Today I am proud to announce the launch of the second version of Open Site Explorer. Since SEOmoz has officially moved out of consulting, we are now able to put our full resources into building fantastic SEO software. We want to thank all of you who provided feedback on the first version of the tool for your guidance and we look forward to hearing more from you in the future.
Now enough with the chit chat, on to the new features!
New Features:
Top Pages on a Domain
With the new version of Open Site Explorer you can get a sorted listed of the top 10,000 pages on a domain. This is essential for viewing your own site and for doing competitive analysis.
With this new feature, we can see that Microsoft is unwisely 302 redirecting their homepage! Doh!
You can also see which content is drawing the most links on your competitors websites. In this example we see that that these are the most linked to comics on XKCD.
Target URL
The new version of Open Site Explorer shows you which URL a given link is targeting when you sort by sub or root domains so you can see exactly where the given link is helping you. (This is also available for all links when the data is exported as a CSV)
With this new feature you can see which link is most important to Harvard.edu’s domain and which page it is linking to.
Comprehensive CSV Export
After lots of input, we are now offering more robust CSV exports.
The new CSV exports offer:
- The Target URL of the given link
- Numbers of links to the given source page
- Indication of whether or not the linked is followed
- Indication of whether the link is internal or external
Usability Enhancements
Remember how you used to have to reload the page every time you applied a filter in Yahoo! Site Explorer?
With the addition of the Filter Results button, these needless page reloads are a thing of the past.
Common Tasks are Easier to Perform
New buttons make performing common tasks easier and faster to do.
The new Explore and Compare buttons make it easier to get more information about any links you find interesting.
Improved Filtering
With the new version of this tool you can do even more filtering to drill down into what you think is important.
In this example, we filtered the data to show only followed (dofollow) and 301 redirecting external links to the specific page.
Open Site Explorer vs. Linkscape vs. Yahoo! Site Explorer
Throughout this process, we also heard a lot of questions about the differences between Yahoo! Site Explorer, Open Site Explorer and Linkscape. The chart below lays out the similarities and differences.
Help us Improve!
Are there other features you want to see? Are we moving in the right direction? We want know! Please feel free to share your suggestions and opinions via SEOmoz on Twitter, SEOmoz on Facebook or in the comments below 🙂
