Site Explorer is Search Atlas's domain intelligence tool. It lets you analyze organic, paid, and backlink metrics for any domain — your own or a competitor's. This article explains how to access those metrics and what each data point covers.
📋 What Site Explorer Shows
The Overview panel surfaces the following top-level metrics for any domain:
- Organic keyword count — number of keywords the domain ranks for in organic search
- Estimated organic traffic — projected monthly visits driven by organic rankings
- Paid keyword count — number of keywords the domain is bidding on in paid search
- Estimated paid traffic — projected monthly visits from paid (PPC) search campaigns
- Backlinks count — total inbound links pointing to the domain
- Referring domains count — unique domains linking to the site
- Domain Authority — a composite score reflecting the domain's link strength
- Position distribution — ranking breakdown across buckets: 1–3, 4–10, 11–20, 21–50, and 51–100
Historical trend data for traffic, keywords, and backlinks is available for up to 12 months.
🔍 How to View Site Metrics
- Log in to your Search Atlas dashboard and go to Site Explorer (Left sidebar → Site Metrics).
- Enter the domain you want to analyze in the search bar and press Enter.
- Open an existing project for that domain or create a new one.
- The Overview panel loads automatically with top-level metrics displayed at the top of the page.
- Use the tabs below the overview to explore deeper data: Organic Keywords, Top Pages, Competitors, Position Changes, Subdomains, Backlinks, Referring Domains, Anchor Text, Outgoing Links, Intent Distribution, Trends, and SERP Features.
⚠️ Things to Keep in Mind
- Site Explorer works on any domain, not only your own. You can freely use it for competitor research.
- Organic keyword counts can appear higher than expected because the same keyword ranking across multiple URLs is tracked per URL before being merged. When reviewing large keyword sets, use the Prev / Next Page pagination controls (Site Explorer → Keywords) rather than relying on the total count display.
- Metrics are based on periodic index updates, not real-time data. Expect a typical lag of days to weeks between changes going live and appearing in Site Explorer.
- If the Overview panel appears blank or is missing its organic research, paid research, or backlinks sections while data is still visible in the individual tabs below, reload the page. This was a known display issue that has since been resolved.
- If you want to track specific target keywords over time, use Rank Tracker (Left sidebar → Keywords → Rank Tracker) — that is a separate tool designed for ongoing keyword monitoring.
- Crawl health and indexed page data are available under the Indexed Pages tab, which is separate from organic ranking pages.
- Site Explorer metrics can be included in client-facing reports using the Report Builder tool.
💬 Need More Help?
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.