REVIEW OF Link Grabber V1.0 SCRIPT by Nielsencl
[REVIEW OF Link Grabber V1.0 SCRIPT]
I received the script only to realize that I also had to get a copy of PHP Link Directory. While the new version costs $25, the seller told me I could get the older 2.x version and that it would also work.
Works with PHPLD
I download PHPLD and installed it on our MesotheliomaDirectory.org yesterday. I had a little problem with the install script not being able to create the SQL database. I had to create the database, the user, and assign the user all rights to the data base. You also have to pay attention to the actual names that are created as cPanel adds a prefix to them. So database "links" might be "domain_links" and user "admin" might be "domains_admin".
Create A MYSQL Database
Once I had created the database and the user the install went fine. I had to assign a few permissions to files and folders, but that was easy. I then logged in and checked all the setting and options for PHPLD to get ready to install the link grabber.
Installing Link Grabber
Installing the Link Grabber is very easy, you just upload a few files that are provided. In my case I didn't want anyone messing with this, so I renamed the main file you use to access the script. You can do that and it still works fine.
Link Grabber Does Not Work
At first my Grabber did not work and gave me a message about the license. I checked a few things and re-uploaded the file. Nothing. So sent off an email and went to bed. The next morning I had 2 emails and a PM from the seller. I tried the script again and it worked, so it must have been something on his end, or his server may have been down for some reason. Anyway, the problem was resolved quickly.
Link Grabber Works Great, REALLY Great!
If you have not tested the script on the demo site, it works pretty easily. you enter the domain the license is for (couldn't this be entered and saved as the default?). You select the PHPLD category for the link to go under, and the keywords for the search results. I was surprised how fast the process ran. It was only a few seconds for most searches that I did. I pulled link links for about 4 categories and then took a look at the results.
Link Grabber Isn't Perfect
Here is the only point at which I was a little disappointed, but the problem is not with the script. If you just want to populate a clone-type directory with links, this script will do it fast. But if you want to have a more quality directory, it will save you some time, but you will need to review and edit many of the listings.
- Some listing have titles that look bad, and this is because the search engine listing titles look bad.
- Some of the descriptions don't look good for the same reason. What I did for a couple listings is went to the site, found a nice paragraph on the page or the about page for the site, and copied that for the description text. This should give you even MORE content for your listings, since Google's are short. Longer descriptions gives you more keywords and text to be indexed. For best results, re-write the text a little to make it your own. It takes time, but you will be surprised by the results. If you doubt it, take a few listings or one of the categories and test it. Then check the results...
- I got some duplicate URLs for different keywords. There is a PHPLD setting to not allow dups, but the default is that they are allowed. I'll have to test if that will help.
- Most of the links seem to be shortened to just the domain. So a page that is like domain.com/topic-page.htm is in the listing as just domain.com. This can take your listing for something specific and make the URL not relevant to what the description is.
Summary: I recommend this script
So that's about it. This is a useful tool for "Grabbing" links from Google, but for the best results you will want to review and edit the listings. Not pulling the complete original URLs is also a shortcoming, but not too serious.
Suggestions to improve:
- Rather than just dumping all the results into each category, it would be nice to have an option to have them in a "pending" mode, or into a "holding" category where they can be reviewed and edited before publishing.
- It would be nice to be able to select some other options like if the "nofollow" should be turned on or not.
- Keeping the entire URL for the listing is important, I think. Or that should be an option that could be set because sometimes shortening the URL is a good thing.
- Pulling the meta description from the sites, rather than the Google listing, or better yet, added to the google listing would be a great option.
