Search Engine Tools Archives

Aaron Wall has written a pretty awesome rank checker tool Firefox plugin that checks various keywords against results on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live. Here's a sample screenshot of what you're expected to see:

While it looks like it's pretty accurate from my perspective, on Sphinn, one of the users note that it isn't completely accurate. Aaron has responded to inform us that the tool "clusters 100 results per page to minimize scraping on Google. That clustering can cause a shift in ranking compared to only seeing 10 results per SERP."

But I gotta say -- this is probably one of the tools that should have been made earlier and just hasn't been. Now, you really don't need an API key to run ranking tools. You can do it out of the convenience of your web browser. Thanks, Aaron. This rocks.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

We have Google's Blog Search and Technorati for blog search, but has anyone found a reputable forum search engine? Enter Twing.

Twing allows you to search and discover forum discussion. We do that here but this is something different. Find content from long ago and use the tag cloud to get additional inspiration.

Here's a screenshot of the system in action.

Sort you results by relevance and date and then even search forums with the associated keywords.

Looks pretty cool. If you're a forum junkie, this search engine looks very cool.

A DigitalPoint Forums has reports from dozens of webmasters that their link counts in the tool are way down.

Some users are reporting as much as of an 80-percent reduction in the number of links Yahoo Site Explorer is finding for their sites.

Lost about 75% on all sites today.

Ya! This was a huge drop though..not the usual slight fluctuation. i lost like 12k links.

I don't track my links on a frequent basis for this site, but I was able to dig up a past link count that I posted here back in October 2007 where I found I had 216,880 inlinks reported. Today, Yahoo Site Explorer reports I have 271,196 inlinks. So I don't see any reductions and I also checked some tools that might have been tracking this for me on an automated basis and I see no reduction.

(1) Either this site was not impacted or
(2) This was a temporary bug that is now fixed.

Are your Yahoo inlinks report down drastically?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The Google Webmaster Tools "external links" report is buggy over the weekend. The tool is not showing any backlinks anymore for, I believe, any site.

For example, here are the non-existent backlinks for the Search Engine Roundtable:

There are dozens of reports from webmasters worrying if Google banned them or not. Threads at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Groups both have concerned webmasters discussion the issue.

The issue started Sunday morning or early afternoon and is still an issue at the time I write this. Hopefully it will be fixed shortly.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Groups.

Now Fixed: At about 3pm (EST), it has now been fixed. JohnMu, a Google Webmaster Trends Analysts posted below and I confirmed it is now fixed.

A very common practice when discussion Google search results changes is to list the data center you are on when viewing Google results. But how do you do that? How do you know which IP address Google is using to serve up your results?

One of the best methods is to download the ShowIP Firefox extension into your Firefox browser. After you restart Firefox, at the bottom bar, you will be able to see every IP address of every web site you navigate to or query. So when it comes to searching at Google, where the IP address may change frequently, this tool gives you the IP right away.

For example, here is a search I did for mp3 players at Google:

The arrow I added points to the ip address that ShowIP adds to the status bar of Firefox. You can easily see that at the time of my query, I hit the 64.233.169.103 Google data center. Not only that, you can also quickly dig up more information on the IP address you hit by clicking on the IP address:

This is a useful tool for many reasons. What if you can't download the ShowIP extension? Well, there are other ways to try to get the ip address but they don't work as well. You can try pinging Google.com before searching, but the search may trigger a different IP address. Some suggest you can look at the cache URL's IP address, but that may not be 100% either.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A new tool called Link Diagnosis has been released that allows you to examine your competition. The tool uses the Yahoo! API and according to Patrick Altoft who posted it to Sphinn, it's one of the "best link analysis tools I've seen."

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. There are a few bugs (this is brand new), but that's to be expected.

I have been running some tests on it and I really like the information it provides. I have experienced a few errors, which is to be expected, and I assume they will get straightened out. All in all I like what I see from it so far.

The findings can then be downloaded to CSV. Very cool.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Search Engine Watch Forums Moderator abbottsys started on a venture to make a tool to help AdWords advertisers automate the process of writing their AdWords ads. You can track the idea to the inception of the tool at the Search Engine Watch Forums thread.

As you might think, most people were skeptical, including the tool creator, abbottsys. But that didn't stop the idea.

The tool is now done and is named AdWords Analyzer. Instead of writing a whole ad, it offers keyword ideas for your text and gives you just the headline for your ad. Does it work well? Far from it.

Let's plug in my Custom Web Applications page from RustyBrick and see what it gives us:

It suggests: "Rustybrick Custom"

I would have been happier if the tool just picked my title tag, "Custom Web Applications" and then maybe add "Done Right" to the end. :)

Trust me, I know how hard it can be to automate the process. Google and Yahoo, I believe, both have tools to aid the advertiser in coming up with titles as well. The only way to do this, is to test by hand. Humans read titles, humans click on titles, humans should write the titles. Of course, using dynamic keyword insertion is the exception to all of this.

Forum discussion Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google seems to have updated the look of the AdWords Keyword Tool.

Here is a before shot:

And here are after shots:

Notice the new tab for "Website Content":

I believe the UK keyword tool has this design for a bit longer - not sure exactly how much longer.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

I have been spotting threads over the course of the week that Yahoo's Overture Keyword Selection Tool is not loading for people. I tested it myself, and yes, it is not loading for me either.

This is nothing new with the tool. Yahoo has not been eager to support this tool since they have other tools in place within their Yahoo Search Marketing console that does similar tasks. In addition, the tool is a huge scraper graveyard, which requires huge server resources - something Yahoo probably doesn't want to invest in with this tool.

Here is a historical look at some of the problems we covered with this tool over the past year:

• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Offline? on January 29, 2007
• Overture Keyword Selection Tool Back Online on February 2, 2007
• New Free Yahoo! Keyword Tool Coming; Overture Keyword Tool Suffering; & Other Tools on January 31, 2007
• Yahoo! Removes UK Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool on May 2, 2007
• Yahoo To Stop Updating Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool on May 8, 2007
• Is Yahoo Working on New Keyword Tool with Search Volume Data? on May 10, 2007
• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Seems Dead on September 17, 2007
• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool has Returned on September 24, 2007

So now it is back offline, for the time being. Do we have alternatives? Of course!

A Cre8asite Forums thread lists a bunch of alternative solutions, including:

• http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
• http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
• https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox
• http://adlab.msn.com/ForecastV2
• http://adlab.msn.com/contextSim/Default.aspx
• http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
• http://www.seosleuth.com/site/www.seochat.com
• http://www.seodigger.com
• http://www.spyfu.com/
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

It appears that the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool has gone offline from yesterday evening to this morning.

Several reports from DigitalPoint Forums have confirmed the issue with the keyword tool.

If you have not used the tool, you should give it a try. It has come a long way since Google first released the tool.

The short 8 hours of the tool being offline really seemed to worry many advertisers and Webmasters.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Google is now updating their AdWords Traffic Estimator data monthly.

GuyFromChicago, a respected forum member, said;

Last week I received an e-mail from Google and one of the topics was the announcement that the traffic estimator stats are now updated monthly. The announcement read:

"Selecting new keywords to meet your campaign goals can be challenging, including the process of getting traffic and cost estimates on potential keywords. We are pleased to announce that traffic estimates are now being updated monthly. As a result, the data will be more accurate than it has been in the past. The specific date that the data will be updated will change from month to month."

I don't think making it more accurate would be all that difficult. When you start with "not at all accurate" it should be pretty easy to move to "a little better than before"

I wonder if advertisers will take notice.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Traditional bookmarking seems obsolete. Adding a bookmark to your browser, to many, is a practice that has been since seemingly replaced by newer methods -- social bookmarking sites, if you will.

However, not everyone is aware of these social bookmarking sites, nor are they ready to abandon their traditional methods of bookmarking. A Cre8asite Forums thread touches upon this subject. In the thread, administrator EGOL suggests that traditional means of bookmarking stay intact, and social bookmarking methods through sites like AddThis.com not necessarily be implemented -- or at least done as a secondary option.

This is exactly what other members agree is the right thing to do:

Absolutely. For most visitors bookmark this site means triggering a bookmark in their browser. I would add social bookmarking micro-icons for the rest. It also comes out as more honest.

The other angle is whether to have social bookmarking sites only, browser bookmarking only, both, or simply some text saying "hey, press Control-D to bookmark this!". IMHO, you need at the very least the Ctrl-D text and some of the social bookmarking sites.

For those not ready to jump into the social bookmarking realm, you should make sure that if you include a bookmarking option, your website accommodates these types of users.

Discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

This article was written this past Monday and scheduled for publication on Wednesday, May 23rd.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has hearsay on Yahoo working on a new keyword tool that will show search volume data.

This has been sorely missed since Yahoo stopped updating the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool with search volume data.

I was talking to a rep at Yahoo! and voicing my concern about the removal of the Keyword Selector Tool removal and reinstatement. She told me that they are currently working on a new version of the tool that will retain the keyword search volume and introduce some more robust functionality as well.

But at the same time, a "platinum rep" told someone else that "thinking" about it, but have nothing started yet.

I personally have not heard more outside of what I posted here the other day. So I doubt they are currently working on a new keyword tool at this moment.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Yahoo! has removed the UK version of the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool.

The tool used to load over at http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ but now it appears to just time out for me and those trying to access it.

It may be just a server issue or it may be a sign that Yahoo will also be replacing this UK version with a new one. Which they promised us after taking the Overture US tool offline.

We know they will begin expanding the Panama solution to the UK soon.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: A reader commented explaining that Yahoo changed the URL of the tool to http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ the other day.

Continue reading "Yahoo! Removes UK Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool"

A WebmasterWorld thread reports a member seeing a new tab within the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

The new tab is for "Negative Keywords" and reportedly "will come up with potential negative keywords for your campaign."

I hope to obtain a screen capture from the member who reported it and post it here, I will update this post if I get it.

The first feedback is:

What I really had hoped it would allow me to do is to use negative keywords right in the Keyword Variations tab, i.e., tell it I was targeting, say, [card games] and then add [-pokemon].

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Here is the screen capture from "Winooski", a longtime WebmasterWorld user, thank you:

Full size screen capture here.

Are you a huge fan of Google's link tool? Would you like to see more details on the page, such as:

• PageRank score
• The anchor text of a link
• Which links are nofollowed
• Are the links still live
• Which links are images

If so, you can add a Greasmonkey script to your browser and the Google Webmaster Central Link tool page will automatically add this data to your reports.

Joost created this code, it is not supported by Google, but it seems cool to me. It adds many but not all, of the features I requested to be added to the Google tool.

You can get more information about the script here, I have yet to try it out myself.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Google released a Link Analysis Tool this Tuesday and the forums have had a couple days to digest the tool. I went through many of the forums and gathered all the feedback I can find in terms of suggestions to improve the tool. Here is what the forums had to say.

• Add an API to access the data
• Filter option by Recent Data Found
• Filter by Last Date Found
• Sort by Link Numbers
• Filter by PageRank Score
• Integrate with Google Analytics
• Open it for competitive analysis (not sure if this will happen)

Some additional ideas from me:

• Graph those links, bar graph to show links growing over time
• Filters for those graphs, to plot only PR # to # on that chart
• Filter the report that shows you new links (to see how many new links have a PR of # versus a PR of #)
• Anchor Text reports (show most popular anchor text used for your links)
• filter those by PR also, and other standard filters
• Outlink To Inlink Ratio Report Per Page
• Show Links by IP address and C-Block

Of course, just providing enough of this data and enabling us to export the data (as they do or add an API), then we can graph it ourselves.

This is an excellent tool, thanks again Google.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Watch Forums, Cre8asite Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums and WebmasterWorld.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has links to several free and useful keyword suggestion tools that are still available to us. Remember last week, we discussed Yahoo!'s plans for a new keyword tool, Wordtracker opening a new free version of their tool and Overture keyword tool having issues. Here are some keyword research tools still available to you today, some from the thread and some I added.

• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Google Keyword Tool
• Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool
• Keyword Discovery Free Tool
• Google Trends
• DigitalPoint Keyword Suggestion Tool
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

At least for now, the Overture Keyword Selection Tool is now back online, I think as of yesterday some time.

Monday we reported some sporadic reports of the tool going offline for a bit. Then on Wednesday we reported Yahoo!'s statement saying that the tool is basically dying and that Yahoo! is building a new one.

I suspect they fixed some of the issues now.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Monday we reported that Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Offline? YahooSarah replied to that at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums explaining that the Overture tool is having issues but they are not taking it down.

I wanted to confirm that YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.

We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year.

If you are an advertiser, I'd suggest using the keyword research tool within our platform (the old or new one).

In her message, it is clear that Yahoo! will be focusing their efforts on a new keyword tool, as opposed to getting the Overture tool working consistently.

The new Yahoo! tool will have an API, that will enable developers to integrate right into their campaigns, so I look forward to it. But it appears that Yahoo! will not continue to fully support the old, Overture tool.

Aaron Wall reports that Wordtracker is now offering a new free version of their keyword tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/. Defintely worth bookmarking, in my opinion.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Not only can you check your Google web search rankings in any country, you can now check your rankings for image search, news search, video search and group search on any Google data center.

A new tool at http://oy-oy.eu/google/trydc/dc.aspx has a method for you to plug in a query URL at Google.com and hit submit, after specifying a Google data center.

Softplus, at Cre8asite Forums, who designed the tool said;

You can specify any C-Class datacenter (or all of them) and run a Google-query of your choice on it. It sends it through my server (so you'll have Swiss geotargeting) directly to that datacenter and returns the results just slightly adjusted (so that the links work and the images are displayed, optionally with the javascript removed). It won't give you any "secret information", but if you stumble upon a query that brings unexpected results, you can work out which datacenter it is and let other people use that datacenter directly (this is especially the case with image-search, though I have seen differences in video, news, froogle and even groups as well).

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

A Cre8asite Forum thread has a discussion on a new tool by oy-oy.eu that allows you to specify the location and data center you want to search in and it will show you a side by side comparison of your Google results between the two locations/data centers you selected.

The tool is located at http://oy-oy.eu/google/world/.

You type in a search query, then specify one set including a location and a data center. The available locations include; (local), Belgium, Canada, China, Denmarkm India, Iran, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Mexico, N/A, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, or Uruguay. There are a number of data centers to choose from as well.

Have questions or feature requests? Join the discussion at Cre8asite Forum.

Yahoo launched a new tool in the Korean domain named Webzari. What it does is use the Site Explorer data to map your inlinks on a map, in the form of planets. A link map, in a sense, with AJAX and more flavor.

You can check it out in action by clicking here.

Pretty cool and here is a screen capture.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Do you hate search spam? Do you report search spam often? Would you like to make reporting search spam easier? Well, if you answer yes to all or some of those questions, this tool may be of use to you. It combines all three spam reporting pages from Google, Yahoo and MSN all on one page. This way you can easily report the spam you find to all three search engines quickly. To be clear, this is a page with three frames loading the spam report page from each search engine. It is not a single form that then sends the data to each search engine. Forum discussion on this tool at DigitalPoint Forums.

Do you have a love/hate relationship with Google's PageRank? Do you find Yahoo's Web Rank to be a joke? Do you want to know, from an independent source how strong a page is in terms of Web popularity? Do you like Rand? If you answer yes to all or some of those questions, the new tool Rand released at SEOMoz named Page Strength Tool may fulfill your needs. Yesterday, I posted an interactive review of it at SEW blog, I will repost my video cast of it below. Forum discussion at DigitalPoint forum.

Continue reading "Quick Spam Reporting Tool & SEOMoz's Page Strength Tool"

Duplicate content issues are one of those plaguing issues that SEOs have to deal with often. Often, Webmasters are unaware they have a duplicate content issue until it is too late. Yes, by too late I mean, your pages are dwindling down in the index and your rankings suffer. So what can you do?

Well, there is a new tool out named Site Wide Duplicate Content Analyzer;

This tool crawls your entire site and then analyzes all your pages for duplicate content. It shows similarity percentage among all pages on your site, so you can see what pages are similar enough to trigger a flag in major search engines and consequently they can penalize your site for duplicate content.

I didn't try it out myself, but give it a whirl. Any comments or feedback, discuss at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Cre8asite Forums has an excellent new thread named Keyword Research and Related Tools, What do you use? The thread contains many ideas for tools and common sense ideas. Here are some tools:

• http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
• http://www.wordtracker.com/
• http://www.keywordsanalyzer.com/

Ammon Johns goes about it a different way. He takes out the old clipboard and pen and talks to people, actual people.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Text Link Ads launched a Text Link Ads Calculator that tells you the value of a link on a particular Web site. The price is derived based on Alexa ranking, link popularity, site theme, numbers of links available to be sold, sitewide versus single page link and most importantly, the location of the link on the page. The thing is, when you test it out on this site, you get the following prank!

There are several other examples of funny responses, including wolf-howl.com, seomoz.org, msn.com, davidnaylor.co.uk, shoemoney.com, text-link-ads.com, webguerrilla.com, and jeremy.zawodny.com. Also if a site is like a Google.com or Yahoo.com, you get the "Priceless!" response. As an FYI - SEW Blog is worth over 6k per month for a single link. More details at the link building blog.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

SEOjunkie posted a thread at DigitalPoint Forums on a tool he built named the Google Ban Checker. The tool uses "typical checks like site: commands and it automatically checks the sites you link to to see if any of them are banned," according to SEOMoz.org.

It is also important to note that if you use Google Sitemaps, Google may also notify you of a penalty.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

I wanted to point you guys to a new service named the Click Fraud Index. In an SEW blog entry Danny Sullivan reports on some recent figures that put click fraud at 13.7 percent, industry-wide. The major problem is that we do not know how "click fraud" is defined in this index and which advertising networks they use to come up with the data exactly. Danny summarizes;

I didn't mean to say the the Click Fraud Index was offering up an industry wide statistics. I meant only to highlight that the data is specific to your particular network only.

Which received more criticism;

hese figures have to be vetted - how are they calculating the percentage, i.e. what does that represent?

For example, if 30% of the universe of all PPC clicks are fraudulent, and the publishers "catch" and don't bill for half of that 30%, then we would see 15% of advertiser traffic that is being billed for as fraudulent. Is that the figure they're talking about?

Or, is the percentage of fraudulent clicks 15% of the entire universe of clicks? And if so, then what percentage of those clicks are being billed for, and what aren't?

Also, how are they defining "click fraud"

So much methodology to vet.

There is a Search Engine Watch thread named Thoughts On New Click Fraud Index & Network? In that thread most are skeptical about the service. SEW moderator, Marcia says;

Brand new, multiple sites, no privacy policy in place. Nice setup for a data mining operation, eh?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There is a recent thread at DigitalPoint forums named Is Matt Cutts a part of the DP Coop? What is happening, is that some DigitalPoint Co-Op Advertisers are using some of their "link weight" to create text ads for Matt Cutts for the term, "search engine optimization." The links reportedly helped Matt Cutts blog earn first page rankings at Yahoo! and MSN Search.

I wonder if this is a good thing or bad thing for the network?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There is a DigitalPoint Forum thread named that discusses a neat PageRank tool at http://www.webmastereyes.com/. The PageRank tool is different from others, in that it will enable you to plug in a URL and it will then place graphical PR bars on all the links you have on that page. For example, I plugged in my corporate site's sitemap and it told me the PR values of all my pages on my site (since all my pages are listed in my sitemap. On the right hand side, is an image of how they plotted my PR values over my left hand side navigation.

Back to the PageRank debate. I do not believe it is worth much in terms of ranking. Google does claim that PR affects your crawl frequency. And when everything else is equal, you have to assume PageRank makes the difference. But when is everything else equal in our world?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

AdSense Publishers who are serious about making big bucks with Google AdSense tend to be aggressive with the managing sites they do not want to show up in their ads. There was even a small unscientific study, where a WebmasterWorld member tested removing his AdSense filters and noticed a downward affect on his revenues. I was skimming Cre8asite Forums and found a thread named Adsense Black List, interesting.... The thread is probably at several other forums, but I found it here first.

It links to a tool at http://www.adsenseblacklist.com/ that helps you generate an AdSense filter for your industry. The tool will "filter low paying google ads which link to MFA (Made for Adsense) sites AND we will provide you with tools that will help you to substantly increase your AdSense revenue, all for free." You can even submit your own list to help the rest of the AdSense publishers.

Ah, but is there any concern for blocking your competitors unfairly on all other sites? Time will tell.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Update to this service under AdSense Black List Revisted.

This week Google introduced Google Finance, which has been getting a lot of attention. They also added a feature named global trends to AdWords keyword tool. I have not seen anyone discuss the fact that Google Finance has added the ability to search and filter news volume over time, just like keyword data over time with global trends.

I was doing some playing with a client of mine, Jennifer Convertibles, Inc. (Public, AMEX:JEN) at Google Finance. I then clicked over to the more news items and found news items put into folders by month. So then I tried the same thing for a company that is more in the news, Yahoo and notice the graph on the top left of the page. It says, "News Volume (90 days)," plus links to articles by month. You can click on the graph columns to sort news by that time period.

This, I would imagine, can be used for search term research, much like the global trends tool can be used for financial research - if you get what I mean. Anyway, I thought this was a nice little feature of Google Finance and I wanted to bring it to light.

I added this detail to our thread on the topic at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

If you are still a PageRank follower, then you will love this tool named live pagerank. Live PageRank lists out a domain's PageRank value over, currently, 78 different Google data centers.

For example, the PageRank of seroundtable.com is a PR 7 but also a PR6 at some of the older data centers.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.