Yahoo shutting down Site Explorer

[Jay_v]

Yahoo announced that they are closing down Site Explorer by this weekend.

Will the Site Explorer APIs be shut down?

The APIs were scheduled to be shut down at the end of last year, but the timeframe has been extended for the YDN Site Explorer API up until September 15, 2011.

Does anyone use any other tools? Any good alternatives?

[Scott]

I haven't tried using any alternatives yet, so I can't vouch towards the accuracy of the tools below. However, most people on another forum I read seem to be recommending the two tools below...

Open Site Explorer: Link Popularity & Backlink Analysis Tool
Ahrefs

[jdwanchalk]

It hasn't worked properly in well over a year, so not much loss in this.

[pokeraussie]

yea they announced this a while back, the webmasters hitting yahoo to check link profiles were probably more then real searchers, this happening was only inevitable

[Michael Martinez]

If people continue to complain that their link building isn't working, the loss of Site Exporer may not be deplored very much when the time finally comes.

[pokeraussie]

So it looks like this has officially happened.

[Tea Flow]

Right, but the SEO Moz tool is better anyways.

[casdir]

I think the seomoz tool is better too. Yahoo Site Explorer was never up to date. It always took months to show any new links.

[Peter Willis]

Open Site Explorer is OK, but it's by far the slowest of the tools I've used extensively (Yahoo SE was always faster at finding links for the sites I monitored).

Majestic is now the fastest that I'm aware of. For a new site I've begun link building on less than 2 weeks ago, it has already found 76 backlinks; OSE has found none yet.

Raven Tools I believe incorporates the Majestic data and is what I'd recommend using (around $15 a month for a basic account).