Yahoo Site Explorer shut down today

[spiritusuk]

Any advice as to how we should check the competitiveness of a keyword in future now we can't check the backlink count ?

 

[webstore]

Any advice as to how we should check the competitiveness of a keyword in future now we can't check the backlink count ?

Just checked link:webstore.co.uk at yahoo.co.uk but number is very very low compared with Google - Is this what you mean ?

If you use Yahoo site verification code you could try logging into your Yahoo account siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/uk/mysites to see if that info is there . . . . BUT . . . . . having just visited there's a message:-

"With the completion of algorithmic transition to Bing, Yahoo! Search has merged Site Explorer into Bing Webmaster Tools. Webmasters should now be using the Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure that their websites continue to get high quality organic search traffic from Bing and Yahoo!."

So maybe that's the reason why you can't test for backlinks anymore at Yahoo.
.

 

[Curious]

https://www.majesticseo.com/ or http://opensiteexplorer.org - not free but may be of use?

 

[fisicx]

Any advice as to how we should check the competitiveness of a keyword in future now we can't check the backlink count ?

Pay for it.

In any case, the number of backlinks is no indication of competitiveness.

In fact the number of backlinks is no real indication of anything.

 

[seowise]

https://www.majesticseo.com/ or http://opensiteexplorer.org - not free but may be of use?

http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-spyglass/ is definitely an option too

 

[logicfusion]

In fact the number of backlinks is no real indication of anything.

Are you being serious ?

Surely it is an indication of something.

What about unique referring domains vs 100's of site-wide blogroll links?

What about running the advanced Majetic reports on competitors using the 'last updated' field? I'm pretty damn sure anyone in a competitive niche wants to know about the latest links their competitors are getting.

 

[fisicx]

Are you being serious ?

I'm pretty damn sure anyone in a competitive niche wants to know about the latest links their competitors are getting.

Latest links, quality of links, anchor text, page content, type of site, location of referrer and so on are all useful.

But to know that competitor A has 1000 inbounds and competitor B has 1100 inbounds is of no value whatsoever.

 

[ADifferentNinja]

R.I.P Yahoo Site Explorer!

I am now using ahrefs.com - much better than YSE in my opinion, and also better than any of the other options already listed in this thread.

I have to disagree with fisicx about the quantity of backlinks being of no use to us, though. It's all very much dependant on the quality of those backlinks, which is very easy to gauge just from skimming through said backlinks.

 

[fisicx]

I have to disagree with fisicx about the quantity of backlinks being of no use to us, though. It's all very much dependant on the quality of those backlinks, which is very easy to gauge just from skimming through said backlinks.

Like I said, quality not quantity.

 

[nuwav]

I use SEO Spyglass to check backlinks

 

[Chunkford]

SEO Spyglass, like many others, got the bulk of their data from yahoo explorer.

 

[zigojacko]

SEO Spyglass, like many others, got the bulk of their data from yahoo explorer.

SEO Spyglass announced this the other day:-

[FONT=&quot]Hi Geoff,

Guess you've heard the news about Yahoo! Site Explorer shutting down on November 21st (which is actually today).

In case you're wondering what all the buzz is about: As Yahoo! Site Explorer has been a source of backlink info for many SEOs for years, SEOs all over the world are worrying "will this shutdown limit my ability to find backlinks?" Similar questions hit top 3 popular questions in our customer support today. People keep asking, "what will happen to SEO SpyGlass?"

The answer is: SEO SpyGlass will work normally as before. You're safe with your SEO software and there's nothing to worry about.

There are just 3 things we'd love to tell you which are making SEO SpyGlass the right choice for backlink research after Site-Explorer shutdown:

1) SEO SpyGlass will continue gathering up to 100,000 links like before.

Unlike other backlink tools that relied on Yahoo! Site Explorer in the first place (and may become obsolete in a couple of hours) SEO SpyGlass will continue gathering hundreds of thousands links without Yahoo! Site Explorer. SEO SpyGlass uses multiple sources to spy out links. If Site-Explorer breaks, your links will be pulled from another place.

2) Your software was massively prepared for this YSE thing over the last month.

Of course we knew about the upcoming change beforehand and made a few important updates to SEO SpyGlass (adding more new backlink sources and upgrading the old ones).

3) Link count will even grow in a few weeks!

Right now we're already running in-house tests of an own multi-billion database of links. This means that you will have a new, very backlink-rich channel for pulling links. You'll be able to use it in SEO SpyGlass in just a couple of weeks.

So, as you see, there's no need to worry - with SEO SpyGlass you won't be caught off guard.

If you're still relying on any other free backlink research tool, this might be high time you switched to SEO SpyGlass as it's already the best desktop backlink finder and is about to beat even online services for backlink search.

Have a good week with the best SEO software!

Cheers,
Link-Assistant.Com team

P.S. Please go here if you need to download SEO SpyGlass.
Or follow this link to order an unlimited SEO SpyGlass license.

[/FONT]

 

[Chunkford]

Cheers for that information.
I'll be testing it in the near future then

 

[TomR]

It is a shame, I also use OpenSiteExplorer but they just don't have the penetration that yahoo had so often link counts are not a true representation.

I've never bothered with Bing Webmastertools but I guess I'll have to have a look now!

And I would have to disagree on backlinks being "no indication of anything", knowing how many backlinks you have is very important, especially from how many domains and the authority of those domains..

 

[amhsolutions]

I use SEO Spyglass to check backlinks

I am pretty sure SEO spyglass used yahoo site explorer to scape links.


You can't really rely on yahoo site explorer to check competitiors, there is real SEO tools out there for that

 

[terryuk]

Pay for it.

In any case, the number of backlinks is no indication of competitiveness.

In fact the number of backlinks is no real indication of anything.

I would disagree?

Happy days anyway, most scally wags won't know how to copy links anymore.

 

[ecombiz1]

You can use SEQ Quake tool.

 

[Curious]

Happy days anyway, most scally wags won't know how to copy links anymore.

And they'll have to pay for the privilege, an option that most people and companies seem to be completely averse too. Was reading some comments on Majestic the other day with people and companies *****ing about the fact it was a paid service!

 

[terryuk]

And they'll have to pay for the privilege, an option that most people and companies seem to be completely averse too. Was reading some comments on Majestic the other day with people and companies *****ing about the fact it was a paid service!

Good...

It will stop the 95% of people who will not pay....



There is blekko added to the Seobook toolbar but ;

http://blekko.com/ws/http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/+/inbound

Looks like it shouldn't be on there!

 

[Andy Miller]

Is Bing the backlink tool free ?

 

[zigojacko]

We've just launched our own bot to crawl and index the web (it was previously discussed in another thread but can't remember which one). The bot is called ZigoBot running Zigo OS so if you see it on your site, you know it's us. Tons more details about the bot and objectives and compliance will be released in due course.

Our aim with this is to build our own web index and release a UK based search engine with tons of built in SEO tools (similar to Blekko) except ours is being built in the UK so UK websites and businesses will benefit first (unlike practically everything on the web which caters for the US 12 months before the UK) - there are a number of issues with some of those YSE alternatives as mentioned above, mostly, they are way out of date - if I want to see backlinks count or analyse a domain, then I want the information to be (at least) no older than 2 maybe 3 weeks.

We're currently visiting 1 million websites on the web and will crawl their contents and links to other domains not listed within our initial 1mil. This is due to complete in about ten hours time. We'll then be sorting the data and completing the database (we plan to allow up to the last five previous cached versions of a site too as opposed to one) - we'll then tweak the 5 mini-bots accordingly (these each will have a different job to do and will be identifyable by numerical versions of ZigoBot). Once we have this basis in place, we'll plan to build a search engine interface for public release - a ranking algorithm could take some time to get right though and I'm undecided upon a solid formula just yet but the primary focus will be the ability to use it as an SEO tool anyhow.

Will be releasing some more information on this as soon as we're ready...

 

[Chunkford]

Ambitious to say the least, good luck.

 

[zigojacko]

Ambitious to say the least, good luck.

Thanks.

Maybe ambitious sure, I like to think we are, what most will misinterpret however is that they'll think we are trying to build the next Google or something ridiculous which simply couldn't be further from our thoughts.

If anything, producing an effective search engine from this project is just a secondary (more of a 'bonus') objective. The key aim is to produce a useful, maintained tool that can display data such as Yahoo Site Explorer did. One that works well in the UK. One that is from an index we built and we own so that we don't have to rely on someone elses API.

Well over one million websites were crawled successfully, it appears the bot is still in process (1,009,237 currently) and this will have already given the basis for us to build a search engine and connect it to our own web index now (along with displaying backlnk data etc) - still a long way to go of course and we're not working on this every day/all day so it will be a little while before we have everything in place for which we need.

Access to the data will be rolled out to our own clients first in the form of their reports accessible from our client report suite before we launch anything publically too.

 

[terryuk]

Thanks.

Maybe ambitious sure, I like to think we are, what most will misinterpret however is that they'll think we are trying to build the next Google or something ridiculous which simply couldn't be further from our thoughts.

If anything, producing an effective search engine from this project is just a secondary (more of a 'bonus') objective. The key aim is to produce a useful, maintained tool that can display data such as Yahoo Site Explorer did. One that works well in the UK. One that is from an index we built and we own so that we don't have to rely on someone elses API.

Well over one million websites were crawled successfully, it appears the bot is still in process (1,009,237 currently) and this will have already given the basis for us to build a search engine and connect it to our own web index now (along with displaying backlnk data etc) - still a long way to go of course and we're not working on this every day/all day so it will be a little while before we have everything in place for which we need.

Access to the data will be rolled out to our own clients first in the form of their reports accessible from our client report suite before we launch anything publically too.

What's the ETA on the 1 million and one websites to be finished

 

[zigojacko]

What's the ETA on the 1 million and one websites to be finished

In terms of crawling and downloading headers and necessary information, it has finished already. We just need to extract all the relevant data into the right database tables now prior to being able to work on a tool. Thanks

 

[zigojacko]

Yeah, I received their update too.

Trying it out now. Although, it was never great in the first place as all it does is just produce backlinks pointing back to whoever ranks top of the search engine you selected and/or for the keyword you entered. And that's it.

Sure enough, that's exactly what it just did still. It returned a <sarcasm>whopping</sarcasm> 47 link opportunities for a largely searched for 'money' keyword!

Not worth bothering with in my opinion.

 

[chrisbuckley]

Blekko works somewhat. But everyone that I know says that subscribing to MajesticSEO for 30 quid a month is the way to go.

Quite why Yahoo didn't make their service premium, I have no idea. They could have made a killing.

 

[seowise]

Yeah, I received their update too.

Trying it out now. Although, it was never great in the first place as all it does is just produce backlinks pointing back to whoever ranks top of the search engine you selected and/or for the keyword you entered. And that's it.

Sure enough, that's exactly what it just did still. It returned a <sarcasm>whopping</sarcasm> 47 link opportunities for a largely searched for 'money' keyword!

Not worth bothering with in my opinion.

I've surely run only limited tests so far, and it's hard to speak for every website, but the minimum link count was 500 links.

47 links sound really strange. What was the website/keyword?

 

[malcom.disouza]

I think Google Keywords Suggestion Tool helps you.