KEA - Help and technical specifications
Table of Contents
- What is the Keyword Extractor and Analyzer?
- How does the KEA work?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- User agent string for the KEA
What is the Keyword Extractor and Analyzer?
The Keyword Extractor and Analyzer (KEA for short) is a search engine optimization (SEO) tool that:
- Extracts the most important keywords from an input web page or input text
- Checks the rankings for the extracted keywords in Google, Yahoo, and MSN
The first step is what makes the KEA a unique tool: Given a web page, what are the keywords for this page? Instead of finding which pages rank well for a given keyword, we are finding which keywords the page ranks well for: it's the reverse of the conventional keyword analysis typically done as part of SEO.
The second step is more conventional: how does the page rank for each of these keywords? This step checks the top 10 rankings for each keyword at Google, Yahoo, and MSN search. The results are displayed in a tidy table.
How does the KEA work?
The best way to explain how the Keyword Extractor and Analyzer works is by a flowchart diagram:
As you can see, the KEA takes one of two inputs: you can either tell it to analyze a web page (a URL input) or give it some text to analyze.
If a URL is given, the KEA gets the HTML of the page using a standard HTTP connection - just like using a browser. The HTML is then 'cleaned up' a bit to remove some unnecessary and distracting bits (like the <head></head> section and any scripts). Once the HTML is cleaned up, it's ready for analysis.
If a text is given as input, the KEA checks it, thus preparing it for analysis.
Extracting keywords
So just how does the KEA extract keywords? It kindly asks Yahoo to do the work for it! From my testing and from the testing of many others, we found that this Yahoo method is quite reliable. Granted it sometimes find keywords that are not really that important but most of the time, the list of keywords returned contains all of the important ones.
The KEA allows you to check the keywords before analyzing them further. You can add keywords, remove any unimportant keywords, and if need be, modify the keywords too. Please note that the KEA will only check the first 15 keywords in your list. If you want to do more than 15, do them in two goes.
URL input: Search engine ranking checker
Once we have a set of keywords, it's time to see how well the page ranks for these keywords. A lot of information is produced, so read this section carefully!
- The KEA gets the search engine rankings for each keyword using their APIs. The problem is that the APIs can get unstable and return wrong results (believe me, it sucks!). The KEA tries hard to detect when this happens and most of the time, it shows you an error message saying it thinks something has gone wrong. The fix, 99% of the time, is to simply refresh the page, submitting any information again.
- The KEA checks for exact matches to the submitted URL, including the www version and the non-www version. For example, if you submit http://ekstreme.com/deeplinkratio/, the KEA checks for both http://ekstreme.com/deeplinkratio/ and http://www.ekstreme.com/deeplinkratio/. If it finds either in the top 10 results, it displays the rank as a number. If it cannot find either, it displays '>10', which means that the search engine rank for this keyword is greater than 10.
- The KEA also checks to see if other pages from the same domain rank for the keyword. For example, suppose again that we submitted http://ekstreme.com/deeplinkratio/ to the KEA. It just may happen that eKstreme.com's SEO section (http://ekstreme.com/seo/ is also picked up by some the keywords. Since this is an interesting find but not an exact match to our URL, the KEA informs you of this by displaying a red asterisk ('*') next to the rankings.
- As a way to check the KEA results, a link to search for the keyword is given then to each ranking; the link is labelled '[»]'.
Text input: keyword search results
If a text input is given, for each keyword the top 10 results are displayed from each search engine.
Frequently Asked Questions
- I keep getting messages that there were errors retrieving the results through the API. What does that mean?The KEA uses a certain set of functions available from Google, Yahoo, and MSN to retrieve its data and results; these functions are call the API. Sometimes, the API functions produce errors or give back wrong results. The KEA tries to detect these errors and if it thinks something has gone wrong, it produces such a message. In most cases, a simple page refresh (press Control+F5) will fix the errors.
- I get one of these messages:
- URL does not seem to be valid. Check that it is valid and starts with http://
- The Page Keyword Extractor and Analyzer works with HTTP connections only.
- Domain name does not seem to be valid.
- URL does not seem to contain an Internet-accessible domain name or is not valid. Check that it is valid and starts with http://.
All these messages mean that the KEA cannot find the URL you entered. To fix this problem, browse to the web page you would like to analyze and copy and paste the URL as it appears in the address bar. Also, make sure that the URL is not on an internal network that the KEA will not be able to reach. - I get one of the these messages:
- Requested page has moved. Please check the URL. [Note: redirection was 301 redirection.]
- Requested page was moved. Please check the URL. [Note: redirection was 302 redirection.]
- Requested page was not found. Please check the URL.
These messages mean that the page you are trying to analyze has either moved or cannot be found. To fix this problem, browse to the web page you would like to analyze and copy and paste the URL as it appears in the address bar. Also, make sure that the URL is not on an internal network that the KEA will not be able to reach. - The KEA shows wrong results for my website. It sucks.Yes, wrong results suck, but hear me out! The KEA depends entirely on Google, Yahoo, and MSN giving it correct data. If the data these search engines return is wrong, then the KEA results will be wrong. Also, sometimes, the data returned varies slightly from the results you would get if you do a manual search. In most cases, a simple page refresh (press Control+F5) will fix the errors. Think of this as part of the fun of SEO!
- I have a question/comment/suggestion/something to tell you, how can I contact you?You can easily contact me via my contact form. I would love to hear your feedback on the Keyword Extractor and Analyzer. By the way, my name is Pierre
User agent string for the KEA
Just a note for webmasters: when the KEA retrieves a URL, it sends the following user-agent string:
Of course, this is easy to spoof. Real KEA hits come from eKstreme.com's IP address.
If you have any questions about the KEA visiting your website, please contact me.
