PageRankr

Provides an easy way to retrieve Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and backlink counts.

Check out a little web app I wrote up that uses it or look at the source.

Get it!

gem install PageRankr

Use it!

require 'page_rankr'

Backlinks

Backlinks are the result of doing a search with a query like "link:www.google.com". The number of returned results indicates how many sites point to that url.

PageRankr.backlinks('www.google.com', :google, :bing) #=> {:google=>161000, :bing=>208000000}
PageRankr.backlinks('www.google.com', :yahoo)         #=> {:yahoo=>256300062}

If you don't specify a search engine, then all of them are used.

# this
PageRankr.backlinks('www.google.com')
    #=> {:google=>23000, :bing=>215000000, :yahoo=>250522337, :altavista=>137000000, :alltheweb=>74500000, :alexa=>727036}

# is equivalent to
PageRankr.backlinks('www.google.com', :google, :bing, :yahoo, :altavista, :alltheweb, :alexa)
    #=> {:google=>23000, :bing=>215000000, :yahoo=>250522337, :altavista=>137000000, :alltheweb=>74500000, :alexa=>727036}

You can also use the alias backlink instead of backlinks. Valid search engines are: :google, :bing, :yahoo, :altavista, :alltheweb, :alexa. To get this list you can do:

PageRankr.backlink_trackers #=> [:alexa, :alltheweb, :altavista, :bing, :google, :yahoo]

Indexes

Indexes are the result of doing a search with a query like "site:www.google.com". The number of returned results indicates how many pages of a domain are indexed by a particular search engine.

PageRankr.indexes('www.google.com', :google)       #=> {:google=>4860000}
PageRankr.indexes('www.google.com', :bing)         #=> {:bing=>2120000}

If you don't specify a search engine, then all of them are used.

# this
PageRankr.indexes('www.google.com')
    #=> {:bing=>2120000, :google=>4860000}

# is equivalent to
PageRankr.indexes('www.google.com', :google, :bing)
    #=> {:bing=>2120000, :google=>4860000}

You can also use the alias index instead of indexes. Valid search engines are: :google, :bing. To get this list you can do:

PageRankr.index_trackers #=> [:alexa, :alltheweb, :altavista, :bing, :google, :yahoo]

Ranks

Note: Compete only accepts urls in the form of "google.com" and not "www.google.com". If the latter is given, a value of 0 will be returned. This will be fixed in version 2 of PageRankr.

PageRankr.ranks('google.com', :alexa, :google, :compete) #=> {:alexa=>{:us=>1, :global=>1}, :google=>10, :compete=>1}

# this also gives the same result
PageRankr.ranks('google.com')                            #=> {:alexa=>{:us=>1, :global=>1}, :google=>10, :compete=>1}

You can also use the alias rank instead of ranks. There are three valid rank trackers supported: :alexa, :google, :compete. To get this you can do:

PageRankr.rank_trackers #=> [:alexa, :google, :compete]

Alexa ranks are descending where 1 is the most popular. If a site has an alexa rank of 0 then the site is unranked. Google page ranks are in the range 0-10 where 10 is the most popular. If a site is unindexed then the rank will be -1.

Fix it!

If you ever find something is broken it should now be much easier to fix it with version >= 1.3.0. For example, if the xpath used to lookup a backlink is broken, just override the method for that class to provide the correct xpath.

module PageRankr
  class Backlinks < Tracker
    class Google < Backlink
      def xpath
        "my new awesome xpath"
      end
    end
  end
end

Extend it!

If you ever come across a site that provides a rank or backlinks you can hook that class up to automatically be use with PageRankr.

module PageRankr
  class Backlinks < Tracker
    class Foo < Backlink
      def url(site)
        "http://example.com/?q=#{site}"
      end

      def xpath
        "//backlinks/text()"
      end

      def clean(backlink_count)
        #do some of my own cleaning
        super(backlink_count) # strips letters, commas, and a few other nasty things and converts it to an integer
      end
    end
  end
end

Then, just make sure you require the class and PageRankr and whenever you call PageRankr.backlinks it'll be able to use your class.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

Fork the project.
Make your feature addition or bug fix.
Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

TODO Version 2

Use API's where possible
Use Typhoeus to improve speed when requesting multiple ranks and/or backlinks
Configuration
- Optionally use API keys

Contributors

Druwerd - Use Google Search API instead of scraping.
Iteration Labs - Compete rank tracker and domain indexes.

Shout Out

Gotta give credit where credits due!

Original inspiration from: