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Top 20 Free Websites to Collect Social and Search Data

Posted on by in Search Engines

Collection of data is very important especially in the SEO world. You cannot compete favorably on the internet unless you can measure and report your social media analytics and also evaluate your SEO campaigns. Data collection tools come in handy at this point and you always don’t have to pay because you can find valuable tools that at no cost. Social professionals will tell you that the industry has a long list of analytics platforms that very depending on the niche, effectiveness, user experience, and price among other factors.

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With the ever-increasing number of options, this article puts forward a list of top 20 free websites to collect social and search data. You need to gather data from online content and social media platforms to guide your business decisions. These actionable social insights will help you in developing your marketing strategy. You have to identify your major business goals, determine your social KPIs, and then measure and analyze your social data. Isn’t this turning out to be a simple process? Let’s look at some of the applications that you will get absolutely at no cost.

1. HootSuite

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Hootsuite is among the leading social media analytics tools that you can find in the market. it has a dashboard that allows your organization or business to run online campaigns across several social media networks. It is a scheduling tool that can also help you in identifying your audience launching marketing campaigns, distributing targeted messages, streaming workflow etc. You will use this tool to extract weekly social analytics reports. Social media integrations comprise of Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. You can begin with three free platforms and then upgrade later.

2. Audiense

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This tool works magic for people who have small twitter accounts with a community of close to 5000 combined followers including the ones you follow. You don’t have to pay anything while using Audiense for your twitter analytics. You will be able to know the best time to tweet and the geographical location, level of influence, and interests of your followers. However, you will pay a fee if you have large twitter communities.

3. How Sociable

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You can get instant access to the magnitude of your brand by entering its name in the respective search field. This will display the level of activity that surrounds your brand in any given week. The rating flows between zero and ten and you can use it to view the brand’s magnitude over 12 platforms such as Reddit, YouTube, Tumblr, Google +, and LinkedIn. You will be able to see which among the 12 platforms is your brand succeeding the most. However, the tool will not tell you what you are doing wrong and how you will need to fix it.

4. Facebook Insights

Are you looking for some insights on your Facebook page? This is the right tool to use. It will go a step further to give you social intelligence on what the Facebook pages of your competitors have to offer. You will be able to tell the number of followers who read your post and the actions that each person took on your Facebook page. For example, they could have clicked to view your website or for directions. You can see location and gender demographics on the people who are following your page. However, most users find the pages to watch area metric which allows you to view those posts that are becoming a success for your competitors. You can use what is working for them to leverage against them.

5. Keyhole

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Keyhole provides simple and realtime stats on Instagram and Twitter. The tool allows you to search for demographics, top sources, sentiment, share of post, location, top sites, recent users, most influential by frequency, Klout score or engagement, related topics, top posts, post activity timeline, impression, reach, and users/posts. You can upgrade for continuous tracking of several accounts or hashtags.

6. Buffer

The primary function of Buffer is to schedule posts even though it has other merits. With the free version, you can schedule your posts on a single account each on Instagram, Google +, Facebook, and Twitter, -up to a maximum of 10 post in your queue per network at a time. Therefore, you will have to schedule more often so that you can view the most and least popular posts in the last 30 days. You will observe this in the retweets, clicks, and mentions. You can upgrade to a higher plan if you want to view more complex analytics and monitor more accounts.

7. Klear

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The software has several free tools you can select from when looking for Instagram or Twitter followers. You can also view Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter page analytics so as to reveal your level of influence on the basis of the posting activity. You can upgrade to get more.

8. Twitter Analytics

Twitter built-in analytics will show you the kind of tweets that are successful and to what extent. However, they may not tell you why but you can use the information to search for answers. The audience metrics will break your followers into percentages on the basis of net worth, household income, gender, occupation and interests. The application also has an events tab that will give you some clues on the current events that are keeping everyone buzz like Lollapalooza and Comic Con. The tool also highlights popular and recurring hash tags so that you can develop trending posts. However, the tool does not have the capacity to target individual segments of audience with specific messages to the groups. The good thing is that you have a rough idea of where you need to aim in order to please a large proportion of your audience.

9. Klout

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Klout has a score that measures your online impact and gives you your position with respect to topics from experts. You can see the relevant content that is worth sharing by a simple click on each topic, together with the top authors you need to follow. The best way to increase your score is posting the kind of content your audience are looking for.

10. ViralWoot

The tool will increase your exposure for Pinterest pins and profile. Repining earns and following other users will earn you some points that you can use in the promotion of pins. With the free version, you can only upload up to three pins. This makes it a bit challenging to post original content. However, you can remain engaged by repining through the automation tool.

11. Cyfe

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This all-in-one dashboard analyses and monitors data that is found on all online services like social feeds, Zendesk, WordPress, Facebook, Amazon, MailChimp, AdSense, Salesforce, blog performance, and Google analytics in real time and from one location. The free version has five limited widgets but there is a lot of flexibility on how you are going to assemble them. You can pick one or two widgets for the social media sites that you work on most of the time depending on your industry. The free version may not be appropriate if you are active on several social media accounts and this may force you to upgrade to the premium version.

12. Peakfeed

This is an effective tool if you want to set and forget about it. The application will give you from reports for LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Klout, Google+, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook on a weekly basis. It will help you to save a lot of time if you are looking for a quick preview of the basics. The main undoing of Peakfeed is that it does not provide real time data whenever things are going wrong. However, you will tell whether your accounts are gaining engagements and followers or not. This will assist you to know where to pay more attention and you can get a free life account.

13. Pinterest Analytics

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You cannot use Pinterest analytics unless you have a business account. However, you can convert a personal account at no cost to check whether visitors love your Pinterest account. You will also view what most users save on your corporate profile. The new audience metrics allows you to see what your fans are into, and the other sites they follow. This gives you an excellent idea on what to look for in a strategy. You can be sure of winning half the battle by having knowledge of your audience.

14. Social Rank

Use this tool to quickly view Instagram or twitter stats such as the emojis, hashtags, popular words, likes, and retweets for both the people you are following and your followers. You can filter to see the most engaged brands, your best, and most valuable follower. You will also be able to see the location of your top followers, and the kind of posts they share. You can be able to join the conversation by seeing the popular words that your followers are talking about.

15. Followerwonk

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If all your social media data is on Twitter, you can connect one profile with Followerwonk and get social authority ranking insights, and also view your followers, when they are active and their locations. You can search bios for keywords and Twitter profiles with a few limitations. However, you can subscribe if you want to view more.

16. SumAll

SumAll has gone back to delivering free daily and weekly emails. These emails allow the user to connect to Instagram and Twitter so that he can receive the much-needed stats through the email. Coming soon are Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook pages to allow you have a quick preview of data from multiple networks in the same place. You can connect to as many accounts as you feel like free of charge.

17. Instagram Insights

Instagram has more than 200 million active users on a daily basis which is appealing to nearly all marketers. It’s good to gather meaningful insights about this target group. The best beginning point is to convert your profile into a free business one if you have not yet done that. You will find an icon that looks like a bar graph on the top left that you can click to access insights. You will also see three dots that you can use to display the menu option. This will allow you to view impression, profile views, and reach for the last week. You will also gather a lot of information about your fans and the average times and days of the week they were active on Instagram. You can also see a lot of insights about your active promotions and stories. You will understand the posts that had the highest conversion rate or those that have spread most virally.

18. Tweet Reach

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The tool gives you a quick snapshot of part of your union Metrix, Tweet Reach, keywords, specified hashtags, and Twitter account. All you need to do is type your key phrases in the search box as is the case with Voila or Google. This will allow you to see the estimated reach of your accounts on the basis of top contributors, impressions, and most retweeted tweets. You can search any account and get a lot of insights on competitive intelligence. Returned data has a limit of 100 tweets but you can upgrade by purchasing more snapshots.

19. Google Alerts

Google analytics is a more in-depth solution that sends you alerts whenever your brand or that of your competitors gets an online mention. The tool allows you to select the alerts you want and it may allow you to know when your brand is making headlines online. This is more important if you are trending for the wrong reasons. The tool can also allow you to discover topical content that you can share with your audience.

20. YouTube Analytics

Videos are among that most engaging social media content that has the ability to turn viral. Therefore, it is important to understand what works and what does not work. This tool will help you to understand where your traffic is originating from. It also has filters that will allow you to see which videos are popular in specific areas or across a particular data range. The earning report will allow you to see the ads that drive revenue and the audience retention graph display the videos that are holding the attention on the viewers through likes and sharing. Your average watch time will serve as a guide about the front-loading key data in all your videos.

Conclusion

The market has a long list of free websites to collect and search data. Most of these tools offer exemplary services despite the fact that you will get them free of charge. The free tools will serve you well especially if you don’t have a large number of people who are following you online. Some of the free websites to collect and search data come with limitation of access. The good news is that there is an option of upgrading so that you can get access to more functionalities.

Author: Ariana Smith

Ariana Smith is the feature writer of Search Engine Magazine and an SEO Analyst at iDream Agency. Over the last 3 years, She has successfully developed and implemented online marketing, SEO, and conversion campaigns for 50+ businesses of all sizes.

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