Archive for the ‘Applications’ Category

Today we’re releasing 3 new desktop applications and re-releasing one existing one.

They’re all completely FREE to download and use with your BlogPiG API key.

The 4 apps are comment extractors for YouTube, FriendFeed, Twitter & Yahoo Answers. I had them built to compliment CommentPiG, our automated blog comment simulator, but you don’t have to be a CommentPiG owner to use them.

The instructions are the same for all 4 apps and they are really simple to use:

- If it’s the first time you have ever run a blogpig desktop app you’ll initially be asked for your BlogPiG API Key. This will then be stored on your PC and you won’t be asked for it again for any BlogPiG dektops apps. If you don’t already have a BlogPiG API key you can get a free one by clicking on the link at the top of the page.

- Once the app has loaded just a enter the keyword or key phrase for which you wish to find associated comments

- If the app allows it choose whether it should be phrase matched for the comment search (returns less comments but more accuracy)

- Choose how many comments you would like returned (obviously more comments will take more time)

- Check the box for a “delay between requests” if availabe. Whilst this will slow down the comment extraction it will prevent your IP getting a potential temporary ban

- Browse to location you would like to save the resulting file, it defaults to the file extension CSV, I prefer to change this to TXT as it makes the Excel import easier.

And that’s it, couldn’t be easier…

You can download the apps from here or inside the BlogPiG Member’s Area:

Download YouTube Comment Extractor
Download FriendFeed Comment Extractor
Download Twitter Comment Extractor
Download Yahoo Answers Extractor

How I Use the Extractor Apps

I use these 4 extractor apps in conjuction with CommentPiG to preload my autoblog networks with a database of cleaned comments. Once uploaded CommentPiG autoposts these comments onto all the blog posts at regular intervals giving the blogs a natural popularity and content boost over time.

Let’s see an example:

- I’ve decided to build a 10 site autoblog network for the “singing lessons” niche, which is a great niche btw!

- I run all 4 extractor apps and set them to extract 5000 comments for the key phrases “singing lessons”, they won’t all extract 5000 comments it’s just a ceiling.

- When naming the save file locations I make sure I put the source name in the filename for each app and I also like to change the extension to .txt as Excel gives you more options later. e.g. “singing lessons comments twitter.txt”

- Once complete (it takes a little while to run through) I repeat the searches for more key phrases, I chose “learn to sing” & “singers” (this last one is more generic) [make sure you choose new filenames for each new search]

- Now I have 12 txt files containing thousands of potential comments, now we need to combine and clean them.

- There are several specialist tools out there than are really powerful for cleaning extracted content, I particularly like Text Pipe Pro. That being said you can easily & quickly clean comments in Excel.

- I open all of my .txt files in Excel, whilst opening it should ask you how you wish to import, be sure to choose NO delimeter character and leave the text delimeter as ”

- I now copy all of the files into one new Excel worksheet so they are all in column A. I currently have over 10k comments. (If you don’t already now about keyboard shortcuts in Excel this would be a great time to learn as it can really speed up your blog building. I particularly like SHIFT+CTRL+{ARROW_DOWN} to select a whole worksheet of row then CTRL+C to copy followed by CTRL+V to past into the new sheet. Then CTRL+{ARROW_DOWN} to zoom down to the last row. I also tile the windows so I can see them all at once but I do have a pretty big screen.)

- Now I clean the comments, I start by using Excel 2007 to remove the duplicates, this is in the Data menu

- Next I add the formula =len(A1) to cell B1 and drag it down to fill all of the b column giving the length in characters of each comment. I chose to delete all comments with less than 20 chars or more than 500 chars

- Now I sort by column A1 so the comments appear in alphabetical order and scroll through them quickly, this gives a very good overview of comments that are very similar or comprised of the same inital groups of words but where not caught by the duplicate filter.

- I also used Excel’s search & replace wit “@* ” in the find box (do no include the quotes but notice the space after the asterix). This removes all the Twitter usernames in the comments.

- You really can be a brutal as you want here don’t be too fussy about deleting the comments. If want to be really picky you can even put a formula like =IF(SEARCH(”singer”,A1)>0,”yes”) into B1 and drag it down all the comments then sort by “yes” in column B and delete those that don’t contain your keywords. Obviously this will eliminate a lot of comments and also reduce the amount of stemmed keyword comments you get, but it is a good way to keep comments on topic.

- I keep cleaning until until I’m happy with the balance of quality vs. quantity of my comments. I use a combination of filters, sorts, formulae and search & replace to get rid of any rows or words I don’t want.

- After about 20 mins of cleaning I still have just over 5000 comments left

- I import these 5000 comments into each of my 10 autoblogs using CommentPiG and let it post on random to my blog posts as they appear. I can use random comment selection as they a pre-cleaned and reletively on topic.

- I also personally don’t worry about the same comment appearing on different blogs as there is such a big pool, but if you are concerned simply divide the cleaned comment DB by the number of blogs you want to use it on

Get the apps now and start turning your autoblogs into communities!

As promised after launching the YouTube Comment Extractor yesterday here is a quick video user guide to get you started.

This application will allow you to extract thousands of keyword targeted comments from YouTube and load them into your CommentPiG WordPress Plugin.

Your blog will become a self-commenting hive of simulated user activity in days!

You can download the YouTube Comment Extractor from HERE and if you haven’t already got a BlogPiG API key sign up HERE

Today I’m excited to launch BlogPiG’s first desktop application, the YouTube Comment Extractor. It is the first in a series of desktop applications that will enable you to quickly harvest essential data for your blogging and marketing needs.

The YouTube Comment Extractor quickly and simply extracts keyword themed comments via the YouTube API. You can then clean these comments up and use them however you want.

You can also use the harvested comments to leverage CommentPiG’s most powerful features and preload it with your extracted comments from a variety of sources.

CommentPiG is a Blog Comment Simulator that automatically turns even brand new blogs into active communities.

You’ll need a BlogPiG API key to run any of our plugins or desktop applications, if you don’t already have one you can get a free Bronze key HERE.

Stay tuned as there will be more desktop applications being released over the coming days and weeks.

I’m in the process of putting together a quick video showing how to use it and here are the full written instructions too.

Unzip ‘YouTube Comment Extractor.exe’ to your PC.

Double click on ‘YouTube Comment Extractor.exe’ to run it.

If this is the first time you have run a BlogPiG desktop application it will ask you to enter your BlogPiG API key. If you do not have a key then you can get a free Bronze key from HERE

If you have previously run BlogPiG desktop applications you may not be asked for a key as it is already stored on your computer. Your API key will simply be checked for validity when the application is run.

Next read the license agreement I click the ‘I Agree’ button.

Enter your chosen keyword or phrase in the ’search term’ box.

Tick the ‘exact match’ box unless you want the keyword search to be broad matched. Broad match searches may return more results but they may be less targeted.

Enter the maximum amount of comments you wish to extract. Obviously the higher the number the longer it will take to return your results. I recommend a 5000 maximum to avoid having your IP address throttled by the YouTube API.

Next enter a location where you would like to save the results. The easiest way to do this is to hit the ‘…’ browse button and navigate to the destination directory. The filename will automatically be called ’search term comments.csv’ but you can change it to anything you wish. The results will be saved as a CSV file with 1 comment per row. You can open a CSV file in Excel or any spreadsheet application.

Once all the fields are complete the ‘Start’ button will appear. Press ‘Start’ to begin the comment extraction process.

Press the ‘Stop’ button at any time to end the comment extraction early. No comments will be saved.

The progress bar shows what percentage of your comments have been collected so far. You can also watch the comments that are being harvested and the current comment count in real-time in the log window below.

Once complete the log window will report ‘Extraction completed’ and the ‘Start’ button will become visible again. Your comments have now been saved to the CSV file in the location you specified earlier.

The ‘BlogPiG News’ section contains updates and information from the BlogPiG blog. You can click on any of the posts to open them in a new window. This will not effect any searches currently in progress.

I’ll post a full instruction video tomorrow, but for now you can download the YouTube Comment Extractor HERE.