Today SEOmoz announced a new tool today – Fresh Web Explorer (in beta, available to Pro accounts).
It’s fast. It’s big. It’s sexy. It’s simple. It tracks links and mentions in aggregate, and so far, has proven to be faster than Google Alerts and Topsy. This is especially cool for SEOs banking on co-occurrence and citations in the future of ranking. Plus, it has a feed authority feature (in the vein of the defunct AlertRank) which could be pretty useful for many.
Example 1:
It provides a legend of search operators, most we can guess if we are fans of the operators that work in Google. Quotes, minus signs, “OR” – they work great. I picked a few terms that I know gets used in conjunction with my blog:
- bill sebald
- greenlaneseo
- greenlaneseo.com
- green lane seo
I have the option to input one at a time, or both in a string like “bill sebald” OR “greenlaneseo” OR “greenlaneseo.com” OR “green lane seo,” depending on whether I want an aggregate or comparison view. I can also scan web mentions as far back as “last four weeks.”
Not only did I find a post that linked to my site just today (this tool is fast!), but I also found a page that mentioned me but didn’t link. I’ll be emailing him shortly to see if we can’t turn that co-occurrence into a link.
Protip – This tool also lets you export, which after a little tweaking of the CSV, makes for a juicy import into Buzzstream for even better link management.
Example 2:
I’m usually very successful with finding and connecting my good content with relevant posts – a reason I love the broken link building tactics. I recently wrote a review for a Visual Link Explorer from Cognitive SEO. I saw State of Search did a write-up on the tool within the hour my post came out. I wrote to them and asked if they’d like to link to my review as more context for their readers. Unfortunately there was no response (hey, it happens to the best of us), but this tool makes the success of that tactic even more possible.
I entered “Visual Link Explorer” into the tool, and had a couple nice hits. I could easily contact all of these sites with my review, and try to negotiate a link. Think about the varieties of keywords you could enter here to find timely posts and content that is still within the webmaster’s attention span. I’ve always found it’s much easier to get a link on fresh content, than something that’s been long forgotten by the webmaster.
Is it missing content, links, and citations? Yes. But this is a really great start. These tricks worked great for me in my first hour of playing with it. Would love to hear what you can come up with in the comments.
Oh, and check this out too – Fresh Web Explorer Bookmarklets
Updated 3/21/2013 – On the heels of Fresh Web Explorer, SEOmoz has rolled the concept into Open Site Explorer with “Just Discovered.” This new tab shows the freshest links discovered by Open Site Explorer by scanning pages recently shared through social media. It appears pretty accurate, unfortunately some of the links they just discovered for me are year old links on popular websites.
Bill Sebald - Ex-big agency guy, now focused on helping small and medium sized business. I've been practicing SEO since 1998. I started the SEO practice at a major digital agency owned by eBay and helped develop SEO products for one of the largest ecommerce platforms. I'm a proud member of the Philadelphia SEO scene. I'm passionate about search, writing, UX, CRO, and psychology in marketing.
Kane Jamison
Thanks for the link to the bookmarklets. Now I’m going to be watching to see how long it takes for FWE to pick up your link to that page…
Bill Sebald
You still found it faster somehow!
Jordan Evans
Great summary. You sure were fast at getting this content piece out there!
Jen Sable Lopez
Hey Bill! Thanks for the review, we’re excited with what we’ll be bringing out with this in the future as well.
If you guys have any feedback, be sure to use the feedback button in FWE and let us know. We’re looking for issues, kudos, whatever!
Thanks,
Jen
Abdallah
Nice review of some the practical features of this new tool. It definitely look very useful!
Greg
It’s about freaking time they came out with a new tool. Honestly, I’ve felt for some time now that the Moz tools have become stale and replaced by other more robust tools on the market, however, this tool, I’m really excited about.
Thank you for the write up Bill.
Anthony Moore
Sweet little review here, sir.
Based on this intro I entered a client into the machine. Turns out said brand had like 200+ mentions last week. Dug into it a bit and saw they are having a giveaway that ends soon (why I didn’t know about this is for another day).
Point – there’s a landing page set up that got a bunch of links that would normally get taken down with no regard for those links when the giveaway is over.
Not. This. Time. Thanks to this little gem, I can keep these unknown opportunities in check.
Jen Sable Lopez
Wait until you see what’s coming up next.
Jen Sable Lopez
Whoa! This is really great to hear.
Glad it was useful!
Brad Russell
Great little tool from SEOmoz. Your article prompted me to try it out and bingo – a couple of nice linking opportunities were found within minutes! Love it!
Cady Haren
Agree with Greg. It was about time that SEO Moz had come up with a new tool. I think they are also planning something big for local by partnering with David Mihm.
Can’t wait to see how that would develop. Exciting times ahead I guess
Stellan Herr
I would also be excited to see a seomoz tool especially for local marketing needs…but I`m happy for now with Fresh Web Explorer
Bill Sebald
FWE FTW!
Ryan Glass
Great, timely article. Actually came across this write-up at the same time I saw the Moz announcement. I’ll be happily sharing this with our social media team as well. Listening tools, ftw.
Bill Sebald
Much appreciated, Ryan!
Joe Oracoy
Yes, I love FWE, yet another great seomoz tool! and thank you Kane for those bookmarklets:) very handy indeed!
Siegfried
thanks for the review – I need to take closer look at this latest tool from seomoz.
FM Recycle
Thank you for the heads up,
Being in the newbie category we are always on the hunt for new tips and tricks.
Our brand is not very big and in the past we have found it difficult to quickly find new mentions or possible link mentions. So we are sure we will make good use of this.
In regards to BuzzStream, We dont actually use buzzstream, should we be using this with our SEOmoz subscription? or is SEOmoz enough?
Thanks
Bill Sebald
Two fairly different tools, both having unique value. I’m a huge fan of BuzzStream for SEO CRM and link management. I’m in it daily.
Thomas Kane
This actually looks like an awesome tool, SEomoz is looking up in the world.