Beware the Free Moz DA Checkers - inc. Moz's own - Domainers and backlinkers take note

If you know who I am, you know that I have been into domaining for well over a decade. In that time I have seen a lot of things that surprise me but few were quite as surprising as what I saw recently when looking through a bunch of domains.

This is a really big thing I noticed today. I found an expiring domain that my tools were showing as having a Moz DA of 30. In doing my due diligence and double checking I saw that, according to Moz's Free DA checker they (Moz) had no data, see below:


So that had me confused why my tool, using paid Moz API would show DA 31 and Moz's own DA checker would say no data.

I checked the moz toolbar and it was greyed out which happens when there is no data. I also checked other free DA checkers, that I had long suspected were scraping the free stats, yep they were showing the same "no data"

I then ran an API query (my paid moz API account) and saw the output showed the domain as having a DA 31. I then used moz Pro and checked their website:


Domain Authority 31!.

So now I see:
My tools show DA 31
Paid Moz API shows DA 31
Moz Pro website shows DA 31

Free Moz Checkers show no data / DA 0

So what does this show us? I don't really know but I can say that I am now not double checking stats before buying domains, I am having to triple check what the hell is going on with some of this stuff.

I'm lucky enough to have the ability to check the stats of millions of domains a week but not everybody is in that position and plenty of people are using tools that rely on these free endpoints for their data.

I don't really know what to say with regards to how to protect yourself and still get access to reliable free stats. I can't say that this is the most common thing I have seen but it has happened before. I brushed it off in the past but thought, sod it, I'll mention it in case others are being tricked by unreliable stats. If you see a claim about a high DA domain / backlink and your free checker shows DA of 0, try and get it confirmed by a paid account before assuming the 0 is the correct value.

I did a video going into more detail about this, as it shows my own products I wasn't sure if it was ok to embed it but I see others link to their own videos so it should be ok, you can see it here. I have tried to keep my products names away from this thread

Have any of you guys seen this? What is your suggestion for people having to rely on these free checkers or the cheaper services that pull these stats?

I actually saw this issue early / mid last week and sat on it. I decided to film the vid on Thursday and wasn't going to post here for fear of it being seen as self promo. Then I thought fug it, what is the point in being here if I can never share any of what I am seeing.

I have just checked, again, all of the things I mention here and the free moz DA page is still showing "no data", the toolbar is now showing the correct stats, though it was incorrect as recently as yesterday evening. Everything else is still correct at time of posting. Even if it is fixed now, that is almost a week of guaranteed incorrect data on that domain.

Well I can see few round here care about things like this but I'll leave an update for anyone that may be interested.

I have been in touch with Moz, after a couple of days I guess they are still looking into it because the page no longer states "No data", it now shows a HTTP 502 error: