How to use Site Explorer?
What is Site Explorer?
Site Explorer is an SEO Analysis tool that you can use to carry out an in-depth analysis of any domain, website or URL and uncover detailed data on tens of SEO parameters, including MozRank, Domain Authority, Page Authority, Citation Flow, Trust Flow and more.
With Site Explorer, you can research, segment and analyze backlinks based on multiple parameters, spot backlink opportunities or spam links that need to be disavowed. You can do this for any website, whether it is your own, a client's or a competitor's website. You can also use Site Explorer to analyze domains, for example, aged domains that you are considering to buy (even if there is no website on them).
How to use Site Explorer?
Site Explorer is located under the SEO Analysis section, in the TOOLS menu.
When you open Site Explorer, you will see a history page showing all previous analysis. To run a new analysis, simply click the blue + button located at the top right of the page.
Fill in the Domain, Site or URL field and click Explore. Note that you can choose to check the "with www." version, "without www." version or both versions.
The analysis will take a few seconds to complete, before a report is displayed with a large range of SEO data.
What data do you get with Site Explorer?
On the report page, you can navigate through a wide range of data by using the menu on the left hand side.
Overview
This is an overview of the following data:
SERPed Rank - This is a score that is calculated using our own proprietary formula. It takes into consideration many different metrics to provide something a bit different from Moz and Majestic. Rather than place the URL on a range of quality, we call our score the 'Real Site Score' and base it on if the site or URL had hard work put into it. It works on a URL basis (subdomains and inner pages will give a different score than the homepage, for example), but does derive some value from residing on a strong root domain.
Moz Rank, Domain Authority and Page Authority scores
Majestic Citation and Trust Flow scores as well as Trust Ratio
Total number of Backlinks, Uniques Domains and Unique IPs
Spam Score - Percentage based from Moz
Topical Trust Flow - To see what kind of pages link to the site
Note that if you selected to run the report for both with and without "www.", the result with the better score will be shown in color, so that you can at a glance see which one is performing better.
Metrics
Here is where you will find:
Other metrics - CMS of the site, Domain Age, whether it is indexed in Google, Facebook shares and likes and Alexa Rank.
Detailed metrics for Majestic, Moz and SERPed as well as a Trust Flow / Citation Flow graph from Majestic.
Mobile Friendly Score - Mobile preview and a check on whether the site is mobile friendly or not.
Backlinks
This section is broken into the following sub-sections:
View Backlinks
Here you will find a list of the site's backlinks, the page title, anchor text, Majestic Citation Flow and Trust Flow, target URL, industry associated with the backlink, link type and whether it is dofollow or nofollow.
This table can be customized to show only what you wish to see. Simply click on the cog icon (Table Column Configuration) at the top right and untick what you do not want to show on the table.
View Ref. Domains
This is a list of the referring domains i.e. the external websites that direct visitors to the site. You can select the details you want to be displayed on the table such as, page title, number of backlinks, number of crawled URLs, numbers of links per crawled URL, number of indexed URLs, number of external backlinks, number of referring domains, as well as the Trust Flow and Citation Flow.
Countries & TLDs
Here you will find a world map showing the number of backlinks per country as well as tables showing the TLD (Top Level Domain) distribution, Top 5 countries and an overview of all TLDs used.
Industries & Types
Here you will find graphs and tables showing the number of backlinks by industry and type as well as the dofollow and nofollow ratio for the site.
Link Age
The age of a backlink is one of the ranking factors as it is considered a sign of trust. The Link Age section shows the number of backlinks the site earned each year and the percentage share. The intuitive graph gives a quick insight into the site's backlink profile.
Link Velocity
Link Velocity is a measurement of how many new backlinks the site gets naturally over time. Here you will see graphs showing the Link Velocity of the site over the last 12 months. This way you can keep an eye on the over time growth of backlinks to the site and take preventive measures when required.
TF Breakdown
Here you will find a graph and table showing the Trust Flow breakdown of incoming links to the site.
Anchor Texts
Referring Domains
Here you will be able to view the anchor texts from referring domains, i.e. the domains that refer to the site. There is a Pie Chart Overview, Anchor Cloud as well as a list of the anchors texts, its Primary Topical Trust Flow, number of domains, Trust Flow, Citation Flow and share percentage.
Referring Pages
Similarly you can also view the Anchor Text Ratios for referring pages i.e. the pages that refer to the site. Again there is a Pie Chart Overview, Anchor Cloud as well as list of the anchors text, its Primary Topical Trust Flow, number of links, number of NoFollow links, Citation Flow, Trust Flow and share percentage.
Anchor Languages
In this section, you can see the language of anchors used to link back to the site. With this data, you can find out what the predominant language is on the pages that link back to your website.
This is useful if, for example, you are searching for aged domains for your blog network as it helps you find out what language they were using in the past.
Traffic
Here you can view the estimated organic and paid traffic a site has received over the past 12 months.
Domain History
As the title indicates, this section will give you a breakdown of the domain history, including:
Domain Information - Age, Domain Name, Registry Domain ID, Registrar WhoIs Server, Registrar details, Registrant details and more.
Screenshots of the domain from previous year(s).
WayBack Versions of the site. You can preview screenshots obtained from WayBack Machine or download and restore previous versions of the site.
Top Pages
This section lists the top pages for the site, the number of linking domains as well as the scores for Page Authority, MozRank and Domain Authority for each page.
URL Rankings
This will take you to our What Ranks Where tool, which analyzes Google's Top 100 results (organic and paid) and shows what keywords or phrases any site ranks for.
Spam Analysis - Backlinks with Flags
Here you can view the Spam Score of backlinks that are considered as spammy.
Note that all charts and graphs from Site Explorer can be printed or downloaded in PNG, JPEG, PDF or SVG vector format.
Updated on: 12/02/2021
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