Cool visual ranking comparison tool

[dannysullivan]

Got a message today about a pretty neat tool to visually see how pages are ranked across a variety of search engines.

It's called Comparison Engine (http://roquefort.di.unipi.it/comparison.html), and be forewarned that it's a demo for someone's PhD thesis. Wasn't working for me this morning, but now it's flying.

Enter a search term, say movies (http://roquefort.di.unipi.it/clus-bin/c?q=movies&google=1&yahoo=1&altavista=1&alltheweb=1&teoma=1&looksmart=1&overture=1&msn=1&about=1&mozdex=1&aol=1&findwhat=1&gigablast=1&espotting=1&a9=1), and you'll get results back for all the search engines selected in a normal meta search style list -- that's the bottom of the page.

The top of the page puts each search engine on a line, followed by numbers. Hover over the number one on Google, and if that page is on any other search engine, the number at that search engine's row will light up.

You can also see the unique pages found by each search engine. Thumbshots has a somewhat similar tool (http://ranking.thumbshots.com/), but this goes above and beyond.

Want to have some real fun -- load results only for Yahoo, AltaVista, AllTheWeb and MSN. The run your mouse along the Yahoo numbers and watch how different the results are, even though it's the same core database.

There's also a normal meta search version (http://roquefort.di.unipi.it/) by the same person, with clustering.

[Terry Plank]

Thanks for the heads up on this tool. Some Beta bugs, but it was very interesting to see so clearly the different results for Yahoo, AltaVista, AllTheWeb and MSN based on the same Yahoo! core database.

Thanks for the clue about hovering over the number button, I was a little lost at first until I went back and read your post. Couldn't figure out why all the bottons kept scrolling out. :-)

[Daria_Goetsch]

That's a very interesting tool, not only for the ranking per engine but the difference in ranking between each engine.

[Terry Plank]

I need to go back and revisit it, but it seemed to me that for a few results I checked manually, they were not always the same for what was being reported in the tool. Anyone else find that to be the case or was I just having a momentary brain disfunction? :)

[Daria_Goetsch]

The results were matching up in AltaVista and AlltheWeb, I didn't do any extensive checking though. I wouldn't be surprised if it's off here and there, but I'd have to work with it a lot more to find out more information.

[AussieWebmaster]

Another tool to play with... I never have time for work!

[seobook]

awesome tool Danny!!!

[Dodger]

I need to go back and revisit it, but it seemed to me that for a few results I checked manually, they were not always the same for what was being reported in the tool. Anyone else find that to be the case or was I just having a momentary brain disfunction? :)

I noticed that too on a couple of checks. I only looked at Google and the results appeared to be flopped around in a few places. It may be that it is coming from a different datacenter though ... and possibly the update has not propogated maybe ??? I hope not, because I like what I am seeing on Google right now. :confused:

[paulavery]

This is a great tool - really enjoyed it.

searches are submitted in quotes.

if searched blue widget the tool submits "blue widget" (which give different SERPs)

I had a shock, because the rankings were not what I'm use too.. until I noticed they were for terms in quotes. I personally would not use the quotes.

Here is a suggestion - when hovering over the disc image if a title tag were to display the URL of that result - that would be really helpful

Well done!

Paul

[Terry Plank]

Hey, paulavery, that was helpful! I didn't think to check if it was searching within quotes. I don't do that either because I find that most searchers don't even know that putting within quotes looks for exact phrase. :-) So I forget that some programs do and probably certain groups of searchers.

[snaket]

Hi all,

thank you for the comments about this alpha release.
Now, many of the inconsistences are solved.
Please let us know.

PS: don't miss our cluster engine on:
http://roquefort.di.unipi.it/

[Terry Plank]

..thank you for the comments about this alpha release.
Now, many of the inconsistences are solved...
Please let us know.


Welcome to your first post and for being available for any communication on your tools tool. I'll give it another look.

[Robert_Charlton]

Hi snaket,

Great tools... both the comparison engine and the clustering engine.

On the clustering engine, I noticed that at "Medium" font size setting on Internet Explorer (Windows), your top frame window is slightly too small to display the instructions for using the clustering tool. You might want to check this out and possibly either use CSS to control the font size, or make the top frame window larger.

Also, you should consider returning sites clicked on in the cluster engine in a separate browser window rather than keeping them framed.

Generally, webmasters don't like to have their sites framed, and there are all sorts of other reasons for displaying a returned site in a full browser window. Your engine is so unique that this becomes less important than it might be on some other engines, but nevertheless it is something to think about.

Thanks for the tools.

[snaket]

Well this time we should fix almost any reported bug.
Please, remind this is still an alpha tool
We will appreiciate any futher reported problem
Ciao,
SnakeT