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Webmasters on the hunt for certain information through Yahoo Search will begin seeing their queries redirected to Site Explorer, which just received a significant update.

As SES 2006 draws to a close in San Jose, webmasters from all over will make their way home. Filled with new knowledge and vendor schwag, they will eventually position themselves in front of the cold fire of a computer monitor. From there, the quest for better placement and higher conversions continues.

Those who have made Yahoo Search part of their strategy to achieve online success will notice a change in how the link:, site:, and linkdomain: operators work. Priyank Garg, Product Manager, Yahoo! Search, provided the news on the Yahoo Search Blog.

Queries for page and inlink data performed through Yahoo Search will redirect to Site Explorer. The data obtained there will be the same as it was in Yahoo Search. Garg listed what will and will not redirect in the post:

To reiterate, the following types of queries will be redirected:
• site:ysearchblog.com
• link:http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000341.html
• linkdomain:ysearchblog.com

All other queries, such as the ones below, will not be redirected:
• ysearchblog.com
• ysearchblog
• site:ysearchblog.com webmasters (looking for ysearchblog posts mentioning webmasters)
• link:http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000341.html Danny Sullivan (looking for links to the article mentioning Danny Sullivan)
• linkdomain:ysearchblog.com site:yahoo.com (looking for links to ysearchblog from within yahoo.com)

Garg also recommended webmasters use the Web Services APIs Yahoo provides for Site Explorer through its developer network.

"The APIs provide the same data and will be more stable and easier to parse than our search page, which we regularly change to make user experience improvements for our users," Garg noted.

Indeed, Yahoo offers Page Data, Inlink Data, and Update Notification APIs for webmasters to use. More information about these may be found at the relevant Yahoo discussion group,