Hey Gang, A while back I was looking for a tool, basically a search engine, that would allow me to search sites by page rank related to my search criteria. I could not find anything satisfactory, so I wrote one. The software is basically a search engine that resides on your computer. You enter a few URL's to sites that contain links related to your keywords. Sites in your niche that you would like to find and add a link to that also have good PR. The most important part of the software is using the proxy setting. If you don't use this setting, after too many requests for PR, your IP will be banned for about a day and you will not be able to check PR until that time is up. Using a free proxy, this is circumvented. Right now, the software is in beta version. Right now, I'm offering the software as linkware. That simply means that if you like and continue to use the software, please provide a link via one of your resources using one of the links I provide on the web site. The linkware version is limited in capabilities where as the full version will be unlimited. Most likely, I will be tweaking the settings available for the linkware version. I'd really like to know what you guys think of the software. whether or not you like it, what features would you like to see added to the software to make it more useful, did you find it useful... You can submit your feedback through a feedback form I've put on the website. You do not have include your email or name when filling out the feedback form. Only do so if you would like a reply back or have a question regarding support. If there is enough interest in the software, I already have some ideas to include in the next version. I put a lot of time and effort into the software and I hope you find it useful. To get in touch with me you can either use the form on the web site or pm me here (for support or feature requests). Most likely I will release a paid version of the software as well that will not be limited like the linkware version. Although it is linkware, I realize that some people would rather not put a link on their site. The software does not check to see if a link is present, I don't believe in writing software that does that, and it's all in good faith. It's simply a way to support the software effort. I'd like to post this in the Google forum as well as the software pertains to Google. If anyone knows off the top of their head whether or not it's against forum rules, please let me know. I will also email a mod before I post anywhere else. Thanks for reading and I hope you can provide some feedback and also find the software useful. Here is the link where you can download the software: http://www.apotho.com
I like the idea of your software, but my anti virus program does not (Norton). Why does it keep warning me when I try to install it?
Still don't understand how it works. So does it search the web for sites that matches your keywords and presenting it base on PR. And what next?
I had someone do a test install and they had the same problem. I'm not sure why it sets off the AV software. It seems that it's just the install software that sets it off. The installer that I use is from Nullsoft. A lot of software writers use that system. Has your AV ever gone off on other installers? I will do my best to track down why this is happening, but I can assure you that it is clean. Thanks for your feedback.
No, it's a little more broad than that. What happens is you supply a couple of links to websites that are within your niche. I suggest using URL's that are pages containing links. Say, pages from directories or even the DMOZ. You only need 1 to 10 links. From there, the software reads the first page you entered, extracts the links on that page, navigates some pages of that site, again extracts links from those pages. What this does is builds a list of links to repeat the process. Essentially, by submitting links within your niche, the next few batches of links that the software extracts should have a good chance of also being in your niche. It analyzes a large number of links using this method. I hope that clears it up a bit for you. I know it's somewhat of a different concept, which also makes it a little difficult to explain without making too lengthy of a post. If you are still unclear, just let me know and I will try to do better at explaining the concept. If you don't understand, it reflects on me not properly explaining the concept and does not reflect on you. I understand what you were first thinking, and that's something that I could build into a future release. The only difficulty would be in making sure that the algo is accurate and does actually miss results that you may find useful. In the next day or so I'm going to up the values in the linkware version. I've been using the software myself, and you really need to have at least 1000 results in the database to take advantage of the software. I may not put it that high, but I will adjust it. Some other things I may add are direct links to yahoo's site explorer. But, we'll see if others think this is a good idea. As always, keep me informed of any features you would like to see added to the software. Thanks
Just wanted to do a quick follow up. I did a little searching and it looks like WinAmp and other NSIS software can sometimes be hit with a false positive. I found a cool site called: VirusTotal You upload a file to test and it runs the file against 40 (in my test) different AV software and gives you a result. It's actually really cool. When I ran the test on my software it came back clean in all tests. I suggest running a test there as well. I also suggest bookmarking as it seems like a really great free service. Please let me know the results you get if you test my software there. Also, please keep in mind that if you get a couple of hits that suggest a positive (on all software, not just mine), chances are it's a false positive. Running only one AV software can be misleading due to differences in heuristics based on different software. A good free AV software (one that I use) is Avira. Just some more good tools
OK, last follow up on the AV issue. This will also apply to other clean software out there. Many installers compress (pack) the software executable files to make the download size (or payload) smaller. Many use UPX. It seems that some "packers" can trigger a false positive in some AV software. I can't say that this is only limited to a UPX system and I don't want to alienate UPX. UPX is great and does a great job. So it appears that this is the cause for the trigger. Having said that, this does not mean that everything is clean. It only means that this is the reason for false positives. If you have any doubts with any software I suggest using the tool I mentioned in my previous post.