Thursday 1 October 2009

@sendmeasearch @rankmysite

I was in a conference recently listening to a great speaker. He rattled of insight after insight, fact after fact, juicy nugget of wisdom after...well, you get the idea - he was good.

I was rapt.

I wanted to follow up on what he was talking about but to avert my attention to Google for subjects would be a) rude and b) I would miss something.

I needed to search but it was inconvenient.

I needed to get my research going but in a way that I would follow it up.

So, @sendmeasearch was born. @sendmeasearch is a twitter app that will search Yahoo, Google and Bing, pull the results of the searches together and mail you the results. It is really an app for the mobile user in a rush but as paid adverts are stripped from the search results, it's also a handy search engine marketeers tool. More on that in a moment.

How does it work?

Simples!

You need to be using Twitter first.

Tweet 'help' to @sendmeasearch:



You'll get 7 tweets back:



So, as it says, follow @sendmeasearch:



And it'll follow you right back...well in about 10 mins or less anyway:



So, now you need to Direct Message your email address to @sendmeasearch. Direct Messages are private between you and the recipient - safe!



Of course, if your email address is longer than 140 chars it won't work...perhaps a sensible alias is required?

So, you're now friends. W00t1! Now you can get searching when and where you want and you're searches will be ready in your inbox when you get back to your desk.





What coud possibly go wrong?

Even though the process is simple I guess things could still happen in the wrong order.

Either of these messages could get tweeted backatcha if things don't go according to plan. you could always comment on this post if things go really silly....

Sorry, we havn't been properly introduced. ;-( Why not tweet 'help' to me so we can get to know each other?

Sorry, couldn't understand your request. ;-( Why not tweet 'help' to me?

BTW, if you want to change your registered email address, just DM @sendmeasearch again with a new email address...

@rankmysite

Finally, having done a successful mashup of Twitter and search I thought, well, why not interrogate the search results to see where certain sites rank for a given search phrase?

No registration required
Just tweet like this:



And you'll get results tweeted backatcha:



there are limits on the size of search results that are parsed but beyond a sensible limit the information is less interesting anyway....