[LINK] RFI: Backtracking Links

[rene]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:10:08 +1100, Ash Nallawalla wrote:
[...]
> I went to a conference where the creators of Blekko and MajesticSEO
> were present and both were motivated to address the gaps in the big
> SEs. MajesticSEO is clearly aimed at SEOs who need accurate backlink
> information. They have been crawling independently and have some 3 TB
> worth of URLs.

Yes - I watched a video on MajesticSEO site/blog about what backlink data 
and related analysis tools they provide, and it certainly looks 
good/amazing. While I think Blekko SEO tools are pretty good, imo they've 
got a long way to go if they want to compete with something like 
MajesticSEO, not least because currently they provide the results via 
multiple html pages - which creates some difficulties with some types of 
further analysis - and appear not to even provide an easy means of 
exporting the backlink data for analysis in e.g. spreadsheets. (Doesn't 
really matter for general interest use, but I'd imagine is a fairly 
significant impediment to e.g. commercial site webmasters (or consultants) 
serious about SEO/trying to improve a site's search results ranking).

>> Hence I wonder if the situation with Yahoo SE hasn't
>> changed/improved much since last October:
>>
> http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-site-explorer-whats-the-status-of-
> the-link -data-53551
>
> Yahoo has indexed my month-old site capereingatobluff.com just fine.
> 100% by the looks of it.

I wasn't meaning that Yahoo's index isn't up to date (sorry that I 
apparently didn't make my contention clear). What I meant is that the 
*backlink* listing that Yahoo provides at:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
appears to be significantly less up-to-date, than what is in Yahoo's search 
index, i.e. the results one gets when one does a normal search on:
http://yahoo.com or http:/yahoo.com.au (which, btw, based on searches I've 
done recently appear to be clones of Bing results).

For clarity - a specific example:
* Blekko SEO tools reports 4 pages (news articles) on crickey.com.au that 
contain a link (in the page body text) to a particular page on my site: 2 
crikey pages dated before March 2009, and 2 dated later in 2009.
* Yahoo's *backlink* listing for that particular page on my site, includes 
the first 2 pre March 2009, but not the other 2 more recent.
* Doing a normal search on yahoo, for the page titles of the more recent 
crikey pages (i.e. those not shown in yahoo *backlink* list) shows that 
those 2 pages on crikey *are* in Yahoo's index.
* (all 4 pages are currently still on crikey and still contain the backlink 
in the body text).
(Similar/same applies in relation to quite a number of pages on other sites 
that contain backlinks.)

In October 2010, Vanessa Fox reported that:
	"Earlier this week, site owners noticed that substantial Yahoo Site 
Explorer link data seemed to be missing. A glitch? Gone for good? The first 
signs of integration into Bing webmaster tools? I talked to Yahoo and got 
at least some initial answers. ... [and among other things that Yahoo had 
said]  'We are working with Microsoft to ensure that we will continue to 
have comprehensive, fresh link data for Yahoo! Site Explorer when we switch 
from Yahoo!’s data to Microsoft data in the future.' "
http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-site-explorer-whats-the-status-of-the-lin
k-data-53551

I speculate that either the latter hasn't been achieved yet, or that Yahoo 
has decided not to make available all backlink data that its (Bing's?) 
search index knows about.

Irene