Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About URL
A new tool from search craftsman Michael Fagan uncovers a hidden wealth of information about virtually any web page.
A new tool from search craftsman Michael Fagan uncovers a hidden wealth of information about virtually any web page.
A new tool from search craftsman Michael Fagan uncovers a hidden wealth of information about virtually any web page.
The unassumingly named URLinfo reminds me of those Ginsu knife ads: It slices, it dices, it translates… It’s an investigative tool that performs dozens of useful operations that help you get scads of information related to a particular web page.
URLInfo’s deceptively simple tabbed interface actually provides links to more than 85 tools. To use it, type a URL into the form on the page, and then click one of the ten tabs at the top of the page. These tabs describe functions: General, links, similar, cache, search, blogs/feeds, translate, track, develop and misc. Under each tab is a set of links related to its general function.
The General tab performs look-up functions about the URL. There are links to a couple of Whois services, Alexa, social bookmarking/caching services such as Furl, Stumble Upon, and others.
The links tab checks backlinks to a page from Google, Yahoo and others. The similar tab finds related pages from Google, UC More, and others. Cache, as you might expect, provides links to copies of the page stored at the various search engines and other sites that save cached pages.
Just about all of the functions offered by URLinfo are self-explanatory. If you don’t know what a link does, simply click on it and watch what happens. You’ll likely discover a useful tool that you haven’t hear about before.
The translate tab is particularly useful. It’s a “meta-translator” that uses several online translation services, automatically matching the translation you want with a tool that can handle it.
There are some fun tools included, as well. The word popularity colorizer highlights words on the page, changing font sizes to indicate how commonly used the words are. Textalyser performs detailed statistical analysis of the page, including word count, sentence length, and keyword density.
Trying to read a page that requires a user name and password to log in? Cut and paste the URL into URLinfo, click the Misc tab and the BugMeNot link, and more often than not you’ll get the keys you need to unlock the story.
These are just a few of the features offered by this terrifically useful utility, part of the ever expanding tool set at Faganfinder.com.
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