Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Moz Link Explorer

Moz Link Explorer
Formerly Open Site Explorer

Overview

What is Moz Link Explorer?

Link Explorer from Moz is a link building utility, replacing the former Open Site Explorer. Moz describes Link Explorer as a highly accurate link tool that lets users check the backlink profile and Domain Authority of any site. Moz was acquired…

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Open Site Explorer, used by The Search Guru's technical services and analytics reporting teams, is a valuable tool for examining the …
Continue reading

Solid SEO

8 out of 10
August 01, 2022
Incentivized
I use Moz Link Explorer to get a sense for what new sites are linking to my company's domain and track the success of our link building …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Popular Features

View all 14 features
  • Competitive analysis (8)
    9.0
    90%
  • Backlink management (7)
    9.0
    90%
  • Site audit / diagnostics (6)
    8.5
    85%
  • SERP ranking tracking (6)
    8.3
    83%
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

Moz Pro

$99

Cloud
per month

Moz Link Explorer

Free

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Return to navigation

Features

SEO

Core features related to search engine optimization

8.1
Avg 7.8

SEO Channels

Features related to optimizing your website for specific channels

7.4
Avg 7.6

SEO Platform & Account Management

Features related to scalability and integration of the SEO platform

7.2
Avg 8.4
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Moz Link Explorer?

Moz Link Explorer Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Link Explorer from Moz is a link building utility, replacing the former Open Site Explorer. Moz describes Link Explorer as a highly accurate link tool that lets users check the backlink profile and Domain Authority of any site. Moz was acquired by iContact in June, 2021.

Reviewers rate Backlink management and Competitive analysis and Integration with web analytics tools highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Moz Link Explorer are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(33)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Open Site Explorer, used by The Search Guru's technical services and analytics reporting teams, is a valuable tool for examining the quality of clients' and competitors' link profiles. Users heavily rely on the Domain Authority metric to gauge a site's strength in search engines compared to others in the same industry. SEO professionals use Open Site Explorer to analyze backlinks, develop link building strategies, and gain valuable SEO insights such as an overview of sites linking to a website and Page or Site Authority numbers. The tool also helps users gain insight into their competition's inbound links and identify the types of links needed for their own websites. Moz Link Explorer is trusted by marketing teams to improve SEO performance, understand inbound link profiles, and track the success of their link building strategies while assessing new sites linking to their domains.

Helpful Link Comparison Feature: Many users have found the link comparison feature in the tool extremely helpful, allowing them to easily compare link metrics side by side among multiple sites, including both their own website and competitors' sites.

Convenient Filter Options: Reviewers appreciate the ability to filter links based on various criteria such as link equity, followed and redirected links from external sites and internal pages. This feature makes it convenient for users to analyze specific types of links and gather valuable insights.

Export to Excel Functionality: The export to Excel functionality has been praised by many users as a great addition. It allows them to examine the links in detail and easily sort them according to their preference, enhancing their ability to work with the data outside of the tool.

Slow Excel report generation: Some users have mentioned that generating Excel reports in the tool can be time-consuming. They state that it takes a while for the reports to generate, which can be frustrating when they need quick access to data.

Lack of instant data export: Several reviewers express their desire for an instant export feature to quickly access and download data without any delays.

Advanced reports require subscription: A number of users note that advanced reports, necessary for larger websites, are only available with a subscription to Moz Pro, which may incur additional costs. Users find this requirement inconvenient and would prefer if these features were included in the standard offering of the tool.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Moz Link Explorer is a great tool for assessing a website’s top pages in terms of inbound links, the website’s overall backlink profile, the number and quality of linking domains, the types of anchor texts used to link to the website, as well as similar links between the website and competitors' websites. It’s a good SEO tool.
  • Moz Link Explorer has a straightforward and easy to use interface. It’s very simple to navigate and understand the data.
  • The anchor text tool gives you an idea of the most widely used anchor texts other websites use when linking to your site. It can raise a red flag when too many sites are linking to you using exact match keyword anchor texts.
  • It would be helpful to incorporate an in-app messaging tool for removing spammy links. After the links are added to a tracking list, this messaging tool can be used to reach out to websites to remove spammy links. And all of the progress will be tracked within Link Explorer.
If you would like a high-level overview of how healthy your backlink profile is, Link Explorer is a simple, straightforward and easy to understand tool for that. You can easily get a sense of how many backlinks, and what types of backlinks your website has and what types of anchor texts are used to link to your website. You can keep track of new and lost links over time as well as group spammy links in a folder. Furthermore, you can compare your backlink profile with that of other websites such as a competitor’s domain.
SEO (6)
60%
6.0
Backlink management
90%
9.0
SERP ranking tracking
N/A
N/A
Page grader
60%
6.0
Competitive analysis
80%
8.0
Site audit / diagnostics
80%
8.0
Task management
50%
5.0
SEO Channels (4)
N/A
N/A
Local SEO
N/A
N/A
Social SEO
N/A
N/A
Mobile SEO
N/A
N/A
Global SEO
N/A
N/A
SEO Platform & Account Management (2)
N/A
N/A
Multi-domain support
N/A
N/A
Integration with web analytics tools
N/A
N/A
  • I used the tool to help identify spammy links and create disavow files.
I think Moz Link Explorer is a great add-on to the overall Moz tool, but compared to Ahrefs, it’s not as robust because Ahrefs' main focus is on the backlink profile. I like SEMRush’s function of being able to reach out to websites directly from the platform and track all of your progress in there.
I’m not qualified to give a rating for this because I’ve never used support specifically for Moz Link Explorer. On the site there are “what’s new” and “help” sections to help those who need further assistance. Also there is a ton of great content regarding SEO and backlinks on the Moz website.
February 18, 2020

I miss Open Site Explorer

Scott Walker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Open Site Explorer to gain valuable SEO information for our clients. The tool was fantastic to get an overview of the sites linking to your website (or web page) and get valuable metrics like a Page or Site Authority number. It also gave SEOs a game plan on what to work on to get the site better searchable performance. Removing spam links, building authoritative links, expanding content or getting better authority scores, finding and removing broken links, etc.
  • Estimating Page Authority and Site Authority
  • Listing Linking Domains and Pages
  • It was outdated
  • It featured many disproven metrics
As much as I'd love to recommend Open Site Explorer, Moz has discontinued the program and replaced it with Link Explorer. Though Link Explorer offers some of the same information and has more updated metrics, the old Open Site Explorer also gave more site-wide information that was useful for meta analysis and competitive metrics.
SEO (8)
68.75%
6.9
Keyword analysis
70%
7.0
Backlink management
100%
10.0
SERP ranking tracking
50%
5.0
Page grader
60%
6.0
Competitive analysis
70%
7.0
Site audit / diagnostics
100%
10.0
Site recommendations
50%
5.0
Task management
50%
5.0
SEO Channels (4)
67.5%
6.8
Local SEO
40%
4.0
Social SEO
90%
9.0
Mobile SEO
40%
4.0
Global SEO
100%
10.0
SEO Platform & Account Management (1)
100%
10.0
Multi-domain support
100%
10.0
  • Took hours of manual work and programatically did it in a few clicks
  • Gave a game plan for future SEO strategies
When it still existed, Open Site Explorer was one of, if not the, best freemium SEO tools. Not only did its free-tier offer amazing insights and data for SEO strategy, but its paid program offered additional resources for SEO. I think it worked better than Screaming Frog because it didn't live on your machine and thus was a cloud tool. Its interface was fresher than some of the other tools. And, before it was replaced, it was probably the most authoritative tool for SEO testing and evaluating.
I put a middling score here because of the difference in support between the free and premium uses. The Free tool was a great service, but there wasn't much support. It was tool that was intended to have a skilled SEO utilize it and save time. The Premium version has great support, but also offered more information so that skilled SEOs and novices alike could benefit from the tool.
Return to navigation