Bing has announced the retirement of Link Explorer, a tool originally from Yahoo which let you see your own websites backlinks along with those of your competition. This was a great way to do some competitive link analysis to learn who was linking to websites such as your own.
Bing states that the Bing search index had simply grown to such a point that Link Explorer could no longer keep up with it – and as such come October 1st, 2015 Link Explorer will no longer be available.
However, as the size of the Bing index has grown many times over since 2012, and as the architecture of our index has evolved to improve speed and efficiency, we no longer will have access to this information at query time going forward. As a result, we will no longer be able to power Link Explorer inside Webmaster Tools.
An alternative is the Inbound Links report however that only shows you your own backlinks and eliminates the possibility of any competitive backlink research. However there is an upside. Link Explorer was limited to analyzing only a small sample of your websites backlinks. The Inbound Links report lets you view and export up to a million inbound links at once.
Saying goodbye to a nifty tool like Link Explorer is not easy, but sometimes it is necessary to let go. With the unparalleled power of the Inbound Links tool still at your disposal to view your own links and with various third party tools that provide even more comprehensive competitive link analysis data in the market today, we feel you’re still in the best position to succeed in Bing and Bing-powered search.