Charles Floate

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You are here: Home / Rants / An Open Letter To @Moz

An Open Letter To @Moz

August 25, 2016 by Charles Floate 21 Comments

An Open Letter To @Moz

Dear Moz,

In the past few weeks it’s come to my attention that you’ve been laying off staff in your community and content departments. Though your official reason is a “re-focus” I’m not sure that’s the whole truth.

In my eyes, as an SEO fanatic, not a content marketer, not a brand manager, an SEO… You’ve been going down hill.

Not only have you been neglecting a HUGE portion of the people who got you to where you are today, but you’ve been almost criminal in your cult like attitude to that of a warped ethical standpoint that anything Google says is the word of god. So much so, that you’ve been ignoring or downright lying when it comes to what actually works.

Gone are the days of trial and error, and instead you opt for the rules Google have written and the words of those that have been hired to enforce it. Not those that are in the front lines, actually doing the work.

This is not something that has been recently happening, it’s been transforming the company for years and taking it down a slippery slope. Just 6 years ago you were running trials on buying links, and guess what happened? You didn’t get penalized, in fact.. It worked.

This kind of testing, pushing the boundaries and working for the common man have been thrown out the window. Instead, opt’ing to listen to those that have been disproven time and time again.

In an email, one of your editors once said “We do not cover anything on the blog that is in violation of Google’s guidelines” – This show’s how ridiculous the zombie-like following of everything Google says has in fact damaged your core values. Not shedding light on what works, in favour of shedding it to what Google wants does not help your end user, it helps Google, and in the end… Seemingly has not helped your business.

Your tools are also in a state of disarray.

Open site explorer’s former glory has seen it’s haydays, with the most I’ve seen it used for recently (outside of the Moz blog) is giving the DA of a link someone is trying to sell, out of force of habit. Your index size, update speed and interface for the tool has been outclassed, outscaled and out done by almost every competitor on the market. Sheesh, even SEMRush have been showing more referring domains than you have from tests. Ahrefs & Majestic are in a whole other league.

Your OnPage audit tool hasn’t really been improved or majorly updated in years, and just like OSE has been completely outclassed by a number of desktop & browser based tools. A lot of them you can get for free, albeit limited usage available.

What ever happened to FollowerWonk? Your tool teams bear minimum attitude has meant you’ve once again been outdone by those willing to go further, and faster.

Your keyword research tool returns poor results, Moz Local can’t seemingly pick up a businesses name correctly to save it’s life, your content auditor get’s outclassed by the default Yoast plugin, your rank tracker is too slow in comparison to others on the market and the only thing keeping you from being a complete waste of time is the small(ish) fee’s you charge every month for such a wide array of tools. It’s just a shame about 90% of those tools can be outclassed by most of the free, or more affordable options available.

The only reason you have such glistening testimonials on your Pro page from such big names, is because 2 paragraphs of hypey BS is worth a dofollow link from your site.

You have a bumpy ride ahead if you want to compete with the likes of Ahrefs now, who have made waves of tool advances that have left you in the dust. Along with their very open, data-driven approach to content, which has gained them favour from all sides of the SEO industry. Rather than the small cult you’ve created, alienating segments of the community, Ahrefs has shown to look at what works, not what is seen as good for the enterprise level, whilst ignoring the realism of the smaller guys.

Your elaborate posts on technical content re-shapeing aren’t going to work for a 5 page mom & pop business, and that’s exactly your problem. You are trying so hard to cater to the big guys, when you can’t supply the big data effectively.

Do one or the other, or succeed a lot more by doing both.

I wish you the best of luck.

Regards,

Charles Floate.

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Lalit Taparia
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Lalit Taparia

Well put Charles. I rarely see moz DA, rather prefer TF &CF

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2 years ago
Joshua Hardwick
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Joshua Hardwick

I honestly think the problem with Moz is that they’ve tried to do too much.

I mean, they’ve got their community (i.e. the blog + youmoz), followerwonk, OSE, moz local, the “keyword difficulty” thing, and god knows what else. It’s just too much and like you say, companies specialising much more in one area (e.g. Ahrefs) are creating better products.

I used to use Moz primarily for OSE, but that alone isn’t worth the $99/month fee, and Ahrefs does the job a billion times better for a lot less (IMO Ahrefs is where it’s at with pretty much everything these days).

I also personally think the UI over at Moz is behind the competition. Again, Ahrefs really know what they’re doing here. It’s a pleasure to use, and Tim Soulo popping up every now and again to introduce new features doesn’t even annoy me (as it probably would on most sites – god I hate pop-ups), because they’re genuinely always useful!

Anyway, I think the only area I’d disagree is on the blog/youmoz front; I still think that on the whole it’s a ridiculously good resource, especially for the more technical stuff. Ahrefs isn’t far behind though; they’ve been publishing some epic stuff recently.

^^ just thought I’d follow your rant with another pointless rant, haha.

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2 years ago
Charles Floate
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Charles Floate

I agree, the UI sucks, it’s very broken up into tons of different designs as well. Just stick with one overall design, jeez!

The difference between the Moz and Ahrefs blog, is Ahrefs publish data driven content that tests what works, whereas Moz completely ignore a lot of things to stay within the guidelines.

The only downside for me on Ahrefs is their pricing update, which I already made a video on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haz6AlZJBRs

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2 years ago
Joshua Hardwick
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Joshua Hardwick

Wow, didn’t even know about this. 25/day is just ridiculous. I get that they’re probably wanting to push people towards their pricier plans, but still.

I usually find myself doing a lot of work in Ahrefs on certain days, and pretty much zero on days following. If they just did 750/month (same as 25/day but not daily limits) I wouldn’t really care, but I get the feeling I’ll be hitting that limit pretty often in future.

But yeah, the Moz UI is an absolute mess, rarely use it anymore (except for the odd bulk DA/PA extract via their API, but I use URL Profiler for that anyway so don’t have to deal with their UI).

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2 years ago
Charles Floate
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Charles Floate

That’s exactly my point, some days I’ll hit the limit in an hour or 2.. Which is really frustrating.

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2 years ago
Costa
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Costa

Brilliant!

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2 years ago
Phil
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Phil

Good points. I’m even disappointed in their Domain Authority & Page Authority metrics, which can easily be manipulated.

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2 years ago
Charles Floate
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Charles Floate

Though all the other metrics can be manipulated too, DA/PA is by far the easiest.. It hasn’t seemingly been updated (effectively) in recent history either. So completely agree.

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2 years ago
Vishal
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Vishal

moz is like yahoo in many ways… think about it.

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2 years ago
James
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James

And here comes the back link from moz…well played Charles, well played. This my friends is how you build links 😉

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2 years ago
Charles Floate
Author
Charles Floate

Haha, I also genuinely dislike a company firing 28% of it’s staff because of poor management decisions 😉

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2 years ago
Michael
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Michael

“Moz Local can’t seemingly pick up a businesses name correctly to save it’s life”

Totally agree with the above quote Mr Floate!

Moz Local is totally S**T! Signed up nearly six months ago and still not indexed with their so called PARTNER network of basic directories! (You know the normal ones’s like the Sun, Mirror,Free Index etc!) Turns out you have to do it manually yourself anyway! Sorry what was the £84 a year for again MOZ????

And don’t get me started on the’re so called DUPLICATE LISTING DETECTION! Couldn’t find their own backside with both hands in DAYLIGHT LET ALONE NIGHT TIME in my opinion!

Like Mr Floate said above:-

“Moz Local can’t seemingly pick up a businesses name correctly to save it’s life”

Thanks for saying out loud what I was thinking and wanted to say Mr Floate!

Stay away from these Google indoctrinated morons!

I would like to post stronger words but I shall refrain for now.

I hope this post was helpful to the readers of this blog.

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2 years ago
Dennis C
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Dennis C

Nice post. Ahrefs is where it’s at. Not even DA/PA is reliable because of their index.

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2 years ago
Charles Floate
Author
Charles Floate

I think the way they gauge DA/PA is what makes the metric useless, but not having the data to support gauging the value of a site is what really kills it.

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2 years ago
Dino Gomez
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Dino Gomez

Drop the MIKE.

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2 years ago
Charles Floate
Author
Charles Floate

Mic* 😉 But thanks haha!

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2 years ago
Tom Buckland
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Tom Buckland

I agree with the majority of what you’ve said here. Trying something and failing isn’t an issue we’ve all done that (alot.) But failing to even try and show all sides of SEO as one of the biggest SEO blogs in the world (if not the most well known name) is just stupid. SEO Case studies are what benefits the market most. If you can say & show “This works but these are the risks” that’s a lot better than simply saying “This is what to do.” …… Which essentially is what every single post has been for the last few years…

As for the tools, in my opinion Ahrefs is in a class of its own above majestic and obviously moz nowadays.

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2 years ago
Charles Floate
Author
Charles Floate

Bingo, you should case study what works, and declining to post relevant information on the basis that you deem it to be some sort of ethical (As if Google is the golden boy) violation is just ridiculous.

In terms of the link checker tool Ahrefs has, Majestic & Ahrefs have differing but similar data points and 2 very different price points, Moz just gets smashed by both.

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2 years ago
Alban
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Alban

This article Charles just confirmed my rookie SEO thoughts. A great one. It’s been months I stoped using MOZ for at least anything! Maybe a DA/PA sometimes but when I see how much referring domains it has indexed it’s equal to ZERO it’s DA/PA. Ahrefs and Majestic all the way

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2 years ago
Jack
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Jack

Loving this!!

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2 years ago
Carlos Polanco
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Carlos Polanco

Times are tough and sadly they are going to get worse.

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2 years ago
ABOUT ME
Charles Floate
I'm a British SEO consultant specializing in link building. I run an E-Commerce SEO Agency & a small affiliate site empire. This is my blog, where I cover online marketing strategies, tutorials, news and do product reviews.

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