Today, Yahoo! formally announced that it's fully transitioning its search engine backend to Microsoft's Bing. While this is good news on many fronts for marketers (simplification of advertising platforms, a bigger competitor for Google, etc), it's a big loss to webmasters who relied on some advanced link data available from Yahoo! Search that's now unavailable.
While Yahoo! is maintaining their Site Explorer service, the use of advanced query parameters on searches using the link: and linkdomain: operators will no longer return results.
For the query above, Yahoo! previously showed pages that pointed to any page on SEOmoz.org from sites with the .edu TLD extension (these now return no results)
_
Webmasters and marketers will no longer be able to use advanced parameters on link: and linkdomain: searches such as inurl, intitle, site, etc. breaking many data sources for software tools and limiting link research abilities. However, there are several worthwhile solutions/replacements, including tools from SEOmoz (though I'll also cover a few others).
#1 - Linkscape Advanced Reports
SEOmoz PRO members now have unlimited access to Linkscape advanced reports, which can apply filters through the UI in much the same way one could with Yahoo! link searches.
Using the filters and search capabilities, I can add nearly all of the filters previously possible through Yahoo!, and many others unique to Linkscape.
_
This tool is available at www.seomoz.org/linkscape
#2 - OpenSiteExplorer CSV Exports
Another methodology without quite as many bells and whistles, is to use Open Site Explorer. While Linkscape offers filtering right inside the interface, Open Site Explorer is built for speed, meaning you can see lots of links, but only in the views directly ported from our API. To get into the deep filtering, you'll need to use the CSV export + Excel (or your favorite spreadsheet program).
The filters in OSE are more limited than Linkscape, but most reports take <10 seconds to generate
_
When I export the results to CSV and open in Microsoft Excel, I can easily filter for the .edu links (or any other modifier I'm interested in). OSE also shows up to 10,000 links per report vs. Linkscape's 3,000.
Using the "find" command in Excel is the simplest methodology, but you can do all sorts of awesome filtering using more advanced techniques
_
This tool is available at www.opensiteexplorer.org
#3 - Majestic SEO
A UK-based search engine built using distributed crawlers, MJ-12, offers an SEO tool for backlink research. The index varies slightly to how major search engines and Linkscape build - instead of new indices built from regular crawls, MJ-12 adds new links and pages as they're discovered to an ongoing index. This means a much larger dataset, but not always the same level of freshness and limited de-duplication/canonicalization. However, many SEOs like this project a lot, and MJ-12 enables the same filtering available in Linkscape:
Many cool filters and ordering are available via MJ's tool and reports typically return fairly quickly
_
This tool is available at www.majesticseo.com
#4 - Yahoo! Site Explorer CSV Exports
Just as CSV exports from Open Site Explorer can enable link searching, so too can exports from Yahoo! 's Site Explorer. The big limitation is the 1,000 link limit (1/3rd that of Linkscape and 1/10th that of Open Site Explorer). Previously, SEOs would use modified queries to make requests and get more link data from Yahoo!, but with this switch, the only remaining option is to request links for many pages on a single domain to help get a better sense of sites with greater than 1,000 external links.
The "Export first 1000 results to TSV" button + Excel filtering option enables marketers to do research, but is limited in quantity
_
This tool is available at search.siteexplorer.yahoo.com
#5 - The SEOmoz API
For those with some programming skills, SEOmoz offers a free API for link data with up to 1 million calls per month, as well as a larger, full featured link data API starting at $500/month. This is the same API that powers both the Linkscape tool and Open Site Explorer, as well as integrations with Conductor, Hubspot, Flippa, Brightedge and many others.
The APIWiki offers lots of information and examples on how to make calls to the service and integrate with your own softare or practices.
_
This API is available at www.seomoz.org/api
#6 - Use Yahoo! in Other Regions (Temporarily)
It appears that while Yahoo! Search in the US has been replaced by Bing, these commands can still work in other regions, such as Yahoo! India and Yahoo! Italy. However, this is likely a short term solution, as Bing will be rolling out to power Yahoo! serach in these countries over the next 1-2 years.
Hat tip to Himanshu in the comments!
#7 - Other possibilities
In addition to these sources, there are a few other options, albeit with less fully functional or open systems. These include:
- Google's Webmaster Tools (which enables you to export links, but only for sites you own/control)
- Bing's Webmaster Tools (with similar limitations, and fewer link options)
- Exalead (a European search engine with limited link command functionality)
- Blekko (a new search engine with a comparatively small index, but interesting link functions - though it's still in private beta)
- Alexa (which contains a limited set of link data for some sites)
Other sources may yet emerge, and certainly players like Majestic and SEOmoz are working hard to improve their coverage, quality and functionality. It will be interesting to see how this change affects the link research landscape - hopefully Bing is working on something valuable to help replace this functionality and to serve up data when Yahoo! Site Explorer is also retired (currently scheduled for 2012).
p.s. If you're hankering for more information on link research and training on SEO tools, we've got just a few tickets left for next week's PRO Training in Seattle.
Have to say since I started using OSE I completely abandoned Yahoo's link data after just one head to head comparison. Just became a pro member last week and still haven't been able to fully utilize all the goodness. Heck, even the free OSE was better than Yahoo in some ways.
free OSE was better than Yahoo
I can't offer up much in the way of a linkdomain: replacement. But I will add to the sadness!
The functionality that I'm already missing majorly is the ability to search text on all the results that link to a particular domain.
One example where I'm hurting is the ability to track the success of a widget. I can't just grab a piece of html text included in the widget and do a simple linkdomain: "that html text" search to find where its been implemented...major bummer.
Hey Mike, you can use Linkscape to find image alt text links if that's what you need. Drop in the domain, filter to show just images, export & filter by the Anchor Text column.
May be Google should just jump ahead and provide same if not better service Y!SE.
They should help comunity, shouldn't they?
I really like SEOMOZ tools, they are very valuable. I hope it is OK to mention it:)
here's a hidden gem :)
https://tools.op.dk/inlink-check.php
Make sure to put region as United States
It looks like it's just replicating the functionality of Yahoo! Site Explorer... Maybe I'm not seeing how to use additional features?
Great post! Sad to see the commands go, they did come handy time to time, on other hand I rarely used them anyway... :)
I prefer Linkscape and OSE.
Thanks for sharing Rand.
As i am writing this comment, the linkdomain command is still working in yahoo UK and yahoo India.
Great catch - I added this as a temporary solution (until Bing powers those sources too) in the list.
Thanks!
Yeah I understand this to only have been fully implemented in US and Canada, so for those using in other countries enjoy while you can ;) The complete change to bing powered results across the board should be happening over the next weeks to months.
Great Post! I was hoping someone would write something that was along these lines!
OSE is surely one of the tools I use the most, even though I still rely in Site Explorer to counter verify websites' links when OSE show the so feared "We have no data about..." red page.
About this, it would be interesting to have somehow the possibility to ping Linkscape in order to make it discover a website that it still has not crawled and we know it has a link profile, even if it is small.
About the API... seriously considering the idea to go out for funds in order to invest in language localized SEOtools based on it.
#1, I am still in total shock over Bing taking over Yahoo search results... but while I sit over here trying to wrap my brain around that, I'm glad you are already on top of the site and link commands via yahoo - We use (used) those functions quite a bit and would have been running around like crazy looking for a proper solution. Thanks for coming to the rescue Rand, you rock!
i am glad that i have one less search engine to think about :)
Fantastic post!
I found the problem about Yahoo! the other day, and didn't know why. Now not only I know the reasons but solutions!
Thanks for the info.
Thank you very much sir, but it is very expensive for me --> just student from indonesia
Open Site Explorer floats my boat. The only reason I find myself using other tools / going back to YSE is due to OSE/Linkscape not indexing as quickly - not that I'm complaining.
Wow, Rand, what a timely post. Glad to see that you're paying attention to some of the links I'm throwing over to you guys. ;)
There are a lot of different seo tools out there and ways to check backlinks and I always seem to end up combining the results of several tools and putting them all into one MS Excel spreadsheet for a manual review.
When it comes to historical data, though, I can see why it's tough to deal with that data on such a large scale. So, I would actually tend to leave the historical link data out of a tool like linkscape and leave it up to the individual SEOs to compare the link data on the sites that they care about. I could see the usefulness of a tool that might compare two sets of links, though, and show the differences.
Thanks for mentioning that those links still work in yahoo.ca and yahoo.co.uk, although they may not at some point, as I suspect Yahoo just has not rolled out the changes there yet.
I don't know ,Why yahoo not indexed my site.
What if my current software doesn't recognize all my links? Is Yahoo and Google still seeing them?
Still working for me on Yahoo US (Chicago area). Maybe it's in a phased rollout and hasn't hit our datasever yet.
Dave @ PrairieWeb
Here i am
one of my favorite activities for our interns was finding brand mentions that didn't link. you know the "brand x widget" -linkdomain:brandxwidget.com search? anyone found a simple replacement for this? if i remember correctly, majestic seo has something like this, just wondering if anyone else had any workarounds?
so sad, I can not use inurl
I hadn't heard of Majestic SEO before. That's a real find, so thanks for that.
For me the best thing about linkdomain was that it woudl exclude duplicate links and I could track through how many of them I went through by saving the url I finished checking at.
What will I do now when you haven't presented an option for that? and OSE lists up to 20 (or 12?) results from one domain, which still makes index VERY spammy when someone has 10-15 blogroll links for example.
What we need for OSE is an option to ONLY display 1 link per linking domain (ideally the strongest link).
I would like to be thank to randfish for providing information for that its realy useful for seo, nice posting I always use SEOMoz tool
Hmm. That is really a bit sad news to me, because, I often use yahoo site explorer and I liked the fastness and efficiency of yahoo in giving out the backlinks. OSE and Linkscape are NEVER less efficient when compared to yahoo results and these will definitely replace the place of linkdomain search.
But Rand, Do you think whether Yahoo along with Microsoft now, will come up themselves with something more efficient than the site explorer search in the future?
I hope something like that may happen. :-)
Thanks Rand,I'll be sad to see the commands go, I really loved the speed at which Y chucked out data. Still, you're right, we have plenty of other tools that give us more information than Y even could.I like Majestic, its graphs are fantastic. I recently used MJ to determine facebooks link growth since Opengraph, I was shocked to see they had trebled.Again, thanks for the insight :)@phillohren
One good thing to keep in mind that we noticed from looking at link growth/loss is that it's much more dependent on what goes into the index than whether sites/pages are gaining/losing links.
Unless MJ's index is only crawling the same sites/pages regularly at intervals, the link growth/loss numbers can be misleading. It's one of the big reasons we've struggled so much to put historical data into Linkscape - given that every index has a different size and composition, is it really fair to say site X gained/lost links?
Also note that Google WMT only let's you download a sample of the external links they note. One client has a download file of 36k links out of over 1.5 million noted by Google.
There are enough replacement tools out there to make up for the loss. As a pro member the combination of OSE and LinkScape leaves most other tools redundant.
However, Moz crawlings needs to be updated a bit more regularly than what it is is currently. ;)
Nice post. I use SEO SpyGlass report, it is the best source of backlinks in my opinion. The highest amount of link in comparison with Y! and OSE and a deep analysis (you can always filter your data according to an anchor text f.e which helps to distinguish websites)
I didn't even know that Y!SE existed, so even though I guess it's no skin off my nose this time around, I'm looking forward to (and already appreciating) the work-arounds we're all coming up with so I can implement them.
I look at it in a positive way Rand. Also your tools are good enough.
really smart idea.
Grab today
These commands still work in Yahoo.ca, Yahoo.co.uk, Altavista...
Interesting - looks like it only fails where Bing powers Yahoo!. I'll make a note of this in the blog post. Good catch!