GTrends : The Second Edition

Getting Google Errors? Try Using A Proxy.

Looks like Google have gotten a bit trigger happy lately - some GTrends SE users have been getting errors in the “Competition” column yesterday, me included. This is because Google doesn’t want any automated tools checking their search results.

I looked around for a solution and made a few minor changes to GTrends SE to make this blocking slightly less likely. I also modified it to show “Forbidden” instead of “Error” when you hit a temporary block, so you know what the problem is. Get the new version.

The solution to these errors is to use a proxy. You can find lists of free proxies on the sites below :

Proxy4Free - I myself am currently using a proxy on this site.
ProxyList “fast proxies” - this site has several lists of proxies; the link goes to the list of “fast” proxies that also shows the uptime. You can use this parameter to determine how reliable a proxy is.

How to use a proxy with GTrends SE.

Another possibility is to install the TOR package (freeware) and use the address 127.0.0.1:8118 as the proxy address. Then you can switch proxies just by clicking the appropriate system tray icon and selecting “New Identity” from the popup menu.

I’d also recommend to increase the Grace period value in the GTrends SE Settings menu.

GTrends Update : Two New Features

New version is out, get it here!

I implemented two new features that were suggested by users -

Launch new instance
Now you can open more than one GTrends SE window. You can do this using the aptly named “Launch new instance” Start Menu shortcut. Note that as a tradeoff windows opened in this manner will not be able receive keywords from the Keyword Grabber extension.

Here’s a bit of info for the technically inclined - the new shortcut launches gtrends.exe with a /new_instance parameter. GTrends SE also supports another parameter - /add_clipboard - that will cause the tool to attempt to get keywords from the clipboard.

Searches vs Competition ratio display
GTrends SE can calculate and display this ratio in a new column on the main screen. You can enable this feature by checking the “Display ratio” box in the Settings dialog.

The ratio is calculated as Ratio = (Searches ^ 2) / Competition, which is consistent with the original definition of Keyword Effectiveness Index.

Using A Proxy With GTrends SE

To configure GTrends SE to use a proxy, open the Settings window by clicking the “Settings” button from the toolbar (it’s the next-to-last button). Then locate the “Proxy Settings” section.

Check Use a proxy and enter the proxy’s address in the Proxy box. The address should be in the form IP:PORT. “IP” is the unique numerical address of a server. If the address you usually use is a domain name, you can find the IP using this free tool.

The Username and Password boxes are just that. Leave them empty if your proxy doesn’t require a username/password.

Proxy settings take effect starting with the next keyword that is checked (yes, this means that if you set a proxy when GTrends SE is already processing a list of keywords, it will switch to using the proxy even if it’s only halfway through the list).

How To Change The Web 2.0 Site List

GTrends SE checks if there are any pages from Web 2.0 sites in the Google search results for every keyword (when searching for an “exact match”). For this purpose it uses a list of domains stored in a text file.

To edit the list of Web 2.0 sites, open the GTrends SE installation directory (it’s “c:\Program Files\GTrends SE” by default) and locate the web20domains.txt file. This is a simple text file that you can open in any text editor, even Notepad. The file contains a list of domains - one domain per row (empty rows are ignored). Any changes you make to the file will take effect the next time you start GTrends SE.

One thing to note is that “example.com” will also match “www.example.com”, “abc.example.com” and so on.

Proxy Support And Updates Available

Following a suggestion from one of the users of GTrends SE, I’ve added proxy support to the tool. Now you can specify a HTTP proxy in the “Settings” window.

I’ve also (finally!) got the upgrade script up and working. If you have already purchased the software, you can now visit the Updates page at any time, enter your email adress and get the download link for the latest version of GTrends emailed to you. Note that this function is still experimental, so let me know if you have any problems with it.