ShrinkTheWeb.com is a free website thumbail provider. edit this microsummary

Wiki edit

Image:shrinktheweb.com-full200x0.jpg
Visit Shrink The Web Website
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A service that creates screenshots of other websites.

edit About ShrinkTheWeb.com

ShrinkTheWeb.com (STW) is the most powerful, free website thumbnail provider on the internet. They specialize in allowing your web page to capture images of any website’s front page, homepage, or subdomain. Specific pages can be captured using a PRO feature (Upgrades). The idea is simple and effective, you give ShrinkTheWeb.com a URL and they are able to generate a thumbnail image of that web page. You can embed, download, and use these images anywhere to reference your website visually. Moreover, this service also supports various ways to integrate screenshot plug-ins, including a non ad-supported preview bubble, to enhance this highly effective webmaster tool.
ShrinkTheWeb URL submit bar used to generate a requested thumbnail.
ShrinkTheWeb URL submit bar used to generate a requested thumbnail.

When you open an account with ShrinkTheWeb, you get access to a customizable widget that dynamically generates thumbnails automatically. The free service is ideal for the vast majority of webmasters, but for those who require more, ShrinkTheWeb offers additional serices. PRO Users can get custom-size images, full-length pages, specific page captures, custom delays, cropping options, custom system messages, and even MORE! See this page for a comparison of both the free and PRO Features.

edit Benefits of using ShrinkTheWeb

ShrinkTheWeb Thumbnail Generator usage example on neobus.com
ShrinkTheWeb Thumbnail Generator usage example on neobus.com
  • Improve Search Accuracy: By displaying an image of your website coupled with your URL you stand a better chance of associating the look of website with the keywords in your URL.
  • Recall Previously Visited Sites: Help visitors remember which websites they visited by giving them a way to see your website.
  • Filter Offensive Sites: Steer clear of adult websites by spotting them before opening the site.
  • Filter Foreign Sites: See foreign text before visiting the site.
  • Discover Ambiguous Sites: Easily distinguish between two websites of similar sounding names.
  • Find Inspirational and Beautiful Designs: Quickly glance through galleries of websites like www.shrunktheweb.com and spot catchy designs. Also great for showcasing your own designs!
  • Filter Duplicates or Related Sites: See duplicate websites and/or identify sites with common content or layout.
  • Filter Parked or Broken Sites: Spot parked pages or broken websites before wasting your time.
Visit learn.shrinktheweb.com to read more on uses of STW.

edit STW Thumbnail Samples

Sample thumbnail sized at 200×150
Sample thumbnail sized at 200×150
Sample thumbnail sized at 120×90
Sample thumbnail sized at 120×90

These free samples, that STW generated, are available in the following default sizes:

  • 75×56
  • 90×68
  • 100×75
  • 120×90
  • 200×150
  • 320×240

Regardless of the size, ShrinkTheWeb.com's thumbnail images are of the highest quality and accurately depict the requested website. At any given time, people may be using ShrinkTheWeb to generate thumbnails for their website(s). This means all requested thumbnails are queued and handled on a first come first serve basis, ensuring fair and equal opportunities for all their customers. STW provides priority services available by request for its upgraded users. During our tests, the website thumbnail for AboutUs was quickly generated.

Sample thumbnail sized at 320×240
Sample thumbnail sized at 320×240


edit About the Founder

ShrinkTheWeb.com was founded by Brandon Elliott of Neosys Consulting to provide a much needed service for webmasters. Brandon is a CISSP, MCSE, CCNA, MCP+I, A+, and has been in the IT industry for over a decade.

He runs STW as a dedicated service and contributes quite a bit of resources at the back-end to keep this service free, reliable, fast and secure. He is open and honest about the challenges that he faces offering this service for free, however, he explains his reasoning and logic clearly to his audience.

Read more
Read more about Brandon Elliott on Neosys.net

edit Customer Testimonials

As a new user of your service, I want first to congratulate you. It's a real top thumbnail service : ultra fast thumbnail generation, good image quality, perfect!

Bertrand

Just found your service and must say I am impressed with it and thrilled that you offer an API and excited to get this working with vBulletin.

Colleen

We are using ShrinkTheWeb to display thumbnails of member sites in our recipe website directory. It's very easy to use, and reliability and performance are great. You're doing a nice job. Keep up the good work!

Khun

edit Contact

Web: Webform
Tel: +1-888-763-6797

edit Languages

Present: English, German, Spanish, French, Russian

edit Additional Information

edit Related Domains

edit What Others Are Saying

Technorati Blog - "Great solution for website thumbnails / previews"

MakeUseOf - "ShrinkTheWeb: Automatically Creates Web Screenshot Thumbnails"

Stackoverflow - "Which third party website thumbnailing services do you use?"

PaperMashUp - "Using web thumbs to enhance user experience"

Orangeinks - "ShrinkTheWeb: Get Dynamic Screen Shot Thumbnails"

D' Technology Weblog - Review

Blog Reign - Review

J.Y. Design/Blog - Review

the revolution hour - Review

edit External Links

edit Influence Us

Add your constructive feedback or review for ShrinkTheWeb.com


edit Saad Saeed's Comments on ShrinkTheWeb.com

  • Saad Saeed (delighted) : I and a couple of other wiki editors at AboutUs now use STW whenever we need to add a custom thumbnail to a page. Its our quick fix solution to show a custom current domain thumbnail. For improvement, it would be great if STW can allow hardlinking to thumbnails and allow periodic updates to thumbnails without one having to redownload a fresh thumbnail. Wed Feb 25 10:12:26 UTC 2009

How visible is your website?

Home Page Analysis

A better home page will help you show up in search results.

Titles & Headings Icon-result-warning
Links & Images Icon-result-good
Search Engine Friendliness Icon-result-good

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Competitive Edge

See how your digital marketing stacks up,
and get ahead.

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Web Presence Analysis

How easily can your site be found around the Web?

value for Google crawl date
value for Bing indexed pages

Registrar

A registrar manages the reservation for domain names. The registrar for this domain is eNom .

eNom

Home Page Analysis

The Home Page Analysis helps you understand how a site's home page appears to both search engines and site visitors.


updated over 2 years ago

ShrinkTheWeb.com Home Page Analysis Summary

Titles & Headings The title and headings on the home page tell people and search engines what a website is about.
Analyze the title & headings of the home page for free or the entire site.
Warning
Links & Images Relevant links to other sites are good for people and search engines. Images on a web page should be described for visually impaired visitors and search engines.
Analyze the links & images of the home page for free or the entire site.
Good
Search Engine Friendliness A few simple technical fixes can make any site show up better in search results.
Good
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updated over 2 years ago

Title

The title of a web page appears in search results as the link to that page. Learn more ...

Purpose

The title of a web page appears as a clickable link in search results and bookmarks. A descriptive, compelling home page title with relevant keywords can increase the number of people visiting the site.

Search Engines

Search engines view the text of the title tag as a strong indication of what the page is about. Accurate keywords in the title tag can help the page rank better in search results.

Length

A title tag should have fewer than 70 characters, including spaces. Major search engines won't display more than that.

Content

The title tag of your home page (and any other page on your site) should not contain the site’s domain name or URL. These will appear near the title in search results, so use your 70 characters to tell people what the page is about. The title tag should not contain any HTML, because it will be displayed incorrectly or not at all.

  • Good: This web page has a title tag.
  • Good: The title tag is a good length.
The title of this site's home page:
Website Screenshot Thumbnail Service | ShrinkTheWeb

Meta Description

Search engines often use the meta description of a web page to describe it in search results. Learn more ...

Purpose

The meta description tells searchers what a web page is about. It is often displayed below the title in search results, and helps people decide if they want to visit that website.

Length

Search engines will read 200 to 250 characters, but usually display only 150, including spaces. The first 150 characters of the meta description should contain the most important keywords for that web page. Using fewer than 50 characters could mean you’re not saying enough about the page.

Content

The meta description should be engaging, and should include keywords that accurately reflect what visitors will find on the web page. The keywords should be the same ones that a site's potential customers are using to search. Include a site’s location if it is important.

  • Good: The meta description is the right length, between 50 and 150 characters.
The meta description for this site's home page:
Free website thumbnail generator service for webmasters

H1 Headings

The H1 heading is an important sentence or phrase on a web page that quickly and clearly tells people and search engines what they can expect to find there. Learn more ...

Just one H1

In most cases, a web page should have just one H1 heading. Using multiple H1 headings is okay if that is a logical way to organize the page, but they should be used sparingly. That’s because search engines can view multiple H1 headings as an attempt to signal that all the content on a page is equally important, a tactic that’s seen as an attempt to game the search engine algorithms.

Purpose

Search engines look for an H1 heading to determine what a page is about. Human visitors do, too.

Content and placement

The H1 heading appears on the web page itself, unlike the page title, which people will see mostly in search results.

The H1 tag (which contains the H1 heading) is usually listed first among the other heading tags for a page. None of the major search engines, however, will penalize a site for listing H2 through H6 tags ahead of the H1 tag.

The H1 heading for a page should be different from its title. Each can target different important keywords for better SEO.

  • Warning: This page has more than one H1 heading. It should have just one.
H1 headings for this site's home page:
  • Who Needs Website Screenshots?
  • Take Advantage of PRO Features!
  • Great Reasons to Choose STW...

ShrinkTheWeb.com in search results

You can see below how most search engines will display this site's home page in search results. The title is used as the link to the page, and the meta description appears below the title.

Website Screenshot Thumbnail Service | ShrinkTheWeb

Free website thumbnail generator service for webmasters

shrinktheweb.com/

Want more? Our Competitive Edge service gives you actionable insight into the social and content marketing of you and your top 3 competitors, and how effective it is.

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updated over 2 years ago

Robots

Your website's robots.txt file can tell search engines to ignore parts of your site. Learn more ...

Purpose

Website owners usually use robots.txt to let search engines know which pages or sections of their site shouldn't be indexed — for example, web contact forms, print versions of web pages and other content that's duplicated elsewhere on the site. Robots.txt can also be used to request that specific robots not index a site. For more information, read How To Use Robots.txt.

Be careful!

If you're going to use robots.txt, be careful not to accidentally exclude search engines from pages you want people to find. To learn more, read Don't Block Search Engine Crawlers.

Search engine robots

You'll need to know the names of specific search engine robots - or "bots" – if you’re going to exclude any or all of them from any part of your site.

  • Google’s bot is called Googlebot. Google is the world’s largest search engine, and is where many people discover new websites.
  • Bing’s bot is called msnbot. Bing also provides search results to people using Yahoo to search the Web. Together, Bing and Yahoo are the second largest search resource, after Google.
  • Baidu’s bot is called Baiduspider. Baidu is a major search engine in China, and the number of people using it is increasing rapidly.
  • AboutUs.org’s bot is called AboutUsBot. To create a Site Report, AboutUs uses crawling technology that’s similar to what search engines use.
  • Good: This website’s robots.txt file is not blocking major search engines from crawling its pages. Your website can appear in any engine’s search results.

Canonical Url

This website can live at www.ShrinkTheWeb.com or ShrinkTheWeb.com. It's best for your site's visibility to live at just one URL, or web address. You'll want to create a 301 redirect to the URL you choose from the other URL. Learn more ...

Choose one or the other

Whichever of these URLs you choose, make sure your website lives ONLY at that location, which is called the canonical URL for your site.

Be careful!

If you choose www.MyWebsite.com for your site, make sure people who don't type www can get to your site, too. Create a permanent 301 redirect from MyWebsite.com to www.MyWebsite.com.

If the same web page exists at two different URLs, people can choose to link to one or the other. Links from other sites to your website are valuable — they tell search engines that your site is important to people. By splitting valuable links between two identical pages, you're diluting the power of those links to help a page rank higher in search results.

Learn more about why you should have just one home page: Read Twin Home Pages: Classic SEO Mistake

  • Good: Your website resides at www.ShrinkTheWeb.com, and ShrinkTheWeb.com is permanently redirected to it.
Want more? Our Competitive Edge service gives you actionable insight into the social and content marketing of you and your top 3 competitors, and how effective it is.

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Web Presence

Search Engine Visibility

Check this site's prominence around the web and in major search engines.

Backlinks

value for Google
value for Alexa

Indexed Pages

value for Google ?
value for Bing ?

Rank

value for Quantcast ?
value for Compete ?
value for Alexa ?

Date Last Crawled

value for Google ?
value for Bing ?

Check this site's presence on news sharing and community sites.

Social Media Visibility

value for Digg ?
value for Dmoz ?
value for Google Groups ?
value for Yahoo Answers ?
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Redirectory

Below we show domains that redirect to ShrinkTheWeb.com.

We survey every domain on the Internet ending in .com, .net, or .edu to see if any redirect to this website. Large or famous websites like Amazon.com often have many sites redirecting to them.

Domains that redirect to the home page of ShrinkTheWeb.com

A website owner can point one domain to the home page of another. Learn more ...

Capture visitors who type the wrong name

It can make a lot of sense to redirect a domain to an existing web page. For example, many people are likely to type wikipedia.com when they are really looking for wikipedia.org. Creating a redirect from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org helps these people get to the site they want.

3 domains redirect to the home page of ShrinkTheWeb.com.

Domains that redirect to a page within ShrinkTheWeb.com

A domain can point to any page within another website. Learn more ...

Get people to a specific web page

Creating a redirect from a simple domain name helps people find an existing web page that has a long, hard-to-remember URL. For example firefox.com redirects to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/.

1 domain redirects to a page within ShrinkTheWeb.com.
shrunktheweb.com
redirects to: http://shrinktheweb.com/social-sharing-previews.htm
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