Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo site explorer exposes detailed information, about web pages and the entire web, from the Yahoo database.  Webmasters take action based on this information - they improve site performance on Yahoo searches.

How it Works

Anyone with a Yahoo account has access to Yahoo Site Explorer, and to information on any site.  They add the site to their profile, then receive information such as:

  • Sites, and site pages Yahoo search indexes
  • Internal and external links to a page
  • A site’s most popular pages

People authenticate their site ownership, then receive even more information, as well as some control:

  • Monitor and manage feeds - URL listing
  • See when the Yahoo crawlers last refreshed a feed
  • Resubmit feeds - webmasters do this when they update a site
  • Remove URLs so Yahoo stops crawling them
  • Download the entire report for easy display in excel
  • Receive a list of sub-domains Yahoo crawls

How it Influences Search Results

Yahoo indicates that Yahoo Site Explorer has no influence over search result placement on Yahoo.  While it’s technically true - viewing information won’t change how Yahoo indexes a site - webmasters do influence listings with the information from Yahoo Site Explorer.

For example, a webmaster who sees his site doesn’t have enough incoming links sends out press releases about new features, and provides pre-made banners and a link exchange program to similar sites.  The webmaster then resubmits the site to Yahoo, for a future crawl.  When Yahoo next crawls the site, and other sites, it finds more relevant external links and ranks the site more highly in search results.  Because Yahoo gave the webmaster information, the webmaster took positive actions that improved search placement.

Conclusion

Yahoo Site Explorer is a fun toy - many people enjoy discovering information about favorite web sites.  It’s also an important tool for webmasters who, after they gather information, can improve their web site placement, and their traffic.

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