John Dilbeck Musings

Ken Evoy’s free Internet search utility has just gotten better, if you have any interest in RSS, XML, and blogs or for specialty hubs and directories.

Search It!, which does NOT involve downloading anything to your computer, is a utility that makes it easier to find information relating to business and ecommerce on the Internet. By using a multi-step process (usually three steps, but sometimes four), it will build the searches for you and go to the appropriate search engine, directory, or content site to find the information in which you are interested.

One item you’ll see in the Step 1 dropdown box is “Reference Library for Content.” By selecting that, Search It! will automatically populate the Step 2 box with appropriate choices. There is a link to get help for using the tool once you have selected your choices for Step 1 and Step 2.

The new searches listed in the Reference Library for Content choice in Step 1 are:

Yahoo! RSS Domain Search
Feedster Blog/RSS Search
Syndic8.com RSS Search
Google RSS Content Search
Yahoo! RSS Content Search

It’s taken me years to learn how to search for some of these things and where to go to find them, and Ken has just given you that power for free.

Not only that, but he just added four more searches related to hubs and directories. Select “Specialty Hubs and Directories” in Step 1, and you’ll see the following new searches in Step 2:

Google Wide
Google Tight
Yahoo! Wide
Yahoo! Tight

The help link below Step 1 and Step 2 gives information on how to use these new searches.

I use Search It! just about every day. It’s easy to use. Leave the small window open in the top-left corner of your screen so it will be available when you want to find something of interest. The more I use it, the better I like it.

I was surprised to see that I have several sites listed in the top 10 for both the Yahoo! Wide and Tight searches for the following keywords: Step 3 = “Murphy NC” and Step 4 = “travel”. It looks like the work I’ve been doing for the last several months is starting to pay off.

I guess each of us has our preferences for which search engine we like to use.

For the last couple of years, I’ve preferred to use Google for most of my searching, although I still use others to compare the results.

If I’m researching keywords or I want to see which sites place well on various search engines, I’ll use a metasearch engine such as ixquick.com.

A couple of weeks ago, SiteSell released their Search It!, which really isn’t a search engine, but is a front-end tool to help you search for a wide variety of things using preformed search queries.

Recently, I became aware that Amazon.com has released a9.com, which can search several databases at the same time, including google, google images, inside books at Amazon.com, inside a movie database, and more. You can read more about it at Why Use A9.com?.

A9.com has the interesting feature of saving your searches so you can reuse them later. It also has a diary and a place to store bookmarks. I haven’t used all the features, yet, but it’s great to be able to search for something, such as “Murphy, NC 28906″, and see results from Google, from inside books at Amazon.com, and images returned from Google. It offers some truly useful features that I’ll be using in the future.

Try it out for yourself and see what you think.

We’re approaching the end of September and people who run businesses are turning their attention from summer activities to gearing up for the final quarter of marketing before the end of the year.

Webmasters, marketers, home business owners, folks who auction products on eBay, and just about anyone involved in online commerce will find Sitesell’s newest tool, Search It! to be a very valuable addition to their online research tools.

How many sites do you have bookmarked that you regularly search? Do you remember all the different formats you must use to get the information you want? Let Search It! help!

If you open Search It! and park it in a window where you can easily get to it during your work sessions, you’ll find that it will become an invaluable tool to help you improve your websites, keep a close watch on your competition, look for ways to monetize the traffic to your site, look for more — and better — keywords and phrases, and do much more, easier than ever before possible.

The good news?

It’s free! Yep, Sitesell, once again, overdelivers and underprices.

Site Build It! owners get some extra functionality, but everyone can use this new tool as much as you want at no cost to you.

It’s a bit different, so be sure to click the help link and read it. One of the great things about Search It! is that the help (between steps 1 & 2 and steps 3 & 4) changes depending upon the type of search you are doing. This makes it easy to use without having to keep notes or just feeling your way around.

I’ve been searching on the Internet since before the World Wide Web even existed and I found some great resources by using Search It! that I never knew existed.

I heartily recommend this tool to you. If you’re searching for anything on the web, see if Search It! can help you.