Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Checking Your Site's Popularity With SearchIt! Free Research Tool
The SearchIt! free search tool consists of a window with two dropdown boxes and two text boxes. In the two dropdown boxes, you select the type of search you want to do. In the two text boxes, you select the search criteria (such as keywords or URLs) you want to use.

Rather than repeat the introductory info about SearchIt! that I shared previously, I suggest that you see the October 2nd blog for this information. Or simply realize that it is important to click all the links and read all the instructions that SearchIt! tells you to do.

You'll find SearchIt! A LOT easier and more valuable to use if you do that.

Using SearchIt!
Last week we looked at how SearchIt! can help you find ways to make money with your website. This week we'll start covering some site research tools, starting with various ways to determine the popularity of your site or that of a competitor.

In the Step 1 dropdown box, scroll down under Site Research and select Popularity.
Click the dropdown box for Step 2: Select Search Type. You'll see the following options.

• Alexa Ranking and Reviews
• Google PageRank - For a Site
• Find Sites Ordered By PageRank

(Note: These options may change. The SiteSell people (who maintain the SearchIt! tool) are constantly adding new search tools to it.)

Alexa Ranking and Reviews
This option shows you the popularity of a site and what visitors think of it. Type the domain name (without the http:// or the www.) in the Step 3 box. Click the SearchIt! button.

Before checking your results, I suggest you click the link on the introduction page that offers the best primer I've seen on what Alexa Rankings are good for what they're not good for.

Once you've read up on Alexa, click the link at the bottom of the intro page to see your results.
Your results will show you three rankings:

• The rank of the site (namely, where it ranks among the top 5 million or so websites on the Web)
• The reach of the site (namely, what percentage of Internet users visit it - in my opinion, this one is usually wildly inaccurate unless you're checking a website in the top 1000 most popular sites)
• The number of page views per visitor

The stats also show these rankings both over the past week and over the past three months and shows how the site has improved or slipped over that three month period. These ranking changes are especially interesting to track because they gives you a good idea of trends on the site.

And one other thing that Alexa shows is any reviews that people have written about that site. Scroll to near the bottom of the page. A link there asks if you'd like to write a review of that site. If anyone has already written a review of it, it will also offer a link to those reviews.

Google PageRank - For a Site
This option shows you the Google Page Rank for any site's home page. Type the domain name and subdomain (without the http://, but with the www. or subdomain you want to check) in the Step 3 box. Click the SearchIt! button.

The intro page gives you an overview of what Google Page Rank is and why it's significant. It also offers a link to Value-Exchange, an excellent way of finding sites that are similar in theme to yours so you can exchange links with them. Once you've read the intro page, click the link at the bottom of the page to see your results.

The results page is very simple. It lists the Page Rank for the page and also what it perceives the actual Page Rank to be (I'm not sure how they arrive at this second figure, though).
You can actually check any page of a site by adding the rest of the path in the Step 3 box (for example, www.onestopwebsupport.com/newsletter-signup.htm), if you want to check a specific page.

Find Sites Ordered By PageRank
This option lets you sort sites by Google Page Ranks to see what sites rank highest for a specific keyword. Type the keyword in the Step 3 box and click the SearchIt! button.

The intro page gives much the same information about Google Page Rank and how to improve your site's authoritativeness with Value Exchange. When you click on the link at the bottom of the page, your results appear.

The results identify the highest Page Rank pages for the keyword and give you a chance to study how they achieved their rankings. You can view the following information about each site:

• The page's metadata (page title, description, and keywords that the writer used for the page)
• Which external sites link to that page
• A link analysis of internal and external links
• A cached version of the page
• Similar sites

Next week
This Sunday, we covered some site research tools, starting with various ways to determine your site's popularity. Next week we'll look at ways to find vital statistics about a site, including info such as contact information or whether your site is on any spammer blacklists.

All in all, SearchIt! can find you lots of valuable information. The main thing to remember is to READ THE DIRECTIONS. With as many tools packed into this one interface, you're not going to take one look at it and intuitively understand how to use every one of them. But the directions they give are easy, and they do more than just tell you how to use each tool; they also throw in tips on how to use the results you receive to make your site more successful.

SearchIt! is one of these free tools that really produces value for you. I recommend that you check it out and make it a part of your web marketing arsenal.
Jeff