Item: Moz Link Explorer
Rating: 1
Author: Scott Walker

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Open Site Explorer to gain valuable SEO information for our clients. The tool was fantastic to get an overview of the sites linking to your website (or web page) and get valuable metrics like a Page or Site Authority number. It also gave SEOs a game plan on what to work on to get the site better searchable performance. Removing spam links, building authoritative links, expanding content or getting better authority scores, finding and removing broken links, etc.

Pros and Cons

Estimating Page Authority and Site Authority
Listing Linking Domains and Pages

It was outdated
It featured many disproven metrics

Return on Investment

Took hours of manual work and programatically did it in a few clicks
Gave a game plan for future SEO strategies

Alternatives Considered

Moz, SEO Monitor, SEO Rank Monitor, SEO Tester Online and Screaming Frog SEO Spider

When it still existed, Open Site Explorer was one of, if not the, best freemium SEO tools. Not only did its free-tier offer amazing insights and data for SEO strategy, but its paid program offered additional resources for SEO. I think it worked better than Screaming Frog because it didn't live on your machine and thus was a cloud tool. Its interface was fresher than some of the other tools. And, before it was replaced, it was probably the most authoritative tool for SEO testing and evaluating.

Support Rating

I put a middling score here because of the difference in support between the free and premium uses. The Free tool was a great service, but there wasn't much support. It was tool that was intended to have a skilled SEO utilize it and save time. The Premium version has great support, but also offered more information so that skilled SEOs and novices alike could benefit from the tool.

Key Insights

Do you think Moz Link Explorer delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Moz Link Explorer's feature set?

Yes

Did Moz Link Explorer live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Moz Link Explorer go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Moz Link Explorer again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

As much as I'd love to recommend Open Site Explorer, Moz has discontinued the program and replaced it with Link Explorer. Though Link Explorer offers some of the same information and has more updated metrics, the old Open Site Explorer also gave more site-wide information that was useful for meta analysis and competitive metrics.

I miss Open Site Explorer

Overall Satisfaction with Open Site Explorer