Top Pages

Frequently Asked Questions

  • The status code of Top Pages in Link Explorer isn't a live query of your site. This data comes from our Link Index and the information we gathered the last time we attempted to crawl and access those pages. If they have been updated/changed since we last crawled those pages, those updates won't be reflected in your backlink data in Link Explorer until we attempt to crawl those pages again. Read more about how we index the web.
  • If you're seeing a 403 status listed in your Top Pages report, this typically indicates that our index crawler, dotbot, is being blocked on a server level from accessing your site. To resolve the issue, please verify that dotbot is fully whitelisted with your server.
  • The status codes noted in Top Pages are based on the last time our index crawler, dotbot, crawled those pages and is separate from your Campaign’s weekly site crawl updates. Since Top Pages is not a live check of the pages listed, you may see status codes that are different than those reported in your weekly Site Crawl. Once dotbot recrawls those pages, the status codes will update accordingly.

What's Covered?

In this guide you’ll learn more about the Top Pages section of the Link Explorer tool. If you need help understanding terminology used throughout the tools, please see our glossary.

Quick Links

What are Top Pages?

Top Pages are a site’s most valuable pages based on key metrics. This can be useful in determining which pages you may want to focus on optimizing in the future and which pages are driving traffic your way.

Find Your Top Pages With Link Explorer

Link Explorer top pages menu location

To find the top pages for a site in Link Explorer, follow these steps from within the Top Pages section:

  1. Use the drop-down to select the scope of your search and see data for a root domain, subdomain, or exact page
  2. Enter the site you'd like to research into the search box and click Analyze
  3. You'll see a list of Top Pages sorted by Page Authority (PA)
Find the top pages for your site by entering in your root domain and clicking analyze to the right.

You also have the option to sort your Top Pages by clicking the headers of the Linking Domains and External Links columns.

Filter by Status Code

Within Top Pages you can choose to filter by HTTP status code. This can be particularly useful if you’re looking to identify pages pointing to broken links or ones returning a server error on your site.

You can use the option of filtering by status code to find links pointing to broken pages on your site.

View Links

Click on the magnifying glass in the View Links column to be taken to the Inbound Links tab in Link Explorer. The results shown will be filtered to show you links to that exact page from your Top Pages.

Click the magnifying glass to view inbound links to this page.

Export Your Data

You can export your data to CSV using the button on the right. If you have filters applied, the tool will export the filtered results. Once your report is ready, you can download it from the Export Notifications flag on the top right.

Please note: The number of rows you’re able to export from Link Explorer is dependent on your subscription level.

The link to export to CWSV is located to the right of the filter by status code drop-down.

Understanding Link Explorer Terminology

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.
Inbound Links (backlinks) - An incoming link from a page on another website back to your own site.
Linking Domains (Total Linking Root 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.
External Links (Total External Links) - All of the links to this page from other sites.
Outbound Domains - Number of domains linked out to from this page.
Status Code - The server’s response to our crawler, dotbot, when requesting this page.

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