machine learning algorithm of link metrics.

Page Authority (PA) - Page Authority is a Moz proprietary metric from 1-100 which predicts how well a page will rank in Google based on a machine learning algorithm of link metrics.

Total links - The total number of internal, external, follow and nofollow links.

% of Total Links, External + Follow - This shows you the percentage of total links that are external and follow = [total external, followed links] / [total links].

External Followed Links - Links to the site from other sites that are followed (they do not have a "nofollow" tag added to the link.)

Internal, Followed Links - A link that goes from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain, that are followed (they do not have a "nofollow" tag added to the link.)

External, Nofollowed Links - Links to the site from other sites, that have a nofollow tag, search engine crawlers not to crawl and index the site.

Internal, Nofollowed Links - A link that goes from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain, that have a nofollow tag, search engine crawlers not to crawl and index the site.

Total 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.

Followed Linking Domains - The number of domains with at least one followed link to any page on the root domain.