Google is showing more and more universal results blended in the regular search results for different queries. For the search queries we’re targeting I wanted to try and map which kinds of results Google shows. I started doing it by hand but soon realized it was going to take me lot of time for one client, let alone for all our clients. So I started looking for a piece of software that could help me out. Roy Huiskes adviced me to use Mozenda. Mozenda is best described as a piece of software to gather data from the web, based on a defined track of actions. I tried solving my issue and succeeded! Here´s how to do it yourself in 10 easy steps:
Step 1: (Download, install, run the tutorial and) launch the Mozenda Agent Builder
Step 2: Enter the URL http://www.google.com/ (or the local Google you’re using)
Step 3: Start a new agent from this page
Step 4: Click the search box and create a list of inputs
Step 5: Enter your search queries manually or use a source file on your computer.
Step 6: Click on the Search button on the Google homepage and select “click this item”
Step 7: Select the search query in the search box of the results page and enter “Query” for the field name
Step 8: Select create a list of items in the left panel
Step 9: click the first two universal search categories and name the list “Universal categories”
Step 10: Test the agent and check the testing results!
You now have a list of all the blended result categories Google shows for your specified search queries. When you save your agent you just created it’s available in your Mozenda console. Here you should be able to schedule your agent to run every once in a while and export your data to CSV and other formats.
I’m not very familiar with the further possibilities of Mozenda. I’m just a starting user. So I won’t be able to do a lot of troubleshooting if it doesn’t work properly. I was really excited about the information I could extract with this simple agent, that I didn’t want to keep it to myself. Hopefully it works as well for you is it did for me. Just let me know!
