Here’s why browseo.net is the one.
Today I’d like to introduce you to browseo.net, a tool you can use to browse web pages from a search engine’s perspective.
It strips out all styles and scripts so you can analyze a page’s text and images without distractions. At the same time, meaningful facts are displayed alongside the content and you can highlight different link types on the page.
When we developed browseo.net, it was initially meant to be a tool we use internally. But as the legend goes, out of compassion with struggling webmasters, we decided to open it up to one and all, for free.
Browseo.net has been publicly released in 2012, and after developing an app for Android devices in the same year, a brand new iPhone app has just been released.
To be honest, I was hesitant at first. There were SEO tools out there that had been created by more experienced pros (I started SEO only in 2004) and that people have already been using for many years.
Did the world REALLY need another SEO browser?
Luckily, my co-workers convinced me to screw my fears and just do it. As a result, browseo.net is now used by thousands of webmasters all around the globe. Here is why I think the world needs browseo.net:
- The “Fetch as Google” feature in Google Webmaster Tools is great in showing you what part of a page Google actually can or can’t crawl, but it gives you a whole bunch of raw HTML. This makes it helpful to those who need to dive very deep into certain issues on sites they control, but for folks simply trying to find out whether or not their content is accessible I feel it’s perhaps a bit too geeky.
- Sure, Google’s cached version of a page can be found by browsing search results, but this cannot be utilized unless a page is indexed by Google. With browseo.net, you can analyze pages that are currently not indexed by Google as well. When you look at a large number of pages you don’t have to check whether they are indexed first.
- No registration needed, it’s open and you can analyze most openly accessible pages
- No automated suggestions. I’ve also tried to keep comments on specific outcomes to a minimum. We’ve added a few helpful pointers in select places for those who are new to SEO though.
I think we chose some pretty useful info to be shown alongside a page’s pure content. Dan Thies asked for a SERP preview and downloadable spreadsheets which we’ve built in. Several members of the Dojo helped test our experimental cloaking detector, which apparently works well in many cases but still needs work.
The fine Dojo people have delivered invaluable feedback so far, and I hope we can keep the conversation going. Now with free mobile apps released on two major platforms, everyone can use browseo.net on the road and while waiting in line as well.
