Moz is one of the original SEO tool providers, founded in 2004 by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig as SEOmoz, an SEO consulting blog and community. The company introduced Domain Authority (DA), a metric that became one of the most referenced scores in the SEO industry, even though it’s a third-party metric with no direct correlation to Google’s algorithm.
The Moz Pro suite includes keyword research, rank tracking, site auditing, and backlink analysis. MozBar, the company’s free browser toolbar, lets users see SEO metrics for any page directly in search results and remains one of the most-installed SEO browser extensions.
Moz went through a rough period in the mid-2010s. After raising $18 million in venture funding, the company struggled to compete with the rapidly growing SEMrush and Ahrefs. Rand Fishkin departed in 2018 and later wrote openly about the challenges of VC-backed growth expectations clashing with the company’s community-first culture.
The company was acquired by iContact (a Zeta Global company) in 2021 and has since operated as part of a larger marketing technology group. Moz Local, a tool for managing business listings across directories, remains a strong product in the local SEO space.
Moz’s biggest legacy is educational. Its Beginner’s Guide to SEO has been read millions of times and served as many people’s introduction to search optimization. The annual MozCon conference draws hundreds of SEO professionals. While Moz’s market share in enterprise SEO has shrunk, its tools remain popular with small businesses and agencies getting started with search marketing.
