URL Search is a program that can be used to harvest, process and store lists of URL’s.
It is a very powerful little program that I bought a few months for around $25.
I cannot remember where I bought it from, I have just Googled and found it for sale on Softpedia, I really cannot remember if that is where I got it from, but I know I paid $25, more than the Softpedia price of $19.95.
Anyway, you have to pay your $19.95 and the author mails it to you the next day… not particularly sophisticated, but I got my program OK!
I exchanged a couple of mails with Henry Ulbrich (the author of the program) after I asked him how many copies he sold. He told me it does not do that well, which surprised me as it is such a useful program.
To start using it you give it an existing text file or a URL to open:
When opening a URL you get to select a few option’s, like whether you want base URL’s (domains) or full URL’s (individual pages) . You can also set the level to search, i.e. how many links to follow to collect more URL’s, and whether you want to exclude image links etc.
The options available make the search quite powerful and customizable.
Furthermore, you can pass in a Google search URL which makes it even more powerful.
For example I passed in the URL for a Google search on “link:sitelogic.co.uk” to collect the URL’s of sites linking to this site, and within a few seconds had a list of sites, some of which are shown below:
I chose to collect base URL’s only, so the image above shows the domains linking to me, not the actual pages. I could just have easily got the individual pages.
Now this is not a very useful example, but there are lots of ways in which URL lists can be useful, for example analyzing competitors sites. In the past I have used this program to collect lists of expired MySpace accounts which I subsequently commandeered 
For $19.95 I think this program is an out and out bargain, I use it a lot and for the money think its one of the best programs Ive ever bought.
You can get a free demo of the software to try for yourself, though it will not allow you to export lists to file or copy and paste them.
The link to buy the software on the above page takes you to a page where the price is $28, as mentioned already, Softpedia advertise it for $19, I am not sure if there are any hidden charges on Softpedia though.
Once I have a list of URL’s, I pass them through another program with which I can order URL’s by the websites page rank, again very useful when analyzing competing sites. That program will be the subject of my next post….
