As of November 21, Yahoo Site Explorer no longer exists. While not the most robust tool for webmasters and affiliate marketers, Site Explorer was a great source for basic information. In particular, many affiliates used this tool to track incoming links.
Yahoo does not plan on leaving people in the dark, though. Instead, they are suggesting that users now sign up for and use Bing Webmaster Tools. This acts in a similar manner as Google Webmaster Central. Link data will continue to be provided for sites that have been claimed in the system.
But what about other sites? This is where Yahoo Site Explorer was head and shoulders above the rest of the industry. You could use this tool to check link data for your competitors. By “spying” on the competition it was easy to see how you could improve your site, based on what others in the industry have already done.
Did you miss our articles on the things you need to know about Yahoo search engines? Check it out!
Not only does Bing Webmaster Tools lack this capability, but you should not expect anything close to this from Google. Again, Google only allows you to see the sites you have claimed in your Webmasters account. Sure, you could use the method of typing “link:url.com” into Google but this will not show you a complete link profile.
To sum it all up, with Yahoo Site Explorer gone forever there is no tool from any major search engine that shows all the links pointing to a given website. While there are other tools that can do the job, many of them charge a monthly fee. On top of this, they are often times difficult to use and don’t offer accurate information.
There is no denying that this will change your strategy as a gaming affiliate. If you previously relied on Yahoo Site Explorer to track your own links as well as the competition, it is time to make a big change. For your own sites, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Webmaster Central should do the trick. But when it comes to spying on your competition, you will have your work cut out for you.
RIP Yahoo Site Explorer!
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