Abstract: A software tool allows non-expert users to locate and analyze virtual communities on the World Wide Web. It employs a configurable crawling algorithm based on social science network theories and content analysis to automatically locate a virtual community of interest to the user, identify key sites within the community, and determine content patterns that characterize the communications of key sites. The software tool employs crawling at an Intrasite Level, for searching for links from seed websites to other linked websites, and crawling at an Intersite Level, for determining which websites are to be included in a virtual community by degree of centrality and content similarity (based on keyword matching). The website data obtained by crawling are converted by network analysis, content analysis, and public analysis (of data obtained from public resources) into website characterizing data and saved in a standard file format to enable further research on virtual communities of websites.