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Whenever we post anything about Yahoo in general we get the “Oh, they’re still around?” level of response from our readers. I suspect that’s because most people who are paying attention aren’t turning to Yahoo for search (although there is still a sizable section of the Internet at large that does, so it shouldn’t be completely ignored, right?).
Well, the Yahoo blog has confirmed some SEO’s worst nightmare by officially announcing the closing of their Yahoo Site Explorer which, for all intents and purposes, has been one of the primary sources of link information for SEO’s.
The blog says
In an August 2010 blog post, we said we would continue Site Explorer with a focus on new features for webmaster community, even after the transition to Microsoft platforms is complete. We listened to your feedback, and along with the team from Bing Webmaster Center looked jointly at the roadmap for the webmaster tools. Having two webmaster portals for a single source for organic results does not add enough value. Once organic results are transitioned to Bing in all the markets, we plan to shut down Yahoo! Site Explorer and Microsoft’s Webmaster Tools will be the source for Bing and Yahoo! webmaster site and analytics data.
As my four year old says when she gets some bad news “Ut-oh potatoes!”. Of course, this is not the end of the world and likely to be very good news for those out there providing link information services like SEOmoz and Ontolo.
As to when this shut down will occur?
We are working with Microsoft to transition organic results in all markets to the Microsoft Search platform. Site Explorer will shut down once all markets are transitioned. This is expected later this year.
As Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land puts it
Yahoo makes it sound like that you won’t miss the old Site Explorer but I find it hard to believe that Microsoft will provide detailed link data for competitors.
So what about you? Will you miss Yahoo Site Explorer and, maybe even more importantly, will you put your trust into Bing’s Webmaster Center for the same kind of data that Site Explorer has provided the SEO community since 2005? Well, to hear if from Yahoo the answer is “You betcha!”
The Bing Webmaster Center team has been actively adding new features over the past few months, including detailed traffic statistics and a new inbound links feature. Microsoft is also committed to build analytic reports that include Yahoo! search usage.
So what’s your take?
