My first programming project-making the most of Search Metrics!

I’ve been a busy lass recently! And I’ll tell you why…I have completed my first programming project!

I got it to minimum viable product level (which is programmer talk for “it works”. It’s ugly as hell, and there are a few bugs/”features” that need fixing, but IT LIVES!).

Basically at work, I have to check the visibility of loads (maybe into the 30-50 a day?) of websites using tool called Search Metrics. Search Metrics is good but very time consuming-I mean it’s looks up what keywords the website ranks for so it’s not the fastest check around…and on top of this, you can only check the visibility of ONE WEBSITE AT A TIME.

Opening dozens of tabs of Search Metrics really slows my computer down so this wasn’t a good solution.

So I wrote my own using Javascript! Boooom! I can now check the visibility of multiple websites in one go!

What you do is you paste in a list of websites you want to check the visibility of like so:

Click the only button on screen. Then sit back and let the Javascript do the work!

Here it is zoomed in.

Things I need to fix:

1. An empty new line in the box will create a iframe with the home page of Search Metrics.

• Why I need to fix: It’s a waste of time and ugly
• Solution: Need to adjust the conditions the function runs with

2. No way to reset the thing without clicking Refresh

• Why I need to fix: Makes it feel amateur
• Solution: Need a button that resets everything

3. At the moment Search Metrics will look up the visibility of the websites in the country the website is hosted in.

• Why I need to fix:  I need to check how visible the site is in the UK or US
• Solution: Needs a radio button for the user to choose UK or US visibility

So there you have it, my first 1 page applet! My boyfriend told me the things to look up and I had to sit there (for hours sometimes…) and figure out how to make the code do what I wanted.

Conclusion: It was a humbling experience as I’ve never had to work with a blank programme. The thing that tripped me up most was stuff like forgetting that computers are dumb, you have to tell it VERY specific instructions as it doesn’t what you want. A blog post about how boyf illustrated this coming soon…

I do enjoy the power of programming-I’m looking forward to getting good enough to be able to slap something together to automate stuff and make my life slightly easier.