2. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
EXTREME
FULL-CONTACT
GOOGLE APIS
–
How Absentmindedly Watching
Network Requests Led to our Most
Popular SEO Tool

3. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
About me
I’m Sean
Tech Director at Greenlane
Extreme amateur programmer
Hobbies include dark beer and long
stretches of doing nothing in particular
greenlanemarketing.com/team/sean-malseed

4. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
THERE WILL BE FREE SPAGHETTI

5. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost

6. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
SPAGHET YOU CAN DEPLOY TO THE CLOUD

7. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
This kills the spaghetti meme.

8. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost

9. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Send a request to a URL, and get back information in a simplified and easy-
to-import format.
Request URL: https://someservice.com/rankapi?keywords=banana,smoothie,fruit
Server gives back:
{"ranks": {"banana":12,"smoothie":24,"fruit":48}}
What an API actually is

10. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Modern API usage
APIs are intended for two primary groups of people:
• Professional developers building robust applications
• Nosey marketing people who know just enough to be dangerous

11. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
How to find APIs
Two ways to find useful APIs:
• Published APIs, such as Google’s excellent comprehensive API Explorer
• Unpublished APIs, usually discovered by clicking around randomly

12. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Google, why aren’t you indexing all these pages?
We Had a Problem

13. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Troubleshooting Indexation, “The Old Way”
YAY
NOT YAY

14. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Troubleshooting Indexation, “The Old Way”
YAY
NOT YAY

15. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
But what if we have almost literally
a bazillion pages to check?
NOT YAY
AT ALL

16. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
We’re not alone in this problem

17. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Something like this could work

18. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Whoops

19. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Whoops

20. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
GOOGLE WHY
CAN’T YOU JUST
BE COOL ABOUT
THIS

21. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Everything is garbage, time to
procrastinate

22. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Watching network requests because ¯_(ツ)_/¯

23. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
You can find a of interesting things under XHR

24. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Hey, neat!

25. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
This trick works on lots of websites

26. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Hey, neat!

27. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
And once you have an API of it...
https://bit.ly/suggkw

28. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
“If it pops up, in, or out...
good chance there’s an API
of it.”

29. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Ok, back to the index thing

30. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
I wonder if there’s something like the suggest API that can help me...

31. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
What the heck is f.txt?

32. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Oh, that’s an API of the entire SERP. Hey, neat!

33. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
FIRST COURSE OF SPAGHETTI

34. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Google Apps Scriptscetti with a Rustic World Wide Wine Sauce

35. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Oh boy! That’s helpful!

36. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Times out after running for 5 mins. How can I make it run a bazillion URLs?

37. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
But what about...

38. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
But what about...
Requests to Google made from Google Apps Script are
made from an internal Google IP address, not yours!

39. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Sample this spaghetti yourself!
Google Sheet with full working script
served with garlic bread and a world wide
wine sauce:
https://bit.ly/test-index

40. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
SECOND COURSE OF SPAGHETTI

41. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
How about a daily automated snapshot of a keyword’s top 100 results?

42. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Sample this spaghetti yourself!
Google Sheet with full working script
served with a fresh pesto sauce.
https://bit.ly/serptracker
Make sure you go Tools → Script Editor, then Edit →
Current Project’s Triggers and set a Time-driven trigger
to run runRankings daily.

43. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
THIRD COURSE OF SPAGHETTI

44. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
“What if we use this API to
make our own API?”

45. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Generic Inception Meme

46. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Google Script can run as a web app, and just return JSON-P to beat CORS

47. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Look ma, no CORS!

48. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Sample this spaghetti yourself!
Google Apps Script ready to File → Make
a Copy served with butter and a cors-free
roll.
https://bit.ly/rankapi
Make sure you go File → Make a copy, then Publish →
Deploy as web app and set a Execute the app as to Me
and Who has access to the app to Anyone, even
anonymous.

49. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
This one simple trick
works so well, you
could build a whole
back-end out of it

50. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Links
–
https://bit.ly/suggkw - Google Sheet with a formula to pull the live Google Suggest API
https://bit.ly/test-index - Bulk URL indexation tester sheet
https://bit.ly/serptracker - Daily SERP top 100 search result snapshot sheet
https://bit.ly/rankapi - JSONP keyword rank API in Apps Script that you can integrate anywhere
https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer - Google’s awesome list of official APIs
https://realkeyword.com - Experimental live keyword rank checker using the Apps Script API thing

51. Sean Malseed | @seanmalseed | #TechSEOBoost
Thx!
–
Sean Malseed
@seanmalseed
greenlanemarketing.com