Yahoo Site Explorer Closing Down Monday, November 21st

As expected Yahoo will be closing down Yahoo Site Explorer this year. Yahoo has just announced the date for the closure. This coming Monday, November 21, 2011, Site Explorer will cease to exist.

The short Yahoo blog post reads:

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!. Site Explorer services will not be available from November 21, 2011.

Bing Webmaster Tools — as Google Webmaster Central does — will provide linkage data about a site that has been claimed within their systems. But neither provides information about sites beyond those that a publisher owns (see Bing Webmaster Tools Launches New Link Reports; Google Webmaster Tools Changes Theirs for more about these tools).

For years, Google has deliberately suppressed reporting all the links. This means with the loss of Yahoo Site Explorer, there is no tool from any major search engine that will show all the links pointing at any site on the web.

Small search engine Blekko, however, does provide these types of tools. And, there are third party free tools such as Majestic Site Explorer,  and SEOmoz Open Site Explorer.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: Now Yahoo Site Explorer has officially closed, with this page left:

Yahoo leaves some related links to its other services at the bottom, most of which make some sense in relation to the original audience of Yahoo Site Explorer. However, “Web Hosting” — which the arrow points to — kind of stands out.

Yahoo offers web hosting as part of its Yahoo Small Business area, which also offers things like domain registration and online stores. Why not point to the entire small business area, then?

My guess is that someone had the bright idea that all those links pointing to Yahoo Site Explorer over the years should be used to channel some potential traffic and ranking boost to the web hosting area. It’s not even identified as “Yahoo Web Hosting.”

Related Stories

• Yahoo Shutting Down Site Explorer This Year
• Bing Webmaster Tools Launches New Link Reports; Google Webmaster Tools Changes Theirs
• Blekko’s SEO Tools: What Information Do They Provide?
• Blekko Offers New Linkroll Widget & More Publisher Tools
•  Link Building Tool Review: Link Research Tool Set By CEMPER
• Link Building Tool Review: SEOmoz PRO
• Link Building Tool Review: SEO Book
• Link Building Tool Review: Raven Tools
• How To Terrify Executives Into Linkbuilding
• Worthy Alternatives To The Useless SEO Data Provided By Search Engines

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About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.