SEOMoz opensiteexplorer shite

[PaulH]

Switched a tool from Yahoo API to SEOmoz.
Seeing loads of reported backlinks that don't exist.
Seems to be showing loads of backlinks from files and all sorts of crap.
e.g. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.dmsholland.nl

Before i start looking at alternatives, any frequent users of this know if this normal, or a recent glitch?

[Rooftop]

They did an update this week and I think it has been worse.  However weird files counting as backlinks and stale data do appear to be fairly constant.

What's the alternative though? Majestic is good, but you need deep pockets if you want to use the API.  I'm just trying to remind myself that Yahoo data was shit too, but we grew up with it's shitness.

[PaulH]

Yeah lot of flash files, but also seeing bin files and lots of other file formats - which wouldn't be that bad if i could ever see reference to the domain their supposed to be linking to.

Yahoo was great for getting back lots of links fast(when used with a couple of hundred proxies) and your own generated API keys.  Would have paid for it. Doing, 10,000's of backlink checks a day.

Majestic seems to return a more realistic number of links. But also seems to report zero links far too often for domains i know have them.

Annoyingly looks like the only way i get what i want is to use both seomoz  api and majectic API together.

[Will.Spencer]

Switched a tool from Yahoo API to SEOmoz.

Just a question -- why not switch to the Boss v2 API?  Does it not provide the link data you need?

Have you taken a look at the Sistrix API?  It's very new and is really Euro-centric, but is still interesting.

[Rooftop]

english version: http://www.sistrix.com/service/docs/api

[Rumbas]

Going to a workshop with the guys from http://www.sitexploration.com in a few hours. Pretty solid system for a 2nd opinion.

They got a 30 free trial.

[Fearless_Shultz]

I've just had a thought. I presume you're all aware of Cristoph's Link Research Tools?

I've used this a couple of times before and found it really excellent, it makes visualising data and actually figuring out what to do with it a lot easier than many of the other tools I've seen. If I had to pay for any link intel services at the moment, this would probably be one.

I also really like Majestic and have personally found it's data pretty accurate all things considered. Some features like the historical data are particularly handy when looking at velocity of link building

I did have an SEOMoz pro account in my previous position and whilst I found some of the tools quite useful, I just found some of their core tools (linkscape, campaign manager etc) too buggy and would not pay for a pro account again at the moment although they do have great potential.

[Rumbas]

You should consider looking at:
http://www.sitexploration.com

It's pretty nifty and will give some great insight. Crawl on demand and not 'historic index' yada yada..

[PaulH]

Not used Yahoo BOSS API for site explorer since i was under the impression this too was coming to an end.

Using the combination of OpenSiteExplorer and Majestic API's is now working out well.

Basically i've a system that checks the backlinks on about 10,000 different domains each day and records several metrics which would indicate quality.
ACRank, Page Authority, Domain Authrotiy, Ref Domains   , Ref IPs, Ref SubNets


If you like the web services without an API then http://www.linkdex.com/ looks good, but still not got round to giving it a try.