

Show HN: Index Ping - Get an email when your new website is indexed by Google. - kendaniels
http://www.indexping.com

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pierrefar
As the contact page and the FAQ require signing in, I can't comment on the
exact implementation. I suspect they monitor Google's cache as that's the only
publicly available data that can power this service. This is the wrong way to
do it for many reasons:

1\. There can be a delay between crawling and the page showing up in the
cache. I've seen it to be on the order of several days in some cases, even
though the page was ranking well and getting traffic!

2\. Email is not a good log format. It's just not. I suspect for this service
you'll need to enter each URL you want to monitor manually (yikes!) and then
you get an email. If your sitemaps are any good, you already have a good list
of your website's URLs and this could be a massive copy-paste operation, but
then you'll get bombarded with emails. One time when I implemented such a
system, GMail locked for days.

3\. A much better solution is to do it server side with a proper log like in
MySQL or MongoDB or whatever. You can do this with a cron job that analyzes
the HTTP server's log files at the end of each day, does clever number
crunching, generates a report and emails you.

Clever number crunching means calculating numbers that affect your business's
bottom line. You can monitor percentage of pages indexed, segment by sections,
do trends over time analyses, and more clever stuff like time between crawl
and first Google-referred traffic.

~~~
kendaniels
Great feedback, thanks a lot!

All valid points and if this grows into something larger than what I intended
it, I'll certainly look into some more advanced/clever ways of handling the
email side of things.

Index Ping was intended for top-level domain names only. IE, "Bob" launches a
new website and wants to know when it is indexed. Not down to the individual
page level, just when he "breaks" in to the index. If people want more
granular control over this, I'll take a look.

Cheers!

~~~
pierrefar
Two things for you to consider:

1\. Turn this into an API that webmasters can send you their data which you
crunch into useful reports. This just might be a decent money earner.

2\. A sitemap importer to kick start the reporting. It should be quite easy as
sitemaps are some flavour of XML or plain text.

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mickeyben
How do you differentiate from Google Alerts ?

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kendaniels
Just thought I'd make a simpler, more accessible tool that focuses on one
thing, finding your site in Google's index. I think simplicity is the main
differentiator. Not that Google Alerts is difficult, but it's main use is not
geared towards finding your site in Google's index.

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panarky
I'm curious if Google will rate-limit you if your site gets popular.

How frequently do you check each site?

Tried to read your FAQ, but it requires login. Also the 'contact us' page
requires login.

Minor nitpick - fix the spelling of "your're".

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kendaniels
Not sure regarding rate-limiting from Google. Needs investigation. If anyone
has any comments regarding this, I'd be interested in hearing.

Sites are checked every 30 minutes.

Fixed up the FAQ and Contact Us pages to be visible without requiring a log
in. Silly error, fixed.

Fixed "your're". I hate when people spell that wrong - I really messed that
one up!

Thanks again!

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petervandijck
Nice. I like it, simple, solves a real problem.

~~~
kendaniels
Thanks, glad you like it!

