Most people meet Moz through a number before they meet the company. A Domain Authority score shows up in a browser toolbar, in a link-building pitch, or inside another SEO tool, and someone asks what “DA” means. The answer leads back to Moz, a company that has been publishing SEO advice for more than 20 years and selling SEO software for most of that time. This guide explains what Moz is, where it came from, what each Moz product does today, and where to go next for the details.
What Moz Is, and How This Guide Was Put Together
Moz is an SEO software and education company: it sells Moz Pro, Moz Local, Moz AI Explorer, STAT and the Moz API, and it gives away free tools, a blog and a Beginner’s Guide to SEO, according to its About page and product comparison page. That mix of software and teaching is what makes the brand hard to sum up in one line.
One thing up front. Indie Stack Lab has not run Moz through our test list. Every Moz fact in this guide comes from moz.com pages that we read on October 24, 2026, with a US-English browser. The only first-hand numbers here come from two other tools we did run, Mangools and Ubersuggest, which both display Moz’s metrics. We label those numbers each time.
Why write a “what is Moz” guide at all, then? Because the questions people search for, from “who owns Moz” to “what happened to Moz Analytics,” are spread across dozens of Moz pages and old announcements. Putting the answers in one place saves you an afternoon of clicking.
A note on money: Indie Stack Lab may add affiliate links to some tools later. Affiliate links are labeled when they appear, and they do not change what this guide says.
Key Takeaways
Moz is a smaller name than its biggest rivals: as of October 2026, 4% of organizations with a vendor in the SEO category use Moz, according to Ramp’s vendor data, which is built from transactions on Ramp’s own platform. Moz started in 2004 as the SEOmoz blog, took the name Moz in 2013 and has belonged to Ziff Davis through iContact since 2021. Moz Pro is the main product, Domain Authority is its best-known metric, and a free account covers small lookups only.
What Is Moz? The Short Answer
Moz is an SEO company whose About page sums it up in one line: “We know SEO. In fact, we wrote the blog on it.” In practice, it sells four paid products, starting at $45 a month for Moz AI Explorer and $360 a month for STAT, per the Moz products page, plus an API and a set of free tools.
Here is the product family on one screen. Prices are the starting prices on each official page, in US dollars.
| Product | What it does | Starting price | Official page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moz Pro | All-in-one SEO suite: keyword and link research, site crawl, weekly rank tracking, reports, AI visibility | $49/month (Starter) | Moz Pro pricing |
| Moz Local | Business listings, reviews and local social posts | $199/year (Lite, billed yearly) | Moz Local pricing |
| Moz AI Explorer | Tracks how AI answers mention and cite a brand | $45/month | Moz products |
| STAT | Daily, large-scale rank and prompt tracking for brands and agencies | $360/month | Moz products |
| Moz API | Moz’s link, keyword and authority data for your own apps | Free tier, then $20/month | Moz API pricing |
| Free tools | Domain Analysis, MozBar, limited Keyword and Link Explorer, MozCast | $0 | Free SEO tools |
So is Moz a tool or a company? Both. When people say “Moz” in a sentence like “check it in Moz,” they almost always mean Moz Pro or one of the free tools. Plan-by-plan limits, the trial and the add-ons are in our breakdown of what each Moz Pro plan costs and includes.
From SEOmoz to Moz: A Short Company History
Moz was founded by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004 under the name SEOmoz, and it “started as a blog and an online community,” according to the Moz Story on its About page. The company’s path from there runs through a consulting phase, a software pivot, a broad marketing push and a return to search.
Here is the timeline, using only Moz’s own pages:
- 2004. Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig start SEOmoz. Moz says the blog and community published the Beginner’s Guide to SEO and the first Search Ranking Factors study, and that work grew into a small consulting firm.
- 2007. Moz shifts from consulting to software and takes its first round of funding to build new tools.
- 2009. The About page says Moz reached its first 5,000 subscribers, wrote down its core values as TAGFEE, and started filming Whiteboard Friday videos.
- Series B. A Series B round from The Foundry Group funded a move into broader inbound marketing. Moz bought the Twitter analytics tool Followerwonk and GetListed, a local SEO tool that, in Moz’s words, “has evolved into today’s Moz Local.”
- 2013. SEOmoz becomes Moz. The same year, Moz released Moz Analytics, a campaign-based suite with content, social and brand features. Around the same time, Sarah Bird became CEO.
- 2016. Moz reverses course. In Moz is Doubling Down on Search, dated August 17, 2016, Sarah Bird wrote that the company would focus on “core SEO such as rank tracking, keyword research, local listings” and would no longer offer Moz Content or Followerwonk.
- 2018. Moz launches Link Explorer and, on October 10, announces that it has acquired STAT Search Analytics, the daily rank tracker (Moz acquires STAT).
- 2021. On June 4, Moz announces that it “has been acquired by iContact Marketing Corp” (Moz blog).
Who owns Moz today?
Who owns Moz in 2026? The About page says “the Moz Group was formed in 2021 following the acquisition by iContact (a subsidiary of Ziff Davis (NASDAQ: ZD)).” The footer of moz.com reads “SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company.” The 2021 announcement itself named iContact’s parent as J2 Global, and the About page now names Ziff Davis. Either way, Moz is not an independent startup anymore. It sits inside a larger public company that also owns email marketing brands.
Where the name comes from
Moz says its name “was inspired by organizations like DMOZ, Mozilla, and Chefmoz,” which it describes as projects built on openness with their communities. That explains the “moz” in SEOmoz. Dropping the “SEO” in 2013 matched the broader marketing focus of that era, and the shorter name stayed after Moz returned to search in 2016.
Moz Pro: The Paid SEO Toolset
Moz Pro is Moz’s all-in-one SEO suite, and its product page says “500,000 marketers trust Moz Pro,” a figure from Moz itself (Moz Pro). It bundles keyword research, link research, a site crawl, weekly rank tracking, competitive research, custom reports and AI visibility tracking across GPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode.
The Moz Pro pricing page lists Standard at $99 a month, Medium at $179 and Large at $299, or $79, $143 and $239 a month when you pay yearly. An entry-level Starter plan costs $49 a month and is “designed specifically for individuals managing a single website.” Standard covers 3 tracked sites and 300 tracked keywords; Large covers 25 sites and 3,000 keywords.
What does each tool inside Moz Pro actually do? That is a long answer, and our tool-by-tool guide to Moz Pro covers Keyword Explorer, Link Explorer, Site Crawl, rank tracking, On-Page Grader and Competitive Research one by one. For this guide, two points are enough. First, everything that runs on a schedule, such as rank tracking and the site crawl, lives in a “campaign,” and campaigns need a paid plan or trial. Second, the free account and the paid plans use the same tools, only with very different limits. And if AI answers are the only thing you want to watch, Moz sells that part on its own as Moz AI Explorer; our roundup of dedicated trackers for brand mentions in AI answers compares four alternatives.
Moz Local: Listings Management for Local Businesses
Moz Local manages a business’s listings, reviews and local social posts, and the Moz Local page opens with the claim that “97% of people learn about a local business online.” It is a separate product from Moz Pro, built for businesses that people visit or that serve a local area.
The Moz Local pricing page lists three plans billed yearly: Lite at $199, Preferred at $299 and Elite at $399. A separate tier serves businesses with 50 or more locations. The jobs Moz lists for the product include keeping listings in sync across search engines, directories, apps and data aggregators, reading and answering reviews from several sites in one dashboard, and scheduling social posts across locations.
Where did Moz Local come from? As the history shows, it grew out of GetListed, a local SEO tool Moz bought during its inbound marketing years. Before you pay for it, Moz’s free listing presence check shows how a business appears across local directories.
Do you need Moz Local or Moz Pro? If your business has a storefront or a service area, listings and reviews come first. If you need keyword research and rank tracking, that is Moz Pro. If what you actually want is your Google position city by city, our guide to tracking local rankings by city and ZIP code compares the options.
Free Moz Tools You Can Use With a Free Account
Moz’s free layer is generous for quick checks: the Domain Analysis report gives “3 free reports per day” without a login (Domain Analysis), and a free Moz Community account adds 10 Keyword Explorer queries, 10 Link Explorer queries and 10 Competitive Research queries a month (Moz cancellation guide).
The free SEO tools page lists these tools:
- Domain Analysis. Domain Authority, Page Authority, ranking keywords and top competitors for any domain, with no login.
- Keyword Explorer. Volume, Keyword Difficulty and suggestions for a keyword, inside the free monthly query limit.
- Link Explorer. Inbound links, top linked pages, and follow vs. nofollow links. The Link Explorer page says “Get 10 free queries per month.”
- Brand Authority checker. A score that, per the Brand Authority page, “measures the total strength of a brand” on a 1 to 100 scale.
- Competitive Research. Your top search competitors, content gaps and keyword opportunities.
- Local citation checker. How a business address appears on local search engines and directories.
- MozBar. A free browser extension that shows search, domain and page metrics on any site you visit.
- MozCast and Google Algorithm Update History. A daily “weather report” for Google ranking changes, plus Moz’s record of major updates.
What does a free account not include? Campaigns. The cancellation guide shows 0 campaigns, 0 Rank Checker queries a day and 0 On-Page Grader reports on a Community account, compared with 10 campaigns and unlimited On-Page Grader reports on Medium. So the free path is research only, not ongoing tracking. For free plans from other SEO vendors, our roundup of the free tiers four SEO suites offer lines them up.
Moz Metrics You Will See in Other Tools: DA, PA and Spam Score
Domain Authority is “a search engine ranking score developed by Moz” that predicts how likely a website is to rank compared to competitors, on a scale from 1 to 100, according to the Moz Learning Center. It is the main reason many people know the Moz name at all.
Three related metrics travel with it:
- Page Authority (PA). The same idea for one page. Moz’s Page Authority guide says PA “predicts how well a specific web page will rank” and also runs from 1 to 100.
- Spam Score. A percentage based on a machine-learning model that “identified 27 common features among the millions of banned or penalized sites,” per the Spam Score guide. Moz calls 1% to 30% low and 31% to 60% medium.
- Brand Authority. Moz’s newer 1 to 100 score for brand strength rather than links.
Moz is also clear about one limit: “Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on the SERPs.” It is a comparison tool, not a grade from Google.
What other tools showed us
You can see Moz’s numbers without ever opening a Moz account. On October 21, 2026, we looked up a small marketing website our own team runs in two other SEO tools as part of the same task list. Mangools’ free SiteProfiler showed a Domain Authority of 3/100 and a Page Authority of 26/100. Ubersuggest’s free Backlinks Overview showed a Domain Authority of 3.
Why do both tools show the same 3? Because both read Moz’s data. Mangools says SiteProfiler uses “the well-known SEO metrics by Moz and Majestic” (Mangools SiteProfiler), and Ubersuggest’s help center says it “sources data via the Moz API,” including Domain Authority and Page Authority (Ubersuggest help center). What surprised us was the gap between the two scores for one site: Moz scores a page and its domain separately, so a page can sit at PA 26 while its domain sits at DA 3.
How Moz builds the score, what counts as a good DA and why other suites score the same site higher are all covered in our explainer on how Domain Authority is calculated and why tools disagree on it. For the Mangools side of that lookup, see what Mangools’ free SiteProfiler and KWFinder showed for a small site, and for Ubersuggest, our write-up of Ubersuggest’s free daily search limit on a real site.
The Moz API and Moz’s Link Data
The Moz API sells Moz’s data to developers, and its free tier “allows for one request every ten seconds, up to 50 rows per month,” with paid plans from $20 a month, according to the Moz API pricing page. It is the reason Moz metrics appear inside so many third-party tools.
The Moz API page lists six data sets:
- Keyword Metrics: volume, difficulty, organic CTR and priority
- Search Intent: keywords labeled informational, navigational, commercial or transactional by Moz AI
- Related Keywords: keyword suggestions for content ideas
- Brand Authority: brand strength scores for benchmarking
- Ranking Keywords: the keywords a page ranks for in Google’s top 50 results
- Link Metrics: Domain Authority, Page Authority and Spam Score
The API uses a JSON-RPC 2.0 structure with a single API token, and Moz says you can also “connect to our new MCP server” to pull Moz data into an AI assistant. For anything larger than the public plans, Moz sells custom data deals under the name Moz Data.
How big is Moz’s link index?
Moz says its link index covers 45.5 trillion links, 8.7 trillion URLs and 1 billion domains (Link Explorer). The links come from Moz’s own crawler, Dotbot, and Moz’s Help Hub says new links should appear “within about 3 days of being found” (How We Index the Web).
Does a bigger index mean better counts for your site? Not always. Every tool crawls the web differently, and for a small site, the gap between two indexes can be large in percentage terms. Our comparison of how four backlink checkers counted one site’s links shows that spread. API row limits by plan and overage prices are in our Moz Pro pricing guide, which covers the API in a short section of its own.
Learning From Moz: The Blog, Whiteboard Friday, the Beginner’s Guide and Moz Academy
Moz started as a blog, and teaching is still a large part of what it does: the Moz Blog sorts its posts into 41 topic categories, from technical SEO to AI and SEO, and its Whiteboard Friday series calls itself “the longest-running and most popular SEO video series” (Whiteboard Friday).
Here are the main free resources:
- The Moz Blog. Articles on SEO and marketing, sorted into 41 categories. Recent Whiteboard Friday episodes in September 2026 covered NLWeb, conference prep and brand authority, so the topics now lean heavily toward AI search.
- Whiteboard Friday. A weekly video lesson in front of a whiteboard. Per the About page, filming started around 2009.
- The Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Moz’s free guide runs from a quick-start chapter through SEO 101, how search engines work, keyword research, on-page and technical SEO, link building and measurement, and ends with a glossary (Beginner’s Guide to SEO).
- The SEO Learning Center. Shorter explainers by topic, such as the Domain Authority and title tag pages.
- The Moz Top 10. A newsletter curated by Moz’s Tom Capper with the 10 most valuable SEO and marketing articles (Moz Top 10).
- MozPod. A podcast series hosted by Chima Mmeje.
Moz Academy and MozCon
Moz Academy mixes free courses with paid certifications. When we read the course list on October 24, 2026, free courses included Getting Started With Moz Pro (82 minutes), How To Use Moz Pro (214 minutes) and 30 Days of SEO (104 minutes). The SEO Essentials Certification was listed at $595, and the Keyword Research, Local SEO, Technical SEO and SEO Competitive Analysis certifications at $395 each.
MozCon is Moz’s conference. The MozCon page lists the 2026 roadshow stop as November 13, 2026, in London, and it warns that official MozCon emails come only from mozcon@moz.com, after fake ticket emails circulated.
Is the Moz community forum still open? No. The Moz Q&A page says “Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024” after more than 13 years, with old posts still readable but locked. A free Moz Community account, with its own profile, now mainly unlocks the free tools.
For a tool-neutral starting point, our beginner workflow for getting real work out of any SEO tool pairs well with Moz’s guide.
Retired Moz Names: Moz Analytics, MozRank and Open Site Explorer
Several Moz names that still get searched for no longer exist as products: Moz Analytics was the 2013 campaign suite, Open Site Explorer launched in 2010 and gave way to Link Explorer in 2018, and Moz said in 2016 that it would stop offering Moz Content and Followerwonk, per Moz’s own pages.
Here is what each old name means now:
| Old name | What it was | What replaced it or what happened |
|---|---|---|
| SEOmoz | The company name from 2004 | Renamed Moz in 2013 (About Moz) |
| Moz Analytics | 2013 campaign-based suite with content, social and brand features | Moz refocused on Moz Pro and Moz Local in 2016 |
| Open Site Explorer (OSE) | Moz’s first backlink checker, launched in 2010 | Link Explorer, released in 2018 with rebuilt link technology (Link Explorer) |
| Moz Content, Followerwonk | Content and Twitter analytics tools | Moz said in 2016 it would no longer offer them (Moz blog) |
| MozRank, MozTrust | Moz link metrics that many older guides still mention | Moz’s current page lists “MozTrust + MozRank” among the factors behind Page Authority (Page Authority) |
| Moz Q&A | Community forum | Closed to new posts on December 12, 2024 |
What “analytics moz” means today
Searches for “analytics moz” usually mean one of two things: the old Moz Analytics suite, or a way to see Google Analytics data inside Moz. The second one still exists. Moz’s Help Hub says the Site Traffic section of a Moz Pro campaign is “pulled directly from Google Analytics once you have connected your Google Analytics account” (Analyze Traffic Data With Moz Pro). So “google analytics moz” is a connection inside a campaign, not a separate product.
What about MozRank? In our reading of Moz’s current pages, none of the free tools on the free SEO tools page reports MozRank as a number you can look up. Domain Authority, Page Authority, Spam Score and Brand Authority are the metrics Moz shows. If you see a “MozRank” in a third-party tool, ask where that number comes from.
What Moz Is Used For, and Who Uses It
Moz is used for keyword research, link research, technical audits, weekly rank tracking, competitive research and local listings, and Ramp’s data shows its adoption is highest at large companies: 7% of enterprise companies with an SEO vendor use Moz, compared with 5% of mid-market and 3% of small businesses (Ramp).
The Moz products page frames each product by who it is for:
- Moz Pro “for anyone with a website who needs traditional SEO and AI visibility support”
- Moz AI Explorer “for anyone wanting to track and monitor visibility in AI-generated search”
- Moz Local “for any business with a physical location & visitors or a service area”
- STAT “for any brand or agency in need of high-capacity keyword and prompt tracking”
How does that compare with the big rivals? On the same Ramp page, Semrush shows a 64% adoption rate and Ahrefs 30% among the similar solutions listed. Moz is a smaller player by that measure, though Ramp only sees companies that run their spend through its platform. If you are weighing those two as well, see our guides to how Semrush describes its toolkits and who they suit and to Ahrefs’ paid toolset and its free tools.
Our judgment: small sites vs. agencies
This part is our opinion, based on Moz’s published limits, not on a Moz account. For a small site checking itself, Moz’s free layer covers the occasional DA check or keyword lookup, and Google’s own free data may cover the rest; our Google Search Console guide for beginners shows what that includes. For an agency or an in-house team, the case for Moz Pro is weekly tracking, Domain Authority straight from the source and one login for research.
Where does Moz sit next to the suites we did run? Our four SEO suites run side by side on one small site shows the free-tier limits of Semrush, SE Ranking, Mangools and Ubersuggest. Moz is not in that test, so treat it as a reference point, not a ranking.
Moz Reviews and Reputation: Where to Check Before You Buy
Before you buy, check two kinds of sources: Moz’s own testimonials and case studies, and independent review platforms. Moz’s testimonials page lists customer quotes and case studies chosen by Moz, so read them as marketing, not as a neutral sample.
For independent views, look at business software review sites such as G2, Capterra and TrustRadius. We don’t repeat their star ratings here, because they change over time and mix very different plans and use cases.
How do you read those reviews well? A few habits help:
- Check the date. Moz’s plans now include AI visibility features, so an older review may describe a different product.
- Match the product. A complaint about Moz Local listings says little about Moz Pro’s keyword data, and the other way around.
- Look for the job. Reviews from agencies tracking thousands of keywords and reviews from a solo blogger rarely agree, and both can be right.
- Read the archived Q&A. The closed Moz Q&A forum is still readable and shows real support questions, such as why a Domain Authority score did not change.
And the simplest check of all? Use the free tools first. If Domain Analysis and the free Keyword Explorer queries already answer your questions, you may not need to buy anything.
Getting Started With Moz: A Short Checklist
Start with the free layer, which costs nothing: 3 Domain Analysis reports a day without a login, plus 10 keyword, 10 backlink and 10 competitive research queries a month on a free Community account. Then pay only for the gap you hit. Why pay before you know which limit you will run into?
A short checklist:
- Run Domain Analysis on your site and two competitors. Compare the scores with each other, not with an ideal number.
- Install MozBar if you want DA and page details while you browse.
- Spend your free Keyword Explorer queries on the topics you are least sure about.
- Decide whether you need tracking. Rank tracking and the site crawl only come with a paid campaign.
- If you run a local business, try the free listing presence check before you look at Moz Local.
- Read the Beginner’s Guide to SEO or a free Moz Academy course if the metrics are new to you.
- Check the pricing pages again before you buy, because Moz changes plan limits from time to time.
Moz has spent more than 20 years teaching SEO in public. Even if you never pay for Moz Pro, the free guides and the free tools are worth a bookmark.
References
- Moz: About Moz
- Moz: Side-by-Side Product Comparison
- Moz: Moz Pro
- Moz: Moz Pro Pricing
- Moz: Moz Local
- Moz: Moz Local Pricing
- Moz: Moz API
- Moz: Moz API Pricing
- Moz: Free SEO Tools
- Moz: Domain Analysis
- Moz: Link Explorer
- Moz Help Hub: How to Cancel Your Moz Pro Subscription
- Moz Help Hub: How We Collect Data for Our Link Index
- Moz Help Hub: Spam Score
- Moz Help Hub: Analyze Traffic Data With Moz Pro
- Moz Learning Center: Domain Authority
- Moz Learning Center: Page Authority
- Moz Learning Center: Brand Authority
- Moz: Beginner’s Guide to SEO
- Moz Blog: Whiteboard Friday
- Moz Blog: Moz is Doubling Down on Search
- Moz Blog: Moz Acquires STAT Search Analytics
- Moz Blog: Moz Acquired by iContact Marketing Corp
- Moz Academy
- Moz: MozCon
- Moz: The Moz Top 10
- Moz Q&A Forum
- Moz: Moz Pro Testimonials
- Ramp: Moz vendor data
- Mangools: SiteProfiler
- Ubersuggest Help Center: Ubersuggest Is Not Showing All of My Backlinks