Link Harvester Updated

I think I have updated Link Harvester twice since I last posted new source code. It now allows you to grab link data via Yahoo! or MSN.

On top of allowing you to search for links at a specific page or links to anywhere in a domain it also has a third function called deep links which allows you to get a sample of deep link data without grabbing links pointing at the home page. The theory is that many good sites get deep links. Looking through the deep links may give you a better view of how they were acquired or if they are all garbage scraper links, etc.

By looking through the deep links you can

  • check the quality of links pointing at inner pages.

  • know what URLs you really need to redirect if you are changing your content management system.
  • know what URLs are important to redirect if you buy a site and want to modify the content or gut out pieces that were causing duplicate content or other problems

Another useful feature of looking at the deep link profile is that if you look at the links pointing at sites that were not actively marketed via SEO techniques it can help you see what natural link profiles look like.

MSN tends to give some weird numbers with their backlink count sometimes and typically shows fewer backlinks than Yahoo! so by default when Link Harvester gives link counts like

Showing 421 unique domains from the first 250 results of 1129 total results

it means that between Yahoo! and MSN there were 421 unique results returned in the query. The of first 250 means that the link search depth was set to 250 per engine. The 1129 results is the number of links in the Yahoo! database (although they don't return 100% of what they know of they return most of them). If Yahoo is turned off the third number should be from MSNs database.

More Free SEO Tools

I added a bunch more SEO tools to the free SEO Tools page. Most of the new tools are geared toward beginners and are perhaps a bit boring, but
I like some of them, including:

Some of the tools could be quite a bit better, but I bought a bunch of them for cheap, almost just for the heck of it because they were cheap. Let me know if you find any of them useful. I already know some tweaks I want to make when time becomes available.

The next build of Backlink Analyzer is coming along slowly but surely. Am hoping to have a cross platform version of it with a few more features before the month is out.

Free Open Source Keyword Phrase List Generator

Probably the least exciting of the SEO / SEM tools I have created so far, but recently my friend Mike created a keyword phrase list generator.

I made it open source, so if you like it feel free to link to it, mirror it, or improve it.

The Best SEO Forum Threads at One Spot

Originally when Threadwatch was created NickW was going to track forums, but quickly found them to be a bit too repetitive & later switched to finding other news sources.

A friend of mine by the name Chris Ridings created a site called Resource Rate, which aimed to use a variety of editors to track SEO forums. It seemed to have quickly faded in popularity.

Another one of my friends, named Eaden, recently lauched SEO Bytes. It is a concept similar to Resource Rate, with a few exceptions:

  • No central editors: instead of having central editors the threads are ranked by freshness, number of replies, and recent activity.
  • Adjustible scoring: you can chose to place more weight on freshness or recent activity to get the newest threads first. You also can rate up good forums place less weighting on forums you do not like as much.

I believe SEO Bytes stores your settings in a cookie, but some SEO's travel a good bit. A few features I would like to see:

  • allow people to log in so their settings work on different computers
  • allow me to block all sub forums from a specific forum
  • add a few more forums to the list of forums
  • if he really wants to put a ton of effort into it ;) allow users to place more weight on thread ratings from friends and allow friends to submit threads for their friends to see

I am fairly certain Eaden will read this post, so please post what you like and what you would like to see at SEO Bytes.

In many industries it is likely that tools such as SEO Bytes will spring up. Sometimes they will have the best value as public research tools, and often if left private they can help some webmasters get the scoops.

New Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool

A while ago I reviewed a ton of keyword research tools, but most of them are lacking in serious user data, which makes them top heavy, and forces people to only see the most common terms.

For the longest time it seemed as though Google was uncomfortable sharing some of their search data, afraid to give competitors the inside scoop, but that is no more. Google recently launched a new Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool [you have to be logged in for the link to work & it may not be available in all accounts yet], which is much more usable than their older Google AdWords Keyword Sandbox.

What features does the keyword tool include?

Features of this tool include:
  • Keyword list sorting. Sort the results of your keyword search by popularity, performance history within the AdWords system, cost, and predicted ad position.

  • Easy keyword manipulation. Select a few keywords here and there, or add them all at once. Keywords already present in your Ad Group will be marked so that you don't have to worry about them. You can also download your keyword list as a .csv file.
  • Search for keywords in three ways. Use keywords you enter, your existing high clickthrough rate keywords, or any webpage URL for your search. You can also expand your keyword search even further to include pages linked to from the original URL. (Note: Site-related keyword searching is currently only available for English language users.)
  • More keyword results based on regularly updated statistics. Our advanced search engine technology allows us to provide you with the latest information on potential keywords for your campaigns.

Google also has tips on how to use the tool. I am not sure how well this tool interfaces with their API, but automating keyword selection based on Google's usage data and extracting meaning from page content makes the market a hell of a lot more efficient, especially for large advertisers willing to pay a bit extra for branding. The new tool also makes it easy for newbies to quickly build out targeted keyword lists. Google also has put Google Suggest in their toolbar, which allows them to sell better targeted ads than searches on broad generic terms would, and also helps consolidate the less common search queries (misspellings, etc.) to fewer overall phrases and more predictible patterns (since the search term suggestions are going to be based off of past popular searches). All of these will lead to Google being able to increase their profit margin per search. Combine that with the recent toolbar bundling and the numbers are looking up for Google.

This new keyword tool allows you to:

So long as Google stays ahead of their competition on the technology front, keeps doing an amazing job on the plublicity front, and finances pumping rapidly evolving spam into the competing search networks the search game is pretty well won IMHO.

I think the only thing that can stop them at this point is if they let another network spring up which makes its users feel like they are making the web a better place by searching there.

Poisoning the Keyword Databases for Self Promo

I just got an email from Andy Mindel of WordTracker, about the SEO software Matt Cutts thought was rubbish. Andy said the sales text was something likeso:

RankAttack technology does not submit your site to the search engines... rather it creates a persona of "popularity" around your site in the eyes of the search engines. The purpose in RankAttack technology is simple: get the search engines attention and make them want to list your website under the keywords you desire'

I can't see search term co-citation being a trusted source of data unless it is from well estabished search history accounts and/or there are also a number of news stories about the topic and/or new web pages on trusted sites about the topic.

If temporal effects of increased search volume are used to allow sites to gain link popularity at quicker rate then odds are pretty good search engines would also look at the number of news stories and unique sites posting about the topic.

I suppose you can write a number of press releases and the like, but it is going to be hard to get mainstream news coverage for most websites, and without it then I can't see any value in poisoning the keyword research tools in your keyword space (unless you are doing it to screw with competitors keyword research ability or marketing your site through spamming keyword suggestion tools - as many SEO companies have done).

Andy states that this type of search spam is poisoning the keyword databases, but WordTracker has worked hard to filter out most of it:

Unfortunately, this approach is skewing the popular keyword databases such as (our own) Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, Overture suggestion tool and the Google keyword tool.

However, we have improved our spam filter and 99% of these skewed terms have now been removed from the Wordtracker database.

Desired SEO Tools

Are there any SEO tools you would like to see made that are not on the market?

MyriadSearch Updated

My friend Mike updated Myriad Search.

Some of the features / upgrades:

  • main results are numbered

  • snippets are organized in the same order as the tabs
  • you can optionally tick on returning Alexa rank, although the Alexa API is fuckslow - for lack of a better word ;)
  • a couple things on the backend...like using the new MSN API & not querying Ask.com directly

Myriad Search was recently featured in SearchDay. Due to that exposure, (thanks for the review Chris!) and a few other links, it seems that sometimes Myriad Search is query limited & requires manually entering a Google API key to bring back Google results.

It still may need bug checks and a couple more features. Let me know what you think of it.

I intend to eventually offer up the source code if I can, but I need to do a bit more talking with Ask Jeeves to see if it is ok before I do that (since they do not have a general use search API just yet).

I know the word myriad is not a heavily targeted high value term, but there are 28,000,000+ results in Google for myriad. It is interesting to note that after about a week the site is listed in DMOZ and Myriad Search already ranks at 15 to 19 in Google for myriad as a three page website without any link buying or press releases, etc.

Ye Old Domain Names

Jim Boykin likes old sites.

And created two tools for looking up site age. I think Jim is still working on the tool naming front. Getting better though, the first tool only took an 18 word link to describe ;)

And if you want to register new domain names, this is a cool tool.

And while at Web Professor, I realize text in images is evil on the usability front, but I may sometime want to try this out. Although I already have tons of other usability issues that should be way way way better than they are on this site.

Myriad Search / Free Authority Finder Launched

Authority Finder is another free search tool created by my friend Mike.

I wanted to create a tool which cross compared the search results from the major search engines to find the most authoritative results for a query (hence the name authority finder).

After a bit of thinking about it I realized with a few tweaks the tool could also double as a meta search engine and sorta like a share of voice tool (although an incomplete share of voice tool as it does not factor in paid listings and there are a ton of variables that go into who searches for what where).

A beta of the tool exists at Myriad Search.com.

Currently Myriad works with the Yahoo! & Google APIs. It queries MSN's search RSS feeds, but will be shifted over to their API sometime today or tomorrow at the latest.

I do not believe Ask has an API. I have sent mutliple emails to Ask to see if it was ok to include their search in the tool and they have not yet responded. Most of the stuff on their TOS talked about commercial use, and this tool is totally free. If they are unhappy with the tool querying Ask I will quickly remove Ask from it.

I have not yet released the source code since I will be changing out the MSN piece today and I still am somewhat uncertain as to whether or not Ask will care, although I am hoping they think it is ok. If not they can email me at seobook@gmail.com.

In the tools section I posted more in depth information about the features of Authority Finder.

Please let me know what you think.

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