Open Site Explorer

Tool name:	Open Site Explorer
Company behind the tool:	SEOmoz
Type of tool:	Link profile checker
Costs:	Free! (limited use)
Description:	Open Site Explorer is a link popularity checker and backlink analysis tool.

About the tool

The Open Site Explorer provides quite some insights in the link profile of a website. You can check the regular basic link data, but SEOmoz has also added a few very nice features.

One of these features is the opportunity to check which URLs 301-redirect to a certain domain, which makes bait-n-switch pages or redirected domains for SEO purposes easy to find.

Another interesting functionality is the option to compare two different domains. Just enter two URLs, hit enter, and you’ll see some pretty charts, accompanied by very interesting data.

The tool is free to use, but only premium members can run more than three reports a day and see all link information.

Screenshots

My Opinion

The Open Site Explorer is a great and very easy tool to use. Although its functions are limited for regular visitors, the combination of link data (including 301 redirects), filters and the export-to-csv option still make it a very useful tool.