Does Open Site Explorer violate Google's Terms of service?
-
According to Google's Webmaster Guidelines:
"Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service."
Does that mean Open Site Explorer is a violation of those Terms of Service, or is it authorized?
-
I'm sorry - I meant to ask the question about the Rank tracker tool that you provide.
Don't get me wrong, I love these tools - I was just surprised when I read that in the Guidelines.
-
Hi Eric,
Open Site Explorer doesn't use Google at all, it uses our own crawl of the web which we call the Linkscape index. Hope that helps!
Jen
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Spammy inbound links: Don't Fix It If It's Not Broken?
Hi Moz community, Our website is nearing the end of a big redesign to be mobile-responsive. We decided to delay any major changes to text content so that if we do suffer a rankings drop upon launch, we'll have some ability to isolate the cause. In the meantime I'm analyzing our current SEO strengths and weaknesses. There is a huge discrepancy between our rankings and our inbound link profile. Specifically, we do great on most of our targeted keywords and in fact had a decent surge in recent months. But Link Profiler turned up hundreds of pages of inbound links from spammy domains, many of which don't even display a webpage when I click there. (shown in uploaded image) "Don't fix it if it's not broken" is conflicting with my natural repulsion to these sorts of referrals. Assuming we don't suffer a rankings drop from the redesign, how much of a priority should this be? There are too many and most are too spammy to contact the webmasters, so we'll need to do it through a Disavow. I couldn't even open the one at the top of the list because our business web proxy identified it as adult content. It seems like a common conception is that if Google hasn't penalized us for it yet, they will eventually. Are we talking about the algorithm just stumbling upon these links and hurting us or would this be something we would find in Manual Actions? (or both?) How long after the launch should we wait before attacking these bad links? Is there a certain spam score that you'd say is a threshold for "Yes, definitely get rid of it"? And when we do, should we Disavow domains one domain at a time to monitor any potential drops or all at once? (this seems kind of obvious but if the spam score and domain authority alone is enough of a signal that it won't hurt us, we'd rather get it done asap) How important is this compared to creating fresh new content on all the product pages? Each one will have new images as well as product reviews, but the product descriptions will be the same ones we've had up for years. I have new content written but it's delayed pending any fallout from the redesign. Thanks for any help with this! d1SB2JP.jpg
Moz Pro | | jcorbo0 -
Moz can't see my link from an external site
Hi, I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this. I've had a followed link created from http://www.dubaisharks.com/ pointing to my website - http://www.yallarugby.com but in the reports it doesn't show that there is a link coming fro this website. The link has been active for a few months now, but still no record of it. Any ideas?
Moz Pro | | SeoSheikh0 -
Open Site Explorer: Facebook Shares, Likes, etc.
I don't fully understand what this means in the report for our site: http://screencast.com/t/aG5jbkYWLA here is our site: www.discountqueens.com & we have thousands of fans & facebook likes and all the time on all our posts. For example yesterday we had 73 likes on this post alone: http://www.discountqueens.com/amazon-ultimate-shrinky-dinks-jewelry-designer-1495/ So here's my questions: Is there an error in the reporting? Are we using a social sharing method that isn't giving us valid credit for these links? What should I consider doing differently & why isn't our likes, shares, tweets & Google+ being calculated into our score?
Moz Pro | | seointern0 -
Fresh Web Explorer Question
Hi, I have been using the FWE tool currently in the SeoMoz toolbox but can't seem to do something. I want to search for say 'Flower Pots' but only return results with the extension .co.uk. Is this possible using the operators? Thanks
Moz Pro | | Bondara0 -
Open Site Explorer WAY Off in Terms of Link Profiles?
Hey, One of our websites is www.inspireeducation.net.au. I have noticed although tools like Raventools capture our links well, Open Site Explorer is doing a terrible job... For example the following page >>> http://www.inspireeducation.net.au/courses/training-and-assessment-courses/certificate-iv-in-training-and-assessment/ has many many more than 8 root domains linking, however Open Site Explorer only presents 8? We are finding the same problem for almost any page we review through Open Site. Does anyone have any idea why the numbers would be so out? The new links are NOT fresh links. Many are well-established (been there for years), and even many newer ones have been there for more that 60 days. I find the same thing when reviewing competitor sites.. is Open Site Explorer working properly at all at the moment?
Moz Pro | | love-seo-goodness0 -
Open site Explorer CSV output mixed up
If I download a CSV output of the external links and the characteristics of them, the output is mixed up. When I put the data in Columns, some columns are disordered. Do more people experience these problems? Is there some preference I have to adapt? Thanks! SFCTf
Moz Pro | | MartijnHoving820 -
Why won't scheduled crawl of my site begin?
I currently have a campaign running on SEOMoz for over a month. It has been showing that a crawl was scheduled to start on 12/21. Now it's 12/23 and there has not been a new crawl, and it still says scheduled for 12/21.. Anyone know why this is happening or how to fix it? Thanks
Moz Pro | | Prime850 -
Competitive .edu Research via Open Site Explorer
I was using open site explorer and trying to figure out how my competitors are getting so many .edu links. Now I won't mention any names here but I am trying to figure out why almost all their links point to downloads of documents. Here are a few of the examples of sites I keep finding... www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/paracomp/tau/monitor/sheehan_examples/tim_context_xmpl?wiki=TailleMaximaleDesFichiersSurUnePartition/orphan www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/mathias/video/090926_wima_klimawandel.ivr?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=American Journal Clinical Nutrition&rft.atitle=Problems with red meat in the WCRF2&rft.volume=89&rft.spage=1274&rft.epage=9&rft.date=2009&rft.aulast=Truswell&rft.aufirst=AS&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fwiley.com%3AOnlineLibrary faculty.unlv.edu/jensen/CEE_468/GISTutorialWorkbook/tutorial11/LandUsePgh.lpk?arrow=nws&read=24922 <colgroup><col width="3111"></colgroup>
Moz Pro | | MichealGooden0