There's no doubt that Google has captured the hearts and
minds of surfers and webmasters alike in recent years. Google tools have
also become a common sight, thanks to the Google Web APIs service.
Using tools such as Google Web API (Application
Program Interface), software developers can query the billions of pages in
Google's databases from their own programs, which has led to some amazing
web applications being developed and released to the public.
Here's a selection that I'll be updating from time to
time of the more
webmaster-oriented tools that can assist with search engine optimization:
Google
Suggest displays related queries *before* you hit the search
button via a dropdown menu below the search box - and will also display the
number of results before you search.
Google
Dancer is unlike most dance (Google update) monitoring applications in
that it runs from your desktop instead of as a remotely hosted application.
The lite version (free) automatically locates data
centers if they move. It also features an automatic self-updating system.
Rank Pulse is an
online tool that provides a look at the daily fluctuations of Google results
based on the movements of rankings of sites in relation to keywords that the
company monitors.
Google
Alert can keep track of what the web is saying about a particular
person, company or web site.
Similar
page checker. This free tool allows you to check the similarity between
two pages.
Google
Dance tool. The Google "Dance" (update) can be identified when
the backlink counts of major sites are different on several specific Google
data centers. This tool updates every 60 minutes and you can also check your
own backlinks on the data centers.
Google
Fight. Wondering which keywords for a particular subject are most
popular? Google Fight allows you to enter 2 keywords or phrases and compare
the results.
Goofresh
is a tool to search for sites added in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, 7 days
or last 30 days.
Google
Tool. Search for results on one or more of Google's 15 data centers.
Google
history. Find out in what year an event occurred (post 1800)
Google
Pos. Discover the ranking for a particular site for a keyword or
keyphrase.
GoogleRankings.
Another tool for checking position based on keywords.
The
PageRank Calculator is designed to mimic the workings of the PageRank
algorithm to calculate an estimated score.
Google
- Yahoo Comparison. Allows for a side by side search of both Google and
Yahoo.
Touchgraph
Google Browser - visually displays the linkages between sites; quite an
amazing application.
Google
Ultimate Interface - Google's tools and options displayed on a single
page.
Proximity
search - Allows you to search for two words within one, two or three
words of each other.
Pagerank
calculator. The results produced by this calculator are related to raw
PageRank and are not equivalent to the values shown in the toolbar
Back
Link Tracking. Free utility for checking search engines for the number
of back links to any specific URL over time
Google
Tools. Enter your URL and the total pages crawled, listed and backlinks
to your site will be displayed.
Google
Count. A Google ranking reporting tool. Requires a (free) Google
Web API Key.
Poodle
Predictor. Enter your URL above to see how search-engine friendly your
pages are and whether they can be easily crawled. Provides Diagnostics View,
Source-code View and Header-Meta View.
Find
Forward - aka "The Uber Engine". A cool Google search tool
that allows you to refine results based on whether your search is a
question, date related, if you want blog/non-blog results, files only and
many other options. A very interesting feature is the search of the Google (Dmoz)
directory - results are complete with thumbnails of the various sites. Find
Forward also includes a nice meta-search feature.
Google
Dance Tool. Allows you to compare search results on up to 12 data
centers and/or 15 countries. Also provides a free subscription service that
will alert you when a major dance has begun and webmasters can also apply to
have the dance tool on their site for free.
Google AdSense Sandbox Tool
This is a handy little tool to ascertain Google AdSense ads based on content or keywords.
Enter the URL or keywords and up to 20 sample AdSense will be generated.
While none of these tools will get you a number one ranking,
they are useful in researching your industry in relation to positioning and
gaining a better understanding of how Google works.