Sunnyvale, California — While retrospecting when Yahoo and Bing first disclosed they would partner up many in the industry expected this was bad news for Yahoo Site Explorer, which went live in September 2005 would inevitably be shut down by the end of this year. Well, It took a while but Yahoo now indeed has announced it will be closing Yahoo Site Explorer.
According to SearchEngineLand.com, the decision to shut the noted service comes as part of the Bing-hoo! partnership that has seen Microsoft’s Bing search engine associated with Yahoo! to twice-shake Google’s search stranglehold.
Finally, Yahoo blog has confirmed some SEO’s worst calamity by officially disclosing the shutting down of their Yahoo Site Explorer which, for all intents and purposes, has been one of the primary sources of link information for SEO’s. Yahoo also confirmed the transition of its much-loved SEO tool to Microsoft’s search platform in an official Yahoo! Search blog post.
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.”
It certainly is a horrible news for many SEOs who have come to rely on Yahoo Site Explorer as a free, comprehensive and search engine backed competitive analysis link tool. Moving forward, the discontinuation of Site Explorer means that Yahoo is directing all their users over to Bing Webmaster Center which should be the default place from now on for site owners when it comes to Bing and Yahoo.
Even though Yahoo is not closing down Site Explorer in one day, they are steadily moving things over to Webmaster Center. Officials stated that algorithmic search results for US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico had already been successfully transferred to Bing, with the remaining world markets to follow later this year.
Moreover, once all markets are incorporated in to the Microsoft Search platform later this year Site Explorer will shut down entirely. The API will be shut down September 15, 2011.
Hermant Minocha, Yahoo! Site Explorer Product Manager, blogged: “In a large part of the world, we have not yet transitioned to Microsoft search platform as yet.”
That also suggests that you can still use Site Explorer for a while. Yahoo even stresses that:
“Hence, it is important that Yahoo! continues to receive your site/sitemap submissions so that search results from Yahoo! are fresh and relevant for markets that have not switched over.”
“In order to keep receiving relevant organic traffic from Yahoo! search results, we recommend you to continue using Site Explorer as you have in the past until we fully switch over to Microsoft search platform for organic results.”
Besides, it is still unclear if Bing Webmaster Center will be offering the same functionalities, chances are they will not. Which means SEOs will be looking in a different direction, like commercial tools such as Majestic SEO or Linkdex or agencies.
Amazingly, “the Bing Webmaster Center team has been actively incorporating new capabilities 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.”
Lastly, “We anticipate that later this year, Yahoo!’s organic results will be powered by Microsoft’s search platform in all parts of the world. Thereafter, any optimization that you do on [the] Bing Webmaster Center tool will be reflected in Yahoo! organic search results,” Minocha said.