This is a weak form of in-silico search, in which the consensus sequence for the motif is compared to genomic positions and the number of mismatches (between candidate site and consensus) is used as a measure of site-quality.

DNA-arrays (or DNA-chips or microarrays) are flat slabs of glass, silicon or plastic onto which thousands of multiple short single-stranded (ss) DNA sequences (corresponding to small regions of a genome) have been attached. After performing a mRNA extraction in induced and non-induced cells, the mRNA is again reverse transcribed, but here the reaction is tweaked, so that the emerging cDNA contains nucleotides marked with different fluorophores for controls and experiment. Targets will hybridize by base-pairing with those probes that resemble them the most. The array can then be stimulated by a laser and scanned for fluorescence at two different wavelengths (control and induced). The ratio or log-ratio between the two fluorescence intensities corresponds to the induction level.

Quantitative Reverse-Transcription PCR is a modification of PCR in which RNA is first reverse transcribed into cDNA and this is amplified measuring the product (qPCR) in real time. It therefore allows one to analyze transcription by directly measuring the product (RNA) of a gene's transcription. If the gene is transcribed more, the starting product for PCR is larger and the corresponding volume of amplification is also larger.

Visual inspection of promoter region to identify putative binding sites based on previous knowledge