The following tools are for monitoring your search results in three major search engines. It isn’t an all-inclusive list, but rather a highlight of some of tools you can use. (I’ll point you to one of master lists when we get into more general tools in part three.)

Using Your Google Site Information Page

I’ve covered this in an earlier article, but just in case you missed it, we’ll go over it again briefly here. (If you need more help following along, you can listen to one of my recent podcasts for a convenient audio walkthrough.)

Open up your browser and go to Google’s home page. Type in info:yoursitenameandsuffix. So if your site was ExactSeek.com you’d type info:exactseek.com. You can also use site:yoursitenameandsuffix to find out which pages have been indexed by Google’s search engine spider.

This search will tell you pages that Google considers similar to yours. It will also show sites that it considered linked to you, and show sites that carry your full url, hyperlinked or not. It’s not 100% accurate as far as telling you all sites that are linked back to yours, but what you can learn from this is which backlinks matter.

From here you can also see last day Google spidered your home page.

To see this in action, click on first group of information links, “Show Google's cache of yoursitename.com” If you look next to word “cached” one first line, date is expressed also.

Sometimes it seems that cached time for yoursitename.com and www.yoursitename.com are different, so be sure and check both.

Finding Information About Your Site In Yahoo http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/tips/tips-08.html

So Rob, when was it that you first decided to start taking part in Paid Surveys and Focus Groups?

Rob: I've been doing Paid Surveys for about 4 years now. When I first started back in 2001, there were only a handful of Market Research Companies - who provide you with surveys - listed on internet. I signed up for I think 5 of them. I didnt want to turn it into a full time job because I was already working 40 hours a week down at factory and didnt really think it would be suitable to have to complete a whole lot of surveys as I wanted to have some spare time for myself too!

Josh: Ok, yes I can imagine! So you signed up for 5 Market Research Companies(MRC's) How did that go?

Rob: It took I think 3 days before one of them replied and asked me if I wanted to take part in a survey about home appliances. I accepted and filled out their survey, which was 60 questions long and it took about 10 minutes of my time overall. Next minute I checked my account and found out that there was $50 in it! I was dumbfounded. It was at that moment I decided to start taking it seriously and have never looked back since.

Josh: Wow! So how many MRC's have you joined so far?

Rob: I'm currently a member of over 300 MRC's. There was a time where I had joined over 400 and I was making on average $6000 a month, but it was taking up too much time and I'd rather be playing golf or going on holidays with my family, so I decided to cut back a little.

Josh: Now there's probably people out there who are wondering how you came to sign up for 400 MRC's. Can you offer them some advice about; firstly how to find them and secondly which ones to go for and ones to stay away from?

Rob: Sure. Firstly it's imperative that you sign up for a Paid Survey Database, that lists all immediate MRC's on internet. They are usually quite cheap - about $60 for a year membership plus they also give you some free bonuses aswell. They always update their site with new information on what's going on with with all MRC's on internet. I'm a member of Paid Surveys Free and I believe you are aswell Josh?

Josh: Yes, yes I am.