The best thing about Niche Browser (despite it’s being free) is that it provides such a rich array of features for you to use in your online marketing research.
Anybody that is starting out or continuing to build their home business will benefit from owning and using Niche Browser. One disadvantage you will find about Niche Browser, however, is that there are so many features that it can be a bit overwhelming.
That is why I am writing this article. I want to help you get started using and mastering Niche Browser in order to take advantage of all the great resources that it provides for you. So let’s take a tour of the overall interface.
Niche Browser can be divided into three basic elements:
1. Browser Window
2. Search Tools Side Panel
3. URL Toolbar
1) Browser Window
The Browser Window is quite simple to understand: It is an instance of Microsoft Internet Explorer. If you right-click a blank area of the window, you will see the familiar context menu, in which you will find, for example, the “View Source” item which will allow you to view the html code for the current page.
Just above the Browser Window, you will see the browser toolbar. On the left are the familiar back, forward, stop, and refresh buttons. The right side has the go, history, favorites, add to favorites, and print the current page buttons. In the center is the URL address bar. To the left of the address bar is a special button that opens the browser in a separate window on your desktop.
Just above the URL address bar, you will notice a small button. This is the URL Address Lock, or Pin URL button. It enables you to browser other websites while keeping the current URL from changing. This is especially handy when you want to use the URL tools toolbar which I will explain a little bit later.
Also, to the left, just above the “Back” button, there is the Expand Browser Window button. This allows you to enlarge the browser viewing area.
2) Search Tools Side Panel
The Search Tools Side Panel provides special features for each Search Tool that you select. The content and functionality of each Side Panel will change depending on the requirements of the associated Search Tool you happen to be using at the time.
In order to understand the side panels, you have to first understand how to activate a search tool. The search tools are listed as subsets of the Search Categories. The Search Categories are the first row of buttons that you see just under the “Related Searches” tool bar. We will be discussing these later on as well.
So, for each item you select in the Search Categories row, you will see a different set of buttons appear in the row below it which provides the Search Tools for that category.
The simplest way to begin exploring the side panel is to look at three different versions of Google search tools: Google Basic search, also known as the Generalized Keyword Search, Google Suggest search, and Google Advanced search. You’ll notice that the contents of the side panel are different for each.
3) URL Toolbar
The Toolbars of the Niche Browser Interface provide a wide variety of features that will assist you in your niche marketing research. When you use the URL Toolbar, be sure to enable the URL Address Lock, or Pin URL button. This will allow you to select each of the tools without having to restore the Site Address each time.
The URL Tool Bar provides the following resources:
a) Alexa Ranking
b) Related Sites
c) Indexed Pages
d) URL Trends
e) Text Analyzer
f) Site Images
g) Site Audio
h) Site Video
i) Site PDF’s
j) Site Flash Movies
k) Wayback Machine
l) Inbound Links
m) Whois Information
n) URL Slide Show
o) Site Search
As you can see, there is an incredible amount of information you can gather about any particular site using Niche Browser’s URL Tool Bar.
a) Alexa Ranking
For those of you who are not familiar with Alex Ranking, you will be amazed at all the information it can provide you about your competition’s website.
Let me give a brief overview. To start with, Alexa only ranks pages for sites that contain the Alexa Toolbar, so this is not a complete sampling of all sites on the Web. However, if your site of interest is listed, you will find it useful.
The first piece of data is the ranking. This tells you how popular the site is compared to all other sites being ranked by Alexa. The next notable feature is the Explore This Site categories. These are, Overview, Traffic Details, Related Links, and Inbound Links, or Sites Linking In.
In the Overview Section, you will find the following:
– People who visit this page also visit…
– Site Stats
Traffic Rank
Speed
Other sites that link to this site
Online Since
Look for similar sites by category
d) URL Trends
URL Trends provides a great deal of information in one location. It will provide the following information about a website’s pages:
Current Rankings
Google Page Rank
Alexa Rank
Incoming Google Links
Incoming Yahoo Links
Incoming MSN Links
Incoming Alexa Links
Overall Incoming Links
Outgoing Links
Page Information
Page Title
Description
Online Since
DMOZ Listed
Archive.org Listed (Wayback machine)
UrlTrends Cache
m) Whois Information
If you ever need to find out about a website domain, this is the place to do it. Using the Whois information tool, you can find out when a site was first registered, when the domain name will expire, what type of server it is running on, whom to contact for information, whether the site has been blacklisted, and related site domains that may be available for sale or at auction.
o) Site Search
If you come across a website in which you would like to search but they don’t provide a search box on the site, you can use this tool that Niche Browser provides. Just navigate to the page, enter the text you want to search, and press the search button.
The tools and features in Niche Browser are seemingly endless, and the value to you certainly is. So be sure and download it now if you haven’t already. In other articles, I will be discussing some of the tools in more details, so be sure and watch for those as well.
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