SEO: In The News
SEO is a moving target at best! And, myths whirl though this industry like no other! We at SEONitro don't believe what we hear, but only what we test. This is where we report and discuss the happenings in our industry as well as our test results. Please feel free to praise, argue, or just rattle on about YOUR point of view. It is all good. :-)
Major SEO Research Tool (Yahoo Site Explorer) NOW Debunked!
Have you tried doing a backlink search lately on Yahoo?
Guess what?
It doesn't work! :-(
Sometime over the weekend one of my staff members who does a LOT of research for me EVERYDAY, emails me to say, "Dori, something is wrong with Yahoo!, it is not giving me backlink detail for my research!"
And sure enough, I checked it out, and what I got was tragic!
It's not a total surprise since they did announce back in July (Bing Blog on Site Explorer Closer) they were going to close it down, but now that it is gone, well, makes me kind of sad. So now along with Yahoo! search..Yahoo! Site Explorer has gone totally Bing!
And the worst part is, is that Bing is pulling a Google and NOT showing us all link data. They have redirected SEO's to their webmaster tools, but that isn't looking promising either. When asked about competitive data Duane Forrester of Bing says..
"..So, I will tell you about what I have about your website, and you can have hundreds of websites and I'll tell you about all of those individually through the tool set. I won't give you the facility to simply enter another domain of your choosing and get similar data back. " - from SEOMoz 10/20/11 White Board Interview
And they aren't, for example, I just did a search on www.About.com, a site we all know that has a gazillion links going into it, and while OpenSiteExplorer.com and MajesticSEO.com are reporting hundreds of thousands of backlinks, Yahoo! ala Bing, is reporting a measly 112! (And yes, Bing reports the same thing)
So, what does this mean?
1) Bing now has 30% search share and that is something to pay attention too.
2) SEO's will have to resort to 1 of 2 paid services for competive data (OpenSiteExplorer and MajesticSEO).
So for me, who uses this type of data everyday, it isn't that big a deal, and I belong to both. But, for the newbie or the person who needs the data only once in a while, the debunkness of Yahoo's Site Explorer Tool will be sorely missed.
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Comments
We all know it is coming but finally it happened.
Great post!
Thank you.
It's not dead yet.
Yahoo! search has been pulling results from Bing for quite some time. No surprise there. For Yahoo! Site Explorer, you now have to go to the Site Explorer URL and enter your URL (no more using the link: operator at Yahoo.com to get there it seems). At least, that's what I've experienced.
Site Explorer shows almost 300,000 links to www.about.com...
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=www.about.com&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=s
But, since about.com uses subdomains extensively, you want to look at about.com, not www.about.com...
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=www.about.com&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=s
Yahoo! shows 3 million indexed pages, and 4.6 million incoming links ("except from this domain, to entire site").
Still works. For now. I'm sure it'll be gone soon.
Yup, I agree - still see it as well. Yahoo! Site Explorer still works fine. It's not the only tool out there, but it is still functioning properly.
Ooops... that second link should have been http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=about.com&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=s
Sorry!
Yah Kurt link:about.com but didn't linkdomain: url.com bring you to that page? I didn't usually use that I would use Quirk in Firefox. So maybe my memory is tricking me. That doesn't seem to take you to site explorer any longer.
Tim - I could be wrong, but I believe that it used to be that link:domainname.com at the "Web" search box at Yahoo.com would bring you to Site Explorer. I certainly remember that site:domainname.com would do that for sure. I noticed a few days ago, however, that it no longer does. You just have to go to Site Explorer directly now and enter the domain name. I've never used Quirk, so I'm not sure what it relies on.
Yahoo! Site Explorer works for me as well. I have to go to siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com and log in to my Yahoo! account, but when I am there it works like it has always done.
Yahoo Site Explorer is not dead... You just used the wrong tool. http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Thanks guys!
I have ALWAYS just used the link: search parameter in Yahoo! to get to Site Explorer, strange that they would disconnect it, and now I have to eat humble pie at my announcement! lol, (and I spent a day researching the dang thing! But not good enough apparently! Doh!)
No problemo! The link popularity tool at marketleap.com is another alternative. Hat tip Andy Jenkins.
Well, Today is the day it is all over! lol, Guess I was just a couple days premature with my announcement, but the writing was on the wall and here is THERE reminder..
http://www.ysearchblog.com/2011/11/18/site-explorer-reminder/
Rest in Peace!
Arhhhhh.... its a conspriracy I tell you. Not sure what Bing stands to gain from hiding data like this.
Oh well, hello SEO Majestic then!!!
Yea i totally agree with you. BTW its very informative
Thanks