Today we are seeing Yahoo Site Explorer coming offline. This will not affect Majestic’s operations in any way at all.
Yahoo Site Explorer was launched in September 2005 to mixed acclaim but became the main source of link analysis data in the world for several years. It is now being retired as we speak and its architect, Tim Mayer laments its demise.
Majestic does not – and never has – used Yahoo’s data. Whilst we expect an increase in the Free services that Majestic offers as a result of this closure, we have already planned for this eventuality within our infrastructure and see no issues in handling the increased traffic to our site.
Majestic crawls the web independently of any search engines and we surpassed Yahoo’s data set many years ago.
We would like to say thank you to Yahoo for Yahoo Site Explorer’s contribution to Internet Marketers everywhere.
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A little bit of history in the making. Not too long ago Overture slipped into history.
Who’s next?
Is Yahoo itself doomed to follow?
November 22, 2011 at 2:29 pmIt looks like we’ll be switching to your tools since the demise of Yahoo Site Explorer. A little more work for our SEO team but a lot more good data to analyze.
November 22, 2011 at 2:49 pmIt will be great to have you on board 🙂
November 22, 2011 at 3:04 pmCome on Dixon! Admit it – we all know Majestic have scraped all their data from YSE for all these years, your domain will be going offline later because you can’t supply data! 😛
Good work on the free services being expanded as well.
Good work… Thanks.
November 22, 2011 at 3:28 pmHeh. I certainly hope not! I have been seriously misled if that’s the case 🙂
It’s odd – I am seeing people that obviously have not tried Majestic at least since the FRESH Index was launched striding in with a misunderstanding of just how powerful Majestic’s data is. I guess some serious cross – platform analyses will happen over the next few weeks. When these come out I am confident Majestic SEO will shine 🙂
November 22, 2011 at 4:06 pmI remember, some day before I Googled “Yahoo Site Explorer alternative” and found Majestic SEO Site Explorer Tool.
First it asked me to login to my account. After logging in, it asked to me upgrade. I never come back here.
Today again I’m here. But I don’t know where I can find free tool for checking backlinks. 🙁
November 22, 2011 at 6:05 pmWe are not a charity, I am afraid. This project has involved hundreds of people and involved millions. That said, we do give plenty away free. The new site means som layout changes, but all the free things in this video are still availabele.
November 22, 2011 at 11:26 pmDefinitely we’ll have to move for some other options probably majesticseo.com to check back links but from earlier I’m afraid yet because I’ve not found majesticseo as user friendly as YSE was.
Hope majesticseo will do some change to make it more user friendly.
Thanks
November 22, 2011 at 7:49 pmRizwan
Try the training videos – they may help get you up to speed.
November 22, 2011 at 11:50 pmAs a user of your tools we are not even dealing with Yahoo issue… probably we were smart long time ago to switch to an independent service like yours, keep the good service you supply…
November 22, 2011 at 8:33 pmI was always so proud to say that “hey, there’s this site Majestic SEO…and they have like 5 times more data than Yahoo.”
Sadly, I guess you’ll now have infinity (∞) times more, right?
November 22, 2011 at 9:33 pmThis is sad news indeed.
I think everyone and their uncle used this great free tool for backlink analysis. I’ll be sorry to see it go.
However, I have tried some of Bing’s new tools, especially the ones where you can data from excel and they seem cool.
November 22, 2011 at 9:38 pmBig lose!
Thank god for tools like yours and SEOmoz’s OpenSiteExplorer.org
November 22, 2011 at 10:08 pmWhat a pity. Thanks Yahoo! Site Explorer for what you’ve supported SEO community.
But this is a great opportunity for Majestic SEO 🙂
And good luck Majestic guys 🙂
November 22, 2011 at 10:26 pmThe data that you guys supply, even to us paupers using the free services is incredibly useful. My one reasonably long standing client only took me on when I was able to show them the comparison charts regarding link building over time. Keep up the excellent service and remember we ain’t all internet billionaires yet, so don’t crank up the free service offering just yet! 😉
November 22, 2011 at 10:46 pmCheers! We have no plans to take away our free offering. The paid stuff rocks too though… But we can wait 🙂
November 22, 2011 at 11:30 pmDixon, it will soon be time to buy you a drink at SES London if your coming. Matt Bailey and I are working with a super SEO tool that is using data from Majestic (you know which one I am talking about) and so here is one guy that stopped using Yahoo Site Explorer yonks ago.
In my opinion the data coming from MajesticSEO is quality and I didn’t expect anything less from the man in the panama hat!
Cheers Dixon
November 23, 2011 at 1:07 amI’ll buy the drink. I think we had a good day yesterday.
November 23, 2011 at 8:53 amYahoo! Site Explorer was quite useful for getting a quick snapshot of links pointing to a particular page (easily accessible with the SEOBook toolbar installed), but it’s not the end of the world without it.
Services such as your really help to analyse the link data in much more detail. Thanks for the good work and good luck 🙂
November 23, 2011 at 2:26 amMy website is downgraded 🙁
November 23, 2011 at 3:51 amNot quite sure what you mean. We only give transparent data. We don’t grade sites based on opinion. You may have dropped in our Majestic Million list. But that just means another site has gained links faster over the last month.
November 23, 2011 at 8:58 amSo sad to hear YSE is off forever.. then I type “yse alternative” in google then found majestic. Hope this will be my good alternative to see my competitor’s backlinks
November 23, 2011 at 4:34 amThanks for finding us. Even though we are not free like Yahoo, when it comes to analysing competitors, we are not expensive. (We estimate that YSE was cost Yahoo quite a lot of money)
November 23, 2011 at 9:03 amWe are an Agency and have used Yahoo Site Explorer in the past and few other tools like Blekko. I have even tried Majestic SEO in the past.
What we realized then was Majestic SEO had too much noise – dead links, active links retrievable only through history etc. Wonder if Majestic SEO would expose a set of most probable active links for site in a clean way or is there a simple way to do this ourselves from your API ?
November 23, 2011 at 5:16 amSounds like you have not tried us since we launched the “Fresh” index back in March or so. This index is the main index now for SEOs. If a URL becomes so isolated that we don’t get to see it within a 30 day window, it drops out of the index. Use the Fresh Index (Silver required) and all your concerns will evaporate. I think there are many people that still think our system is the same as 12 months ago. Now we update daily on the Fresh index.
November 23, 2011 at 9:08 amGreat to hear that your free offering will remain, a lesser company would have just seen the dollar signs! I think the free offering will see a lot of people upgrade, anyway, I’m sure I will.
@Alex, I can’t see Yahoo disappearing any time soon, isn’t it supposed to still be one of the largest collection of web properties out there?
November 23, 2011 at 6:03 amI’m sure that @Alex meant YSE not Yahoo itself!
November 23, 2011 at 9:10 amSo glad that I didn’t use Yahoo, or similar.
Decided on MajesticSEO which provides really decent data, and hope that this gives a nice boost to Majestic!
November 23, 2011 at 6:40 amI have very good experience about Yahoo Site explorer but now very sad about this, 🙁 now we have to see alternatives of Yahoo Site Explorer 🙁 What experts recommend for this?
November 23, 2011 at 7:24 amWell – I think you are with the converted here. I think that debate will play out in the next week or two.
November 23, 2011 at 9:11 amYahoo Site explorer has been my main source of backlinks checker until now. The main reason being it’s free and extremely user-friendly. I will definitely missed it. Now where to next for those who can’t afford a paid membership?
November 23, 2011 at 7:53 amWell – thus data is very expensive to collect. We do let you analyse sites you control for free and of course our backlink history checker is a very popular free tool. After that, £30 (US$50 approx.) is not a lot to pay each month if you are a serious Internet marketer. Link data is still a core tool of the trade.
November 23, 2011 at 9:14 amHmmm, sorry if I seem a little overly “Newbie-ish” but I think I must have missed something.
I bought Market Samurai way back in 2008 or 2009… The days when those guys started using Majestic for backlinks, that’s when I got a free account with Majestic SEO (I trust the Noble dude 😉 ).
Anyway, you said, “We do let you analyse sites you control for free….”. Does that mean everything? As in, just like the paid service except for my own sites only?
I hope I asked this question properly and made sense 😛
For what it’s worth, as “Newbie” as I may seem to be…. I got my first “Serious” Local Business SEO Client early September … he was on Page 15 – 20. I got him on page 2 in 9 days…. He’s now holding steady at Position 7 and 8 on Page-1 for his chosen key-phrase. Having lots of fun too!
Thanks MJ Guys!!
Gary Anderson II
November 24, 2011 at 7:20 amaka- @GanderCo
Hi Gary,
On our web interface, you can get your OWN site’s links for free. (We cannot easily monitor that when data is called through an API, so it does not apply there.) To analyse your site for free, you first need a free account registration, then follow the instructions to verify your account when you request a report.
Looking at the back links of OTHER sites… yes, that costs money. £30 a month is where it gets interesting.
November 24, 2011 at 8:55 am> The paid services are excellent value – so I would argue they are within the grasp of all internet marketers.
December 5, 2011 at 10:55 pmThanks For the nfe comment!
December 6, 2011 at 7:22 amIt is this great loss for me – webmaster 🙁
November 23, 2011 at 8:50 amSad to see Yahoo!`s service go, but I`d say it`s a win for Majestic; you guys are now perfectly positioned to dominate the market!
November 23, 2011 at 4:13 pmBad news for most of seo ! But good news for Majestic Seo.
November 24, 2011 at 9:17 amCertainly it is! Although one does make their own luck a bit. Everyone has known for a year that Yahoo was going offline. If that isn’t the very definition of a “Market Opportunity” I don’t know what is 🙂 – We knew years ago that YSE was not viable as a long term free offering – because we see the costs directly of course.
November 24, 2011 at 9:37 amHi Dixon
I was wondering if you will introduce a priceing thats more in line with inhouse “SEO’s” – as silver is a bit more than we/I need. On average I “did with YSE” 10-20 scans per month with long breaks inbetween – more of a keep tabs on the local competition. And there is more hassle in createing a subscription and canceling it the next week only to set it up again couple of months later…
thanks
M
November 25, 2011 at 6:29 pmI cannot see how a business in a high tech niche like ours can maintain a B2B offering for less.
We have no plans to reintroduce anything lower than a £30 a month. Yahoo Site Explorer must have been costing millions every year. We have no other way of funding what is a considerable infrastructure, so this entry price is, we feel, incredibly reasonable when you compare with services like Hitwise and Radian6 with monthly fees in the the thousands.
We also let you verify your own site for free and have several other free tools.
If a company is large enough to employ an inhouse SEO, my argument would be that the company has no excuse for not giving that person a budget if £30 a month to do the job properly.
November 26, 2011 at 10:38 am> I understand the issue of your costs and such and I am not saying you do something in which there is no profit. If you say its not worth it then there is not much for me too say. You are the only one to be able to find out if there is a inbetween market for people that do SEO from time to time /especially maybe those in eastern europe/ – for which the cost isnt a monthly fee of £30, but rather £360 for off time use unless you keep canceling/setting up your account every couple of months – which is really where im comming from.
I guess though in the end it will come out the same for both you and me just that, now since YSE is dead, I get more hassle with it as I will buy eg gold 2 a year – pay £200/12 = 16 pounds a month or silver 4-5 times a year and pay 12 pounds.
As an afterthought maybe you can charge a per scan cost which would prolly cover this “issue”.
November 26, 2011 at 4:14 pmWe tried a non subscription based model several years back, but it was not sustainable I am afraid. However – we do offer 12 months upfront for the price of 10 if you pay annually in advance. Just contact support when logged in for this.
November 27, 2011 at 11:49 amreally upset with the news for yahoo site explorer going down…will really miss it
November 26, 2011 at 1:10 pmThanks Dixon!
LOL! I’m definitely going to set things up for me to use MJ on my own sites! It will likely be after the 1st of the year, but I “will” be getting the paid subscription for sure.
Thanks again!
Gary.
November 29, 2011 at 5:57 amYahoo is a major dissapointment is this the beginning of the end?
November 30, 2011 at 10:12 amNah. It’s the end of the beginning. Cliche, but for us it really is a new dawn.
December 1, 2011 at 8:32 amYahoo! Site Explorer was a great tool for finding something about a competitors link graph but had no feature that I was aware of to “grade” or “value” links/domains. Both alternatives, Majestic SEO and SEOMoz (Linkscape) offer ACRank and Mozrank respectively enabling users to sort a competitors links quickly to find the 10% of high value links that are worth pursuing which was not possible in Yahoo! Site Explorer in my experience. Sad to see Yahoo! Site Explorer go but if you are in the SEO/Link Building business, then seriously consider Majestic SEO or SEOMoz as a valuable upgrade to your toolbox.
November 30, 2011 at 6:48 pm