First of all, let me start with a little disclaimer that I doubt about the ethics of the tool reviewed below. I for one recommend using it:
- To research your (client’s) site neighbors (It is not confirmed officially but I have seen plenty of sites being treated the same by Google – and the only thing that connected them was Google Analytics or Google AdSense. Thus checking what other sites can be associated with your (client’s) one is very beneficial);
- To research your competitors’ tactics (Your competitors may be owning hundreds of niche sites to help in link building you may want to know about. Or they may be running some related side projects like social media communities that may inspire you);
- To discover networks of sites (It’s a good idea to research your future link neighbors before arranging a guest contribution for example).
I don’t advise though to use this tool for any malicious purposes.
SpyOnWeb is a free online tool (requiring no registration) that lists sites (possibly) belonging to the same owner based on:
- Same Google Adsense ID;
- Same Google Analytics ID;
- Shared IP address.
I’ve seen similar tools before but they were all paid, so I was quite impressed to see this free one. Too bad they do not have any FireFox addon, giving you some data snapshot while you are browsing the web.
The tool was reviewed under SEJ Disclaimer.
a really nice tool to reveal someone’s online background.
Ann,
Hi.
I’ve also not seen such a service for free, before. Thanks.
It needs a caveat. In the few tests I’ve run, it appears to work as in the the example using huffingtonpost.com when a site is on a dedicated server. This included one test where the tool returned a subdomain. I ran two tests using URLs hosted on a dedicated server.
However, for smaller sites on a shared server many of the results were erroneous. Errors fell into two categories: 1) some of the URLs returned are not registered to client who’s site was the test, and 2) not all of Top Level Domains registered to that client were returned in the results even when they’re on the same host plan.
Similar erroneous errors were present in all of the tests I ran for URLs hosted on shared server plans. I tested eight URLs registered to three clients, each on a shared server plan by three different web hosting companies.
I’m not sure that’s ethical but it’s cool! Thanks Ann! :)
That is great! Nothing like being able to see all the sites related to another. You Get Signal did something similar but only looked for sites on the same IP address. This is more complete.
I agree – when I ran one competitor it was accurate. But on another competitor, it was WAY off – and when I ran my own, out of 545 results, – 7 of the domains were mine.
That’s really cool, thanks Ann
Useful tool, thanks for bring it up.
Hi Ann,
Have you tried for google.com search on SpyOnWeb.com. If not try now…
That’s amazing, it show the Google Analytic and Shared IP Address. Good source to find out your competitors background. But it’s not actually ethical.