As one of its creators, I’ve been testing it extensively using plumber, plumbers, plumbing + big city terms (6 large metropolises spread around the country) and I thought I’d share the results with you here. I aggregating and sorted the data regarding the citations and reviews associated with the  top ranking sites for these queries. The result is a list of what we feel are probably the best websites on which plumbers should be listed and the best websites on which plumbing companies should encourage happy customers to leave reviews:

Best Sites for Citation Sites for Plumbers
CitySearch
Angie’s List
Superpages
BBB.org
Yellowbot
DexKnows
Yelp

Other Good Citation Sites for Plumbers
InsiderPages
MagicYellow
YellowPages
ServiceMagic
Checkbook.org
Kudzu

Best Review Sites for Plumbers (besides Places)
Yelp
CitySearch
InsiderPages
Judy’s Book
DexKnows

Other Good Review Sites for Plumbers
Kudzu
Yellowpages
Local.Yahoo
ServiceMagic

I have some more testing to do and I’ll share those results with you here, as well, so check back. Hopefully, this will give you ideas of ways you may be able to use the Local Search Toolkit for competitive analysis to help you rank better in Local Search. Enjoy!

One reason that I’ve needed to know the IP of a website recently is that I had to help a friend redirect a group of sites in the DNS at some small hosting company to one site on another server. They don’t want to use htaccess and the only way to do this is by knowing the exact IP address of the site they need to go to. In the DNS settings, I was able to get the redirect to work by entering the URL of the site, but it wouldn’t redirect the non-www versions of the sites which is why I needed the exact IP address.

Whatever your reason for needing to know the IP of a website, here’s how to do it in both Windows and Mac.

Finding the IP of a site in Windows

Start by opening the Command Prompt in Windows. There are various ways to do this and also depends on the version of Windows you’re using. For example, if you are on Windows XP you can use the RUN function which you can find in the Start menu. From there simply type “cmd” without quotes and hit enter.

If you’re in Windows Vista, the Run feature has been moved, but that’s OK. Instead, open your Start menu and type “cmd” into the search box at the bottom. This will find the cmd.exe program. I don’t have Windows 7, so I’m not sure if it works the same way.

Once open, type: ping yoursite.com

And there you have it!

Finding the IP of a site in Mac

Doing this in Mac is super easy. It’s as simple as typing “Network Utility” into Spotlight and opening it up.

Or you can do it the long way: Open Finder > Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Network Utility

Once open, click the Ping tab and enter the URL. Set the “Send only _____ pings” field to 1 and hit the Ping button to see the IP address. Simple as that.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

Never Fear, LocalSearchToolkit is Here!

Well, the fine folks at SEOverflow have come up with a new tool that automates this process – just type in your keyword phrases and it gives you a full report, including:

-Who is in the 7-Pack
-What their citation sources are
-Where they have online reviews
-What categories they are using

Listen to the Full Interview.

Sign up for the beta at LocalSearchToolkit.com, it’s FREE

Give our tool a local keyword and it gathers and organizes information on the businesses that rank in the Google Local Pack for it. You can take a tour of it here.

Right now, we have limited its use to a small team of Local Search experts who are beta testing it. But please can sign up for our new Local Search Tool and when we are ready to add more users, we’ll let you know!

Insights For Analytics comes in the form of a Greasemonkey script and you must have the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox installed in order to use this tool.

Installation Instructions

Option 1 – easiest option

-download and install Greasemonkey Add-on For Firefox

-Install from link UserScripts.org

Option 2 – coming soon

- install Erik Vold’s Better GA Firefox Add-on to get Insights for Analytics and many other Analytics enhancement scripts

Demo Video

Notes on Google Insights

One thing to be aware of when using Google Insights is the keyword data you are viewing is based on broad-match. This means the traffic patterns you are viewing may deviate quite a bit for the same keyword using exact-match.

Updates and Versions

- v2 released 10/24/2009 – updated so that it works with the new pivot view

Other Resources

http://www.seobook.com/google-adds-keyword-predictions

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/08/competitive-intelligence-analysis-google-insights-for-search.html

http://www.localseoguide.com/search-engine-optimization-google-insights

http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2008/08/early-adopters-vs-the-mainstream-google-insights-points-out-websites-only-used-by-silicon-valley-nerds.html

If you have any questions of course feel free to contact us, and please connect with us on Twitter, Linked In, and Facebook! If you are wondering where we will be in the future, please check out our Events Page.

Reid Fenlaw
Twitter: @rfenlaw
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/reidfenlaw

Chris Hickey
Twitter: @hicculus
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishickey

Mary Bowling
Twitter: @marybowling
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marybowling

seOverflow on Facebook

Here is the presentation, broken into sections for your convenience.

The first thing you need to do is set up a Google Reader account. If you already have a Google account, all you have to do is go the Google Reader page and log in. Now you have to start importing feeds.

Now, you want to start checking your favorite blogs to see if they have an RSS feed. Most blogs do these days, so you shouldn’t have a problem. On your favorite blog, look around for an RSS feed icon or link. They look like this; .

You can also check for this icon in the URL address bar of your browser. Now click on the button and you’ll be taken to the feed page.

There are two ways to bring this feed into Google Reader.

1. From the feed page, change the dropdown menu to display Google and click the subscribe button. This automatically imports the feed into Google Reader.

2. Copy the url from the address bar on the feed page, go back to Google Reader, click the Add Subscription link and paste the URL in the box and click Add.

Now repeat the process with all of your favorite websites and you can begin to read all of your articles from one place, instead of having to check each website out one at a time. Google Reader will remember which articles you’ve read as well and it’ll update every time one of your favorite sites posts a new article, so you’ll never miss a story.

How does this help my link building efforts, you say? Well I’m glad you asked! Assuming that you have a plug in on your computer that alerts you when links are no-followed (if you don’t get the FireFox extension and thank me later), browse blogs about whatever subject matter is relevant to your current link building project. There are plenty of blogs out there that allow followed links in the comments. Notice that on many blogs the text of the commenters’ names is actually a link to another website. Yes, free text links right there on someone else’s blog! Now before you go all comment crazy, I am NOT advocating that you spam these do follow blogs. That’s bad bull and can get your comments deleted and probably make you a few new enemies. What I AM advocating, however, is doing your due diligence to find blogs that are relevant and that you will actually sustain a presence in. Blogs that you actually want to read and can contribute to the discussion with valuable information and interaction.

Do this and you will be welcomed into that “community” with open arms. So when posting your comment, in the “Name” box, (if that will turn into the text link) type one of your keywords or keyword phrases. For example, if you own a website that sells widgets specific to North Dakota, you might want your name (and text link) to be “North Dakota Widgets”. And obviously don’t forget to fill in the URL field- but you knew that, right? Viola- you just built a keyword rich text link back to your website. So get out there and do some reading, do some learning, and do some commenting. Just don’t do any spamming, or I’ll get ya.

A safe and happy holiday season to you and yours from seOverflow- your SEO outsourcing partners.

SEOQuake Screen Capture

When changing configuration options I recommend setting Load Parameters to ‘by request’. This will prevent the tool from constantly hitting search engines such as Yahoo and Google for data and prevent any possible bans as a result of automated use. The plugin also started to modify my Google and Yahoo SERPs pages. To turn this option off click on the SE Plugins tab in the SEOQuake preferences and disable Google, Yahoo, and anything else where you don’t prefer the interference.

I highly recommend trying out this tool, but again the configuration does take some patience. I have a feeling this tool offers much more than I have been using already. Also as a side note the developers of this tool also created SEODigger and AdsSpy which are two other very useful SEO tools in our tool kit.