Does Open Site Explorer violate Google's Terms of service?

[ericwagner]

According to Google's Webmaster Guidelines:

"Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service."

Does that mean Open Site Explorer is a violation of those Terms of Service, or is it authorized?

[jennita]

Hi Eric,

Open Site Explorer doesn't use Google at all, it uses our own crawl of the web which we call the Linkscape index. Hope that helps!

Jen

[ericwagner]

I'm sorry - I meant to ask the question about the Rank tracker tool that you provide.

Don't get me wrong, I love these tools - I was just surprised when I read that in the Guidelines.