Thread: Which Backlink Checking Tools Now That Site Explorer is Gone?

Now that Yahoo's Site Explorer is gone, which backlink checking tools are people using?

From the messages I've seen from Yahoo, it looks like the Yahoo API was shut down several months ago. That raises the question of where BacklingWatch.com and other backlink checking sites are getting their data and if it is reliable.

Does anyone have any info to add to this?

I use Majestic SEO, they have a Site Explorer. Majestic has the most accurate data.
Also, Open Site Explorer, as well.

use alexa.com to find website reputation points. these points are called backlinks

Originally Posted by bhartzer

I use Majestic SEO, they have a Site Explorer. Majestic has the most accurate data.
Also, Open Site Explorer, as well.

I haven't seen any evidence that any service has access to backlink data that is independent of Yahoo. It appears that all of the online services were using the Yahoo API. According to some Yahoo articles, they discontinued updating Site Explorer around September 15, 2011. That raises the question of whether or not Yahoo is continuing to update the API data. What we could be seeing is old data in all backlink checking services.

Have you seen any information from Majestic SEO that indicates a different or fresher source for their data? I know that their home page seems to indicate that they have their own spider that is gathering backlinks. That may or may not be true.

Have you seen any new backlinks show up when using Majestic SEO's backlink checker? Before I would sign up for a paid service I want to see some evidence that their data is current.

It looks like Market Samurai has been hit not only with the loss of Yahoo backlink data, but also with recent Google changes that affected their ability to check Google rankings. They do mention in the comments section that they have been using Majestic SEO for backlinks.

What Happened?

Its true yahoo site explorer is shut down.But its being merged with bing now.So you can use bing webmasters tools for it.But first you should copy and paste the code in the end on HTML body tag.I think it gives good results.Else type links:sitename.com in Google to get an insight.

Have you seen any information from Majestic SEO that indicates a different or fresher source for their data? I know that their home page seems to indicate that they have their own spider that is gathering backlinks. That may or may not be true.

Majestic SEO has their own crawler, and their historic index is updated daily.

One of my forum member has developed a tool,you can use that and get some good result Best Free Tool To check your websites rank! - Forum Hookers

The Majestic FAQ says:

Where is the data coming from?
Our data comes from the World Wide Web itself. The Majestic-12: Distributed Search Engine does not meta-search or otherwise query other search engines: we are the search engine! Over a long period of time we have developed software capable of crawling and indexing large amounts of web data. This index is a big stepping stone towards relevant full-text search. The purpose of the index is to allow relevancy research as well as to help fund continued activites in development of a competitive community-driven general-purpose web-scale search engine.

That would be a monumental task, given the size of the web. I'm naturally a bit skeptical only because of the enormity of the resources that it would take to do this. However, Majestic SEO does seem to be the only viable choice now that Yahoo has dropped this service.

This still raises the question of where BacklinkWatch.com and others are getting their data.

Maybe it is a monumental task, but imagine the revenue that you could pull from SEO's if your service is the only offering available for back-link checking that is based on current data.