CuteRank Free Edition

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on September 30, 2010

An important aspect of search engine optimization is figuring out what words people are likely to type into a search engine to try to find your Web site, and to then make sure that your Web site contains those words. CuteRank Free Edition is an easy way to see how your keywords are performing in the top search engines. Although the program won't show you which keywords people are actually using to get to your site, it will tell you how effective your chosen keywords are.

Using CuteRank is simple: just enter your Web site's address and then either have the program detect keywords from the site's metadata or enter keywords manually. CuteRank then lets you select the search engines you want to analyze; the options include Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL, and for each of these you can select the countries you want to analyze. Click OK, wait a minute or so, and CuteRank comes back with results for each keyword in each search engine. We found, for example, that when we searched for our name, our personal Web site was the 12th Google result, but that with this keyword our site didn't even show up in the top 100 results for the other search engines. The program has some pretty cool extras, including the ability to create reports and to schedule updates for a particular time each day. The program also lets you track keyword performance over time. Though it's true that CuteRank doesn't really tell you anything that you couldn't figure out by just going to a search engine and entering your keywords, it does make the process of monitoring keyword effectiveness significantly easier. The program's online Help file is brief but adequate.

CuteRank Free Edition installs a desktop icon without asking and leaves a folder and Start menu item behind upon removal. We recommend this program.