What's new in SeoTools?

Version 8.1

• Lots of bugfixes.
• Improvements to the Connectors manager.
• New Connector XML features that allows us to build serveral new types of integrations.
• Dump without comments.
• New function: StripTags

Version 8.0

• Connectors can now be downloaded and updated through our new Connector Manager. New Connectors will be released continously.
• Improved UrlEncode, UrlDecode and HtmlEncode to support full unicode character table.
• Added removeEmptyEntries option to StringJoin.
• IntelliSense for all SeoTools functions.
• Spider
  • Fixed memory leak and improved speed.
  • New "Range" mode where you can select list of urls from your workbook.
  • Spider now doesn't crash when finding binary files.
  • Fixed serveral other issues.
  • Spider columns can now return multi-row output. For example XPathOnUrl can now return all the values that matches an xpath.
• New function:ParseNumber
• KeywordDensity now handles numbers in the same way as letters.
• Fixed issue with bulk adding proxies in HttpSettings.
• Added case sensititive option to RegexFind functions.
• Fixed problem with UnshortUrl not generating a timeout exception.
• Optional parameter to control case sensitivity in RegexpFind.
• All UI is now build for retina displays.
• In the task pane wizards there's now an utility in the text boxes to select a cell reference.
• Fixed issues when using Dump and Connectors that return values that begin with '='.
• Experimental SeoToolsGetConfig and SeoToolsSetConfig functions.

Version 7.0

• Loads of new Connectors.
• New function:Distinct
• Fixed bug with UnshortUrl for certain urls.
• Fixed major performance bug in Connector engine.
• Breaking change:Converted Ahrefs,Majestic,SEMrush and BingScraper into Connectors.
• Adding setting in SeoTools.config.xml for making async functions run syncronously (for VBA scripts).
• Ability to specify a proxy when registering for SeoTools Pro.
• New function:DownloadFile
• New function:ImageProperties
• Fixed issue with Spider not naming sheets correctly.
• Added support for HTML base tags in the Spider.
• Optimized loading time.
• W3CValidate, GoogleCacheDate and InternetArchiveFirstSeen converted to connectors.
• Google analytics functions are now asyncronous.
• Had to remove the Resize function. Can't make it work with the asyncronous functions properly.
• New function:DumpTo
• Updated Google Analytics dimensions and metrics.
• CsQuery in Spider.
• All windows now support retina displays.

Version 6.0

• New function: PixelWidth(text, fontFamily, fontSize, bold, italics)
• New "String generator" tool.
• Sistrix: Added select country to "Domain PageRank" and "Domain age". (Set this to you country if you get the error "Permission denied.")
• Google Analytics:View for listing all profiles.
• Google Analytics:New UI for metrics, dimensions, filters and sorting.
• New function: IpClassC(url)
• SEMrush: Added display date parameter for "Domain organic search results".
• New function: KeywordDensity(url, noWords, minWordLenght, minOccurrences)
• The most functions are now asynchronous (won't block the UI and will sometimes be a lot faster).
• Fixed issue with SEOlytics ApiKey.
• Added option to XPathOnUrl to get html output =Dump(XPathOnUrl("http://seotoolsforexcel.com";"//a";;;"html"))
• Built a new cache solution that should be more robust. Hopefully no more OutOfMemoryExceptions.
• RegexpReplace and RegexpIsMatch now accepts an empty input. Read more.
• New function: Slice({11,12,13;21,22,23;31;32;33},0,0,-1,-1) => {11,12;21,22}. Used for slicing parts of arrays, like skip the first row in an array. Read more.
• Updated UI for managing errors.
• Loads of TLD WhoIs settings. We know parse the following TLDs: ac, ae, ag, am, as, at, au, be, bg, biz, br, by, ca, cc, ch, cl, cn, co, com, coop, cr, cx, cz, de, dk, ee, fi, fm, fr, gov, hk, hr, hu, id, ie, il, in, info, ir, is, it, jp, kr, kz, li, lt, lu, lv, ma, mk, mn, mo, ms, mx, na, name, net, nl, no, nu, nz, org, pe, pl, pt, pw, ro, ru, sa, se, sg, si, sk, st, tc, th, tk, tn, to, tr, tv, tw, ua, uk, us, uy, uz, ve, ws
• All "WhoIs" and "Http" functions now requires a Pro subscription.
• New function: CsQuery.
• Fixed issue with JsonPathOnUrl not being able to parse arrays.
• Adwords is updated and working again.
• Fixed issues with GoogleResults, GoogleIndex and GoogleLinks connectors when result was empty (returned 16 instead of #NULL!).
• Updates to Instagram connector.
• Removed the GooglePageRank function as it has been discontinued by Google.
• Fixed issue with Microsoft Translate.
• Fixed broken AWQL in Google Adwords integration.
• Configurable HTTP timeout in global HttpSettings. Default is 120sec.
• Removed SEOlytics as they have merged with Sistrix.
• Added support for TLS connections.
• Breaking change: Rebuilt the Facebook connector as the previous API has been deprecated by Facebook. Now requires an AccessToken and sepparate connectors for urls and pages.
• Fixed issue with Majestic keywords.
• Fixed problem with W3CValidate.
• Added a Debbuger tool (shown in debug mode) for Connector creators.
• Updated Metrics and Dimensions in Google Analytics.
• Had to retire connector "DeliciousShares" as data is not longer available.
• New Connectors: Flickr, Gavagai, AccuRanker, FullContact, GooglePlus, Pipedrive, Tumblr, Serpstat, FacebookInsights, Vimeo
• Updated Connectors: Twitter, YouTube, Sistrix, Searchmetrics
• Removed the ad on startup.
• Moved the cookbook folder to Github. Please submit your templates!
• Fixed issues with wizard configs.
• Updated Adword API.
• New function StringSplit(input, separator, removeEmptyEntries)

Version 5.1

• New Connectors:
  • Google search console
  • Sistrix (created by William!)
  • PhantomJs Cloud - Headless scraping is here!
  • Amazon
• Installer!
• Little bit better support for retina displays (not work to come).
• Fixed issues with Majestic authentication not beeing stored correctly between sessions.
• Fixed broken WikipediaLinks connector.
• Fixed some issues with Ahrefs authentication.
• Created the Northwind connector as an example SqlConnector. Read more.
• Removed TwitterTweets connector as backing API is no longer available. Read more.
• Updated Google Analytics metrics and dimension metadata.
• Majestic: EnabledResourceUnitFailover=1 for Index data. Read more.
• Ahrefs: Implemented "Backlinks new&lost" endpoint.
• Majestic: New "Referring domains" command.
• Fixed issue with external webpages (like Ahrefs login) not opening in default browser.

Version 5.0

• Rebuilt Scrapers entirely. They are now called "Connectors" and can return table values. To run a Connector you now need a Pro license. The implementation of the Connectors included in SeoTools are open-sourced on GitHub.
• New integrations: (built using Connectors)
  • Moz
  • Bitly
  • MailChimp
  • Microsoft translate
  • Twitter
  • uClassify
  • WhoisApi
  • YouTube
• New Razor() function for string templating.
• New MdFive() for Md5 one-way encryption.
• Fixed issues with HtmlTitle().
• SEMrush: Added Display date parameter to Domain overview, Keyword overview and Organic results.
• SEMrush: If you select a database in the view "Keyword overview" the SEMrush command "phrase_this" would be used instead of "phrase_all" (consumes less API credits).
• Google Analytics: Added sampling level
• Google Analytics: Fixed issue with accounts with a lot of items.
• Google Analytics: Updated MCF dimensions and metrics.
• Option to specify encoding in UrlDecode and UrlEncode: =UrlDecode(UrlEncode("åäö";"utf-8");"utf-8") => "åäö"
• Tool for bulk adding proxies in Http settings.
• Google adwords: Option to retrieve search volumes from Google search only.
• Majestic: Fixed problem with "Index data" when sending more than 100 urls in one batch.
• Rebuilt W3CValidate() to support new REST API.
• Google Adwords: Making sure authentication is remembered between sessions if StayAuthenticated is set to true.
• Fixed broken GoogleCacheDate().

Version 4.4

• SEMrush integration
  • Anchors
  • Backlinks
  • Competitors in organic search
  • Competitors in paid search
  • Display advertisers
  • Domain organic search keywords
  • Domain overview
  • Domain paid search keywords
  • Indexed pages
  • Keyword difficulty
  • Keyword overview
  • Organic results
  • Paid results
  • Phrase match keywords
  • Referring domains
  • Referring ips
  • Related keywords
  • Url organic search keywords
  • Url paid search keywords
• Fixed broken PageCodeToTextRatio()
• Updated Google Analytics meta data.
• Fixed problem in Google Adwords integration with phrases in Keyword search volumes.
• New attribute in DirectoryList() for recursive file lists.
• Fixed broken Youtube scraper. You now need an API key. Thanks Doeleman for helping out!
• Modified UrlProperty:

  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com","depth") => 0 
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/","depth") => 0 
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/foo","depth") => 1
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/foo/","depth") => 1
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/foo/bar","depth") => 2     
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/foo/bar/","depth") => 2        
  

• Added support for xpath count() in XPathOnUrl. Count number of links on a page:

  =XPathOnUrl("http://nielsbosma.se","count(//A)")=>0
  

• Fixed broken Instagram.Followers scraper.
• Fixed broken UnshortUrl() when working with http://t.co/ urls.

Version 4.3.5

• New Scrapers:
  • Google.AdsenseId
  • Instagram.Followers
  • Twitter.Followers
  • Youtube
  • Google.MobileFriendly
• Added Include and Exclude url options in Spider.
• Defaults for AhrefsRank function.
• Updated Google Analytics metrics and dimensions.
• New "depth" option for UrlProperty:

  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com","depth") => 0 
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/","depth") => 0 
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/foo","depth") => 0
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/foo/","depth") => 1
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/foo/bar","depth") => 1     
  =UrlProperty("http://seotoolsforexcel.com/foo/bar/","depth") => 2        
  

• Fixed formatting bug in Google Adwords/Search trends header results.
• Fixed issues with the Spider when loading stored configurations.
• Fixed a bug when loading saved Google Adwords settings.
• Fixed issue with device fingerprinting for users on VMs.
• Fixed issue with large numbers in Google Analytics.

Version 4.3

• Adwords integration
  Views:
  • Adwords Query Language (AWQL)
  • Campaigns
  • Keywords
  • Keyword search volumes
  • Keyword ideas
  Requires that you have you're own Google Adwords API key and that you have a SeoTools Pro key.
• Ahrefs integration
  Features:
  • Ahrefs rank
  • Anchors
  • Backlinks
  • Domain rating
  • Metrics
  • Pages
• Introducing Scapers
  Implemented:
  • Alexa.LinkCount
  • Alexa.Popularity
  • Alexa.Reach
  • Bing.Index
  • Delicious.Shares
  • Dmoz.Entries
  • Facebook.Likes
  • Google.AnalyticsId
  • Google.Index
  • Google.Links
  • Google.PlusOne
  • Google.Results
  • Klout
  • LinkedIn.Shares
  • Email
  • Pintered.Pinned
  • Stumbleupon.Likes
  • Stumbleupon.Stumbles
  • Twitter.Tweets
  • Wikipedia.Links
  • Yahoo.Directory
  • Yahoo.Index
  Adding these are quite simple. You can see their implementation in SeoTools.config.xml.
• Inserting values from wizards is now super fast! Also fixed a large performance issue with Dump(). This will make a big difference in SeoTools experience.
• MajesticSEO Updates:
  • Added Skip parameter to Anchor texts, Backlinks, New&Lost Backlinks
  • Added new commands Top pages, Topics and Search by keyword.
  • You can now enter "unlimited" urls in Index data.
• New icons and restructured the menu.
• Updated how delays between requests are managed. In HttpSetting you can write:

  
  <IntervalBetweenRequests RandomFrom="1000" RandomTo="1500" IfSame="Host" />
              

  This will ensure that requests to the same host will be executed with a delay of random ms between 1000 and 1500. IfSame can be "Host" (default), "Domain" or "Url". This is used in some scrapers as a strategy to not get blocked too quickly.
• Added a default user agent in HttpSettings and some sites returns a http error when none is set. Request are made to look like Chrome 39 on Windows 8.1.
• Fixed some Spider issues with GooglePageSpeed and GooglePageRank columns. Some other stability improvements.
• Saving SeoTools.config.xml in AppData directory if failing to save SeoTools dir. Added some additional safe guards.
• Updated available metrics and dimensions in Google Analytics Core Reporting.
• Changed how SeoTools.config.xml is handled. If SeoTools.config.xml is not found in SeoTools installation path one is created. Also if SeoTools don't have write access to the installation path then user AppData directory is used.
• Added some stats to the Spider progress windows.
• Fixed problem in Spider when creating report and there's no active workbook.
• HttpStatus and UnshortUrl functions now uses global HttpSettings. HttpStatus column uses HttpSettings from wizard if defined otherwise global HttpSettings. This required when scraping mobile sites where you need to set the User-Agent.
• HttpStatus column in the Spider now has an option to show the "final" http response status code or the "first".
• Updated HtmlAgilityPack to solve stackoverflow exceptions on certain pages, improving Spider stability.
• Now treating all Google Adwords dimensions as strings.
• Google PageSpeed can now query mobile results.
• Fixed bug with backlinks in SEOlytics not working.
• You can now fetch more than 1000 rows (if you have Pro) using Analytics formulas.
• Breaking change: The following functions has been removed and replaced by scrapers: GoogleIndexCount, TwitterCount, FacebookLikes, AlexaReach, AlexaPopularity, AlexaLinkCount, GoogleLinkCount, GoogleResultCount, DmozEntries, WikipediaLinks.

Version 4.2

• MajesticSEO integration now including support for Topical Trust Flow.
• Fixed bug in CheckBacklink when fetching a page with no links at all.
• Fixed bug with HtmlCanonical and HtmlMeta* functions to be able to parse pages using mod_pagespeed with remove_quotes enabled.
• New propety in UrlProperty:
  

  UrlProperty("http://nielsbosma.se/foo?query=value";"left")
  =>http://nielsbosma.se/foo

• Fixed so that MajeticSeo authentication is persisted in the task pane.
• Fixed problem with transpose in Dump.
• Beta implementation of a new function Resize() that can be used instead of Dump() and will instead resize the array.
• New SqlTable() function.
• Additional parameters for Format.
• Added functions HtmlEncode() and HtmlDecode().
• Better error handling. All functions now behave the same. Error handling can be controlled in SeoTools.config.debug.
• Added function FriendlyUrl().
• Added function GoogleCacheDate().
• Fixed broken W3CValidate(), DomainAge(), InternetArchiveFirstSeen(), GoogleLinkCount(), GoogleIndexCount(), GoogleResultCount(), BingScraper(), BingOtherDomainsOnIp(), BingLinkFromDomain().
• Introducing the SeoTools spider! Take any function in SeoTools and combine into a crawler.
• New functions BingScraper (check out the wizard), BingOtherDomainsOnIp(), BingLinkFromDomain().
• Added parameter: Dump({object vector},bool transpose) for transposing results. Added transpose in wizards.
• Better support for pagination when inserting values in Google Analytics and MajesticSEO wizard.
• Start index parameter of Google Analytics has been removed. May break your formulas!
• Added debug metric: ContainsSampledData in Google Analytics. Read more about this.
• New function WordCount. Returns number of words on a page.
• Added parameters to IsFoundOnPage(string pageUrl, string countOccurencesOfString, bool ignoreCase, bool textMode, bool distinct) to restrict search in text nodes only and only count distinct links. 
• Fixed problems with Alexa functions.
• Google PageSpeed integration.
• Breaking change: BuildHttpDownloaderConfig() renamed to HttpSettings() with modified arguments.
• Proxy support in HttpSettings:
  

  <Proxies>
  <Proxy Address="87.110.149.80:8080" Username="foo" Password="bar"/>
  </Proxies>
  You can enter as many proxies as you want. SeoTools will distribute requests. 

• Breaking change: DownloadUrl() is renamed to GetTextOnUrl()
• Task pane wizards built for XPathOnUrl, GetTextOnUrl, RegexpOnUrl, JsonPathOnUrl.
• Changed default response encoding in HTTP settings to UTF-8 as this seems to be the most common encoding on the internet.
• Dialog for editing HttpSettings() and global http settings (from SeoTools.config.xml).
• Now (by default) HTTP requests doesn't fail on HTTP codes like 404 and 500. These are now scrapeable. You can set "Fail on HTTP error" in HttpSettings.
• Fixed bug with certain HTML pages stating to use an encoding that doesn't exists (or is recognized by .NET).
• Clear cache:
  

  =SeoToolsClearCache() 

  Clear all pages from http://nielsbosma.se (use '*' as wildcard):
  

  =SeoToolsClearCache("http://nielsbosma.se*")

  From VBA:
  

  Application.Run("SeoToolsClearCache","http://nielsbosma.se*") 

• Changed HttpStatus() to by default use HTTP request method "GET" instead of "HEAD". This is slower but as pointed out by lsgbusiness, some servers are configured to return 404 not found. As an optional argument you can choose request method yourself:

  =HttpStatus("HEAD") 

• Added option to "Collect cookies" between http requests in HttpSettings. Button "Clear cache&cookies" in About resets cookie container.
• Added "name" option in UrlProperty.

  =UrlProperty("http://www.nielsbosma.co.uk","name") 
  =>"nielsbosma"

• IsFoundOnPage is now cached (can be turned off in global http settings.).

Version 4.0.7

• MajesticSEO integration!
• Added a bunch of new Google Analytics metrics and dimensions.
• You can now save and load your configurations in the Google Analytics wizard.
• Upgraded Google Analytics to 3.0 API. Authentication is now through OAUTH.
  You can use your own OAUTH ClientIdentifier and ClientSecret retreived from https://code.google.com/apis/console/ by setting these values in SeoTools.config.xml:

  <GoogleAnalytics OAuthClientIdentifier="" OAuthClientSecret="" StayAuthenticated="true"/>
  

• Upgraded to ExcelDna 0.30.
• Completely rebuilt interface for Google Analytics with a task pane instead of a popup.
• Support for Google Analytics Multi-channel Funnel Reporting with new function =GoogleAnalyticsMcf().
• Percent values in Google Analytics are divided by 100.0 for better integration with Excel.
• Replaced TwitterCount implementation.

Version 3.3

• This release is sponsored by SEOlytics.
  
  A lot of work has be put into integrating their new API with SeoTools. Each function has a wizard found in the SEOlytics menu to help build formulas.
  
  Functions:

  =SEOlyticsSVR(string domain, string lcc, [int weeksBack=1, string fields="position", includeHeaders=false]]) : table
  

  Returns SEOlytics SVR (Search Visibility Rank).
  
  

  =SEOlyticsMonitoredKeywordRanking(string domain, string lcc, string keywords, [Date date=null, int daysBack=1, string searchEngine="google", string fields="position", includeHeaders=false]) : table
  

  Returns daily ranking data for the registered domains of the keywords registered by the caller via the Ranking Resource - similar to the Monitoring/Positions section in the SEOlytics tool.
  
  

  =SEOlyticsDomainMetrics(string domain, string lcc, [Date date=null, int daysBack=1, string fields="google-backlinks", bool includeHeaders=false]) : table
  

  Obtain daily domain detail and social media data for the registered domains - similar to the Monitoring/Domain Details/Social Media sections in the SEOlytics tool.
  
  

  =SEOlyticsLinkCount(string domain, [int weeksBack=1, string fields="no-links-total", bool includeHeaders=false]) : table
  

  Returns link statistics for an url of a registered domain - as available via the Backlinks/Link Popularity section in the SEOlytics tool.
  
  

  =SEOlyticsLinkHistory(string domain, [int monthsBack=1, string fields="links-incoming", bool includeHeaders=false]) : table
  

  Retrieval of link history - as available via the Backlink/History section in the SEOlytics tool.
  
  

  =SEOlyticsBacklinks(string url, int limit, string fields, [bool includeHeaders=false, bool exactUrl=false, string achorText=null, string status=null, string type=null, string srcDomain=null, string srcCountry=null, int srcACRank=0, int backlinksLinkingToSrcDomain=0, int domainsLinkingToSrcDomain=0])
  

  Import backlinks - as available via the Backlink/Overview section in the SEOlytics tool.
• Fixed problems with result strings from XPathOnUrl containing "/t" (for example "http://t.co/vrPCw2Nu" was returned as "http:/ .co/vrPCw2Nu").
  Thanks Javi Garcia fore reporting this.
• Fixed bug in Analytics Wizard where last profileId wasn't remembered correctly.
• Added function:

  =DmozEntries(string host) : string
  

  Returns the number of entries found for a host or domain on dmoz.org.
• Added function:

  =UnshortUrl(string shortenedUrl) : string. 
  

  Traverse HTTP redirects until final location is found.
• Updated to the latest ExcelDna version (r.70906).
• Added links to Forums, Documentation, Like on Facebook and What's new in Help section.
• Added attributes for Tlds in SeoTools.config.xml to support additional date formats, such as "dd/MM/yyyy" (.FR). New Tld attributes are WhoIsCreatedDateFormat, WhoIsUpdatedDateFormat and WhoIsExpiresDateFormat. Date formats like "dd/MM" are interpreted as the "next future date". If today is dec. 14 2011, "01/02" is interpreted as febr. 1 2012.
• Added function:

  =WikipediaLinks(string url, [string languageCode]) : int
  

  Returns the number of exernal links found on url on [languageCode].wikipedia.org. Default languageCode is "en" for english. Maximal number to be returned is 5000. Wildcards '*' can be used in url.
  Thanks Lena Sjögren for suggesting with this feature.
  
  Examples:

  WikipediaLinks("*.seomoz.org","en") => 89
  

• Improved error handling when SeoTools.config.xml isn't found. Also now displaying path to SeoTools.config.xml in About dialog.
• Added function:

  =Velocity(string template, range vector) : string
  

  Velocity string templating functionality to Excel.
  
  Velocity syntax
  
  The following template options is available:
  
  Access elements in vector:

  $P0, $P1, $P2...
  

  
  Use any SeoTools function in your template:

  $SeoTools.UrlEncode('niels is awesome!')
  

  
  Eval any excel formula:

  $Utils.Eval('A1')
  $Utils.Eval('A1:C1')
  $Utils.Eval('SUM(A1:C1)') 
  

  
  Look in the cookbook folder for examples.
• Added function:

  =NormalizeWhitespace(string text) : string
  

  Replace all whitespace in a text to single spaces.
• Added function:

  =StripWhitespace(string text) : string
  

  Removes all whitespace in a text.
• Blecko functions removed due to Blecko now requires authentication.
• Added "Insert values" option in Google Analytics wizard.
• Added function:

  =NiceColors(strin baseColor, int howMany, bool skipHash) : list of colors
  

  Returns a list of nice colors that plays nice with each other.
• Updated CheckBacklink so expectedLinkHref and expectedLinkText now supports wildcards.
  Example:

  =CheckBacklink("http://nielsbosma.se","http://*.uservoice.com","Suggestion*",TRUE)
  

  Thanks to Serge Esteves for suggesting this.
• Changed how SeoTools handles errors. You can now opt-out to get popups for subsequent errors in that session.
• Added ability to skip update reminders until next version.
• Updated GooglePageRank function so PR(n/a) returns -1 (instead of 0) to separate from PR(0).
  Thanks to Pieter-Jan Vanneste for suggesting this.
• Support for Open graph protocol in HtmlMeta:

  =HtmlMeta("http://ogp.me/","og:title")
  

• Fixed workaround for bug in HtmlAgility Pack (http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/workitem/28317) when parsing documents with tags.