Search Engine Commando resurrected

From the ashes of TopDog rises the new Search Engine Commando SE submission and ranking software.

Regular readers of Pandia know the tragic TopDog conflict. We are not going to repeat that tale here, except to conclude that the TopDog brand probably has been damaged beyond repair.

Too bad, as TopDog had become one of the most popular search engine ranking and submission programs on the market, a worthy competitor to software like Webposition Gold and Agent Web Ranking.

The TopDog people are, however, not the type that easily give up. Some of them have started a brand new company for a new search engine submission and ranking program called Search Engine Commando.

What is a search engine submission program?

Search engine submission programs, are programs that -- ah, well -- submit web pages to the search engines.

Now, why on earth would anyone want to buy a product like that?

After all, many search engine optimization experts argue that you should submit your pages by hand. In some cases submissions are unnecessary, they say, as the search engines may find your pages by themselves.

There is definitely some truth in this. Given that no more that six to eight search engines and directories produce most of the search engine traffic in the World, software like this may seem superfluous.

In fact, using automatic submissions to directories like Yahoo! and the Open Directory may easily backfire. A search engine like AltaVista has become so tired of spam that it is doing all it can to stop automatic submissions.

Moreover, if you have in bound links from sites already listed by the search engines, their spiders will most likely find your site by themselves. In fact, Inktomi will initially give a small ranking boost to pages it has found by itself, reckoning that pages linked to by someone else will have a certain quality.

However, if you have several sites that you update often, you will find it difficult to keep track of what pages you have submitted to which search engine and when.

Moreover, the process of finding and accessing the various "submit URL" pages takes time, and you will soon start wondering if there is an easier way.

This is where the search engine submission software comes in. These programs will keep track of your submissions for you. Moreover, they will submit them to the search engines automatically.

Search engine ranking programs

A few of these submission programs have another time saving feature that will be of great help to anyone trying to keep track of their Web page rankings.

They will query the search engines for you, reporting your ranking for various search queries of keyword phrases.

For a search engine optimization expert with a need to document his or her success as a Web site promoter, this type of software is must. However, anyone trying to improve their sites' standings will probably find ranking software useful, too.

So, even if you prefer to submit your pages by hand, buying some search engine ranking software may make perfectly sense.

Search Engine Commando

Like TopDog before it, the new Search Engine Commando is a program that both submits pages and checks their rankings.

We have tested it, and found it to be a well designed and easy to use piece of software.

The design is simple, but tasteful and easy to understand.

The File menu provides access to all the major functions (Preferences, Reporting and Submission), which are also represented using icons in a left-hand column shortcut bar, a user-interface element already familiar to Microsoft Outlook users.

Selecting a folder in the shortcut bar displays relevant icons for each function. There are separate forms for entering URLs, selecting search engines, entering submission properties (name, email, categories etc.), displaying results and more.

Search Engine Commando's submission feature will submit one or all of your pages (for any number of web sites) to the search engines you select.

One interesting capability of the Submission feature is that it can submit each URL to a unique list of search engines. This is especially useful for pages which are to be submitted to a shorter list of search engines that the rest of the pages in a web site.

The number of search engines

An important test of the "seriousness" of software like this, is the number of search engines. More is not always better.

Services submitting your pages to "thousands of search engines" will submit them to largely unproductive FFA (Free For All) pages and link exchanges.

In the worst case scenario this may lead to your pages being punished by the search engines. In any case free for all pages will lead to a large amount of spam email and practically no new visitors.

At the moment Search Engine Commando includes some 120 search engines for auto-submission and some 300 for rank checking. As far as we can see, they have made a sensible selection. There are no FFA pages included.

The reason Search Engine Commando goes beyond large international search engines like Google and Fast is that they have included a wide array of national search engines and directories. (By "national" Pandia means "country specific", not "American"). There is, of course, no point in submitting to all of them!

Search Engine Commando is clearly aware of the search engines' dislike of automatic submission programs. It causes the search engine to believe it's a real person with a regular Web browser.

Moreover, its so called "Trickle Submission Technology" spreads submissions out over the appropriate number of days according to the acceptance policies of the individual search engines.

This is especially important if you want to submit your pages to -- or check your ranking in -- Google. Google has been known to block IP addresses of people burdening their servers with too many queries of this kind.

One word of warning: Search Engine Commando offers support for automatic submissions to the Yahoo! directory. Again, it does so by simulating a regular Web browser, and it will ask you for all relevant information.

Nevertheless, submitting to Yahoo! is a delicate and, in most cases, costly affair. You must read the Yahoo! guidelines carefully before submitting and preferably also ask others for advice (see our article on directory submissions).

This is why we recommend that you use the manual submission forms of the major directories, just to be sure that you do not make any mistakes.

Ranking

There are other programs that offer ranking analysis, including Webposition Gold and AddWeb. Agent Web Ranking is actually solely dedicated to ranking. These software packages all have their strenghts, and Pandia will come back to all of them at a later stage.

As far as we can see, Search Engine Commando is the one supporting most search engines in its ranking feature -- some 300.

The ranking part of the program will search all selected search engines for the search queries entered, and present the results in a separate table. Top 10 results, Top 20 results and so on will be flagged as such.

The number of search queries and search engines selected will obviously influence the speed of the submission and ranking processes. If you select some five to ten search engines it will be ready in a couple of minutes max.

You can customize the appearance of reports using your own html code, including tags for images and fonts.

It is all rather intuitive. The only part we have found difficult is to grasp when it is necessary to save reports. It is probably best to push the save button every time you have produced a new report.

Help files

Search Engine Commando will present its help file the moment you start the program. It is well written and easy to understand. The simplicity of the whole program means that you will be up and running in no time.

You may search by using the table of contents, an alphabetical index or the included search engine. There is also information on the product Web site.

The old Search Engine Commando

"Search Engine Commando"? The name sounds familiar, doesn't it?

And yes, there was another search engine submission program back in the Internet mists of time -- 2001 that is -- called Search Engine Commando.

The new Search Engine Commando, LLC acquired rights to the brand name from search engine marketing guru Michael Campbell who, until last year, marketed the previous version of the software. This newest release of the product features a completely redesigned user interface and many more features.

What happens to TopDog?

TopDog will not be abandoned, at least not until the present lawsuits are resolved. Anyone who has a subscription for TopDog updates will continue to receive them.

However, according to our sources no new development and no new marketing efforts are going to take place while the lawsuits are underway.

What happens afterwards is unclear. Needless to say, Pandia recommends all potential buyers to stay away from any version of TopDog at the moment.

Language support

Search Engine Commando will operate in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Like Agent Web Ranking, it offer supports for limiting searches to a specific language. You may sort the list of search engines by language or country, or you may click on the "Select By" button to choose a subset of the search engines using language and/or country from a drop-down list.

The software runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP. Macintosh users will have to buy Virtual PC to use it.

Automatic software updates over the Internet ensure that you always have the latest search engine definitions and enhancements.

Our verdict: This is a high quality product that does what you asks it to do in an efficient manner. It is easy to install and easy to use -- a worthy heir to TopDog.

Prices

The download version costs US$199, the CD-ROM version US$219 and a printed manual is available for $30. These prices include a one year subscription for updates, which are optionally renewable for $99. Search Engine Commando is offering competitive upgrade discounts for current TopDog and WebPosition users.

You may try it for free, and there is a 30 day money back guarantee.

Click here to go to the Search Engine Commando home page.

Pandia will shortly take a closer look at alternative submission and ranking programs, including the American Webposition Gold and the French Agent Web Ranking.

More search engine news...

The Pandia Post is our free bimonthly newsletter on Internet searching, search engines and directories.

We will give you the latest news from the world of Internet exploring, useful tips on how to improve your searching skills or search engine ranking, as well as information on the development of the Pandia Search Central.

We will never give your address to any other company or organization.