indexedbygoogle.com

A friend asked me to create a simple one page app that would take as input a webpage url and check to see if the all-mighty search engine has indexed it. Seemed like overkill for a django app so I thought I would implement it as a straight up python cgi app.

The results are at http://indexedbygoogle.com. I am responsible for the code and Steve did the styling. The results are OK but I am busy on a version 2.0 that checks for variations in the url (e.g.: if you submit 'example.com/this-is-a-post', I also check the www.example.com/this-is-a-post version and the http://example.com/this-is-a-post version and the http://www.example.com/this-is-a-post version). Believe it or not, though the page might be indexed, that particular url might not be. I have to check all variations to tell if that page was indexed. Why does that matter? Well, the point is to see if the page is indexed but the url you enter might not be. By checking all variations for that url, I can tell if the page has been indexed at all. Remember, a user is not going to search for a page by its url but via keywords. The point is to see if your page will be one of the results and that is why you want to see if its indexed. This version is still in alpha and not live though its mostly working.

Also implemented it as a bookmarklet. Just drag this: IndexedByGoogle? to your bookmarks. Click the link on any page to see if its been indexed.

Feel free to comment on how you like it.

Update 9/22/09: Well, I've since re-coded the webapp into a Django site after all. It was super simple and along the way, I refactored the site a little. Plus, I added an api. No matter how easy, it's easier with Django. :)