"Yahoo!?... Where R U?"

For a few years now, looking at backlinks thru Google using the link:http://www.url.com query was all but a waste of time. Much like putting any credence into the Google Page Rank bar.

So thank goodness for Yahoo. And in fact, they put together a nice little tool over there called Yahoo Search. But alas a recent post has confirmed my own suspicions. The tool ain't all its cracked up to be.

It is in fact a bit inconsistent and as this post points out just plain wrong at times.

Yahoo site Explorer shows the following stats for my blog site.

Indexed Pages: 3,673
Crawled Pages: 580
Known Pages: 3,673
Hosts linking to Site: 153

On click of the Indexed Pages link it shows me only ONE page indexed.

I use to have 220+ backlinks and 631 indexed pages till May 16th 08 and then it dropped to 0 the next week onwards.

Currently it shows 800+ backlinks and ONLY 1 indexed page whereas my blog contains 2370 pages till date.

This brings me to a couple points I would like to make:

1. These free tools are just that, and as such are only as good as the data that is feeding them.

2. Remember these engines have zero incentive to help us to figure out their positions. So do not be at all surprised when this tool goes away or becomes useless lke Google's green bar or link query.

   

Yahoo search allows you to check how many pages of your site are indexed in Yahoo. (see pages).  It alos allows you to discover how many links you have coming to your site or just on epage. It also will allow you to not count your own links from your own site. Additionally, you can download the report as a  TSV.

Comments

[Daniel]

If we compare this "Yahoo Explorer" with Google WebMaster Tools then it stands nowhere. I didn't like it.

[Coach Tim SEO]

Without question Google Webmaster tools is better although definitely not perfect. Some have reservations to G's stuff however and consider it spyware.

[dubai properties]

Yahoo Site Explorer is fantastic. I use it all the time. Google seems to only list the links it fancies at a particular time, not like Yahoo which lists all and in order of importance.

[Todd Covington]

I just can't get used to the Yahoo stuff. Google Webmaster tools is so detailed compared to Yahoo. I also think Google is more accurate after checking behind Yahoo.

[Maine Waterfront Properties]

Yahoo site explorer have been very helpful in so many times. Save me from looking for free tools to look for my backlinks. It is for me a very convenient way of looking for at least an estimate of how my website is read by this search engine. The point of course is this is free and we can't expect too much from it.

[John Carle]

Great. Am I the only one who feels like I'm hunting in the dark?

[Tom]

I am not a big fan of free tools. Like previously said, you get what you pay for. I guess if you are just worrying about your own site you may be able to handle it, but for our clients we shell out the money for tools that we can count on. For anyone who hasn't visited, check out seomods.

[Fiona Brown]

Useful information regarding SEO of real estate website. Good posts.. keep it up!!