G-Mapper

Browsing the Internet is a popular activity today and there are scores of online resources, probably well in excess of 1 billion units. As such, many auxiliary tools have been developed to assist users in one way or another with handling this amount of data. G-Mapper is one such application, intended to help users spider websites.

The application analyzes an online site and crawls its way around all the available linked resources. Although the process can take considerable time when targeting especially large items, the results will be displayed in a tabbed interface. Images are separated from regular addresses and one can even configure the program to skip pictures altogether.

Setting up the tool is very easy, as a built-in wizard guides users both experienced and new through all the necessary steps. Several options can be adjusted at this stage of the process, including the ability to target addresses with only certain extensions (e.g. ASPs, or HTMLs), or defining items with priority. Adjusting the default option of the latter feature is recommended when dealing with large resources.

Filtering images from target sites is supported and one can even define file-type masks. If the spider seems to be taking too long, consider discarding images from the analysis. Once satisfied with their results, users can export their sitemaps to XMLs or TXTs.

It should also be stated that one can apply batch metadata adjustments to the retrieved items, such as altering the author information. Manual editing is also supported and one can even adjust specific page data, such as titles or descriptions.

In conclusion, G-Mapper is a simple, but practical web site spider, suitable for most basic needs. It is not particularly fast, but will get the job done and the batch edit module does make quick work of otherwise cumbersome and lengthy editing jobs.