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Susan Goodson -> RE: Web Positioning Software (10/12/2002 12:13:41)
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Actually I did not come on here with the intention of defending every little aspect of WPG nor did I want to push or sell it. As I stated from the start some people like it, some don' t and I am not going to try to change anyone' s opinion. I just wanted to clear up some of the misinformation and outdated information that was posted. And further to that, out of those that do like WPG, I' m the first to admit that they do not necessarily like or use every module of it. Some have certain modules that they feel are of no use to them and have other modules that are indispensable to them. Everyone has a right to his or her opinion and no one' s opinion is necessarily right nor is it necessarily wrong. The bottom line is: that it is what is works best for YOU as an individual user that is right for you. So if you are looking for me to come on here and say " YOU MUST USE EVERY PART OF WPG AND LOVE THEM ALL BECAUSE THEY ARE PERFECT FOR EVERY ONE ALL THE TIME" that is not going to happen. Yet I do feel that is what some of you are looking for, especially pageone. That would be like me saying you must all eat prunes, carrots and broccoli for every meal for the rest of your life and eat nothing else because they are very healthy and I like them. What if prunes make you sick? What if you are allergic to broccoli? What if you just hate the taste of carrots?
That being said I am happy to do my best to address your specific questions.
Okay there were a lot of questions and statements made there and I will try to do my best to address each of them if I miss some feel free to point them out:
1) One, can you explain to us the benefits of using the Auto Submitter in WPG? What engines still accept free submissions that are of any value?
>The benefit is that it is a quick, easy, automated way to submit your pages to the engines. Almost all of the engines have paid and free ways to get listed in their engines. The free ways are either directly through their engine or free via a partner engine that they pull results from. Specifically the following WPG supported engines still accept free submissions either directly or indirectly:
AhHa
Alltheweb/Lycos which supplies results to:
-Lycos
-Regional versions of Lycos
-Alltheweb
Google which supplies results to:
-AOL and all regional versions of AOL
-Anzwers
-Google
-ICQ Search
-Web DE
-Yahoo
Hotbot which supplies results to:
-Inktomi
-Iwon
-MSN and all regional versions of MSN
-Overture
-Goo
Jayde
Regional Engines supported in the submitter are:
Goo
Fireball
Liberio
Club Internet
NoMade
BigLobe
Regional Googles
Regional Lycos
Rambler
Voila
WebWombat
And we are continually adding more engines.
2) Two, why does the webposition.com site have a PR3 for its home page and PR2 for internal pages? With as many users that you have, and with as many sites as you have linking to you, surely your Google PR should be somewhere around 6 or 7. Also, Google is not counting backwards links for your site. Is there a possible penalty in place? If so, why would there be a penalty?
>I honestly don' t know. We no longer do any site promotion for our company or software. As we have dealer and partner programs we allow our dealers and partners to promote their sites. One possibility is that because our dealers have mirror sites and they link to our site there may be a penalty for so many mirror pages linking to us. Another is that because we have so many partner sites linking to us it may look like some kind of link farm so Google may also penalize affiliate or partner sites to help even things out as far a link popularity. But straight out, for a certain answer to this you would have to contact Google directly. However, would it be possible there is a penalty? Absolutely, there could be one! Google has the right to penalize any page or site they wish.
3) There are some flaws with your statements above. I don' t have the time to dig up all the threads I' ve read at various forums where WPG has been a possible cause of their problems. I do remember quite clearly a statement from GoogleGuy indicating that rank checking programs are against their TOS, no matter what program it is. I' ve seen users post comments about how they used WPG and then GoogleGuy comes along and states that was a possible reason for their troubles and that he would reinstate their PR if they stopped querying Google.
>I never said it was not against their TOS in fact I stated in my post above:
" Google states plain and simple that they do not like automated queries to be run on their service. They say accessing their service with a browser is fine, but all other tools that automate searching are not."
Also regarding Google guy, of course he is going to say it is WPG' s fault. But then you have to stop and think what about all those people who don' t use WPG and never used WPG who got blocked and/or banned?
Regarding the posts and thread you refer to, I think I may know at least one of the threads you are referring to which is:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/4235-6-15.htm#msg84
Googleguy and I both posted to it and it is an excellent reference for those who want to know more about both sides of the issue (including those whose pages and site get completely dropped and Google admits to it not being on purpose but rather do to a mechanical glitch).
4) About the Page Generator, I experimented with it last night. Those pages are in my mind not worth the effort. You are better off building your own page following the core algo strategies that most professional SEO' s use.
>Hey that is fine! I understand completely, when I was strictly doing SEO I didn' t use all the modules either. I never said (and our company never said), you must use all tools in the software and love them all. Most users don' t, they use the parts of the software that are useful to them and work for them. But to say hey I don' t like the Page Generator therefore NO ONE should like it, is an overgeneralization. I have tons of customers who call in and love the Generator, because they are new to HTML and new to SEO and the Page Generator helps them create pages and they learn about the different areas of the pages and about HTML code as they go.
5) About the Page Critic, I ran a few top ranking pages through the critic. I was a little suprised at the advice it gave me in regards to making changes. Right now, those pages hold top 5 positions in various SE' s. If I were to make the changes that the Page Critic suggests, I' d probably lose those positions.
>The recommendations and suggestions given by the Page Critic are based upon statistical AVERAGES of top ranking pages. Used effectively, these suggestions and tips can do wonders for a page' s position. But, the suggestions made by the software are far from being the only solution. There are an infinite number of combinations that can produce a page that ranks well. Any number of variations in the tags, body text, etc. could produce that special high-ranking page. We' ve had customers report that top ranking pages still had lots of suggested improvements by the Critic. In fact, this is the norm, and is GOOD for you. It means that generally when you implement the suggestions, you' ll rank HIGHER than those already in the top 10. In other words, just because a page is number one in an engine for a given term that does not mean that it is perfectly matching the search engine' s algorithm. It just means of all that pages in the engine' s index, with the search term in them, that page came the closet to what the search engine' s algorithm was looking for. That means there can still be a lot of room for improvement. But we have always stated and I believe this is also in our FAQ' s and help files that if your page already ranks in the top 10, or top 5, and you' re satisfied with that listing, then you may want to leave the page alone since positioning is not an exact science yet. Tinkering with it could move you to the number one slot, but occasionally you could drop in rank too.
6) Remove Google from the program. If you want to make amends with the largest SE out there, then you need to honor their TOS. You' ve not done that by keeping Google in the list of search engines that can be queried.
>As I stated above:
We recognize that online businesses have a fundamental need to measure their search engine rankings and automate submissions to save time and increase accuracy. This can be particularly true if you are paying a search engine to be included in their index. You can' t invest time or money into a marketing effort without having a tool to measure your results. Part of that measurement comes from measuring traffic, but another part comes from measuring your rankings and whether they improve or decline over time. Whether you choose to use a tool like WebPosition to assist you in that, another tool, your browser, or not at all is ultimately up to you as the marketing manager. Ensuring your Web site is visible on the search engines is an effective, and for some businesses, essential marketing method. The desire to be found on the search engines is not one that is likely to ever change...We do hope Google realizes that the same people that financially support Google by buying advertising via AdWords and other services also have a need to measure their rankings. If they don' t do that with the tool we offer, they will simply use some other tool, so this is not simply a " WebPosition" issue. With that in mind, at least in the case of FirstPlace Software, it is our desire to promote the responsible use of our product, to discourage search engine spamming, and to work together with search engines and the Web marketing community whenever possible. Most search engines realize this, but in the case of Google, they have a different viewpoint.
7) Post a very large and bold statement telling your users not to query Google with the program. Also let them know that they should not post reports on the web showing Google results. You know how many web sites I' ve seen that do this? Too many, and some of them have been assessed with some sort of Google penalty.
>We state this in the software as follows:
Google has stated a policy that they do not like any type of automated program to query their service. In rare cases, they have been known to ban IP' s or sites caught conducting automated queries. However, they went on to say that if you run automated searches on Google, that you do so during non-peak hours (late at night, US Pacific Standard Time). Therefore, in respect to Google' s wishes, we suggest that when using the Reporter, that you take advantage of the Scheduler program to schedule your Reporter missions to run during off peak hours whenever possible. You should also consider spreading our your missions during the month rather than running a large group of missions or queries during a short time period.
We also have safety features in the software to help make it easier. We do not have plans to remove Google, and I personally don' t feel we should have to. The only people that were blocked from searching were those that abused the software. Should we ban all hammers because sometimes people miss the nail and smash their thumbs with them? To do so would start a dangerous trend. Our software was built so that SEO professionals and laymen both could utilize it. You are looking at this from the aspect of " if I feel this way" then you should do it. But we have hundreds of thousands of customers and each one has the right to monitor their positions and each one has different opinions on this. Also, there is a tendency towards some SEO consultants to want the software to die because they feel it takes customers away from them. However, there will always be a market for professional SEOs because some folks don' t have the time, patience or knowledge to do their own positioning and some of the biggest most profitable and successful SEO companies out there use our software and have helped build their fortunes on it. So again it is not the tool that is the problem but what each user chooses to do with it. A hammer is a wonderful thing in the hands of a responsible carpenter but look out if you hand it to someone who is careless.
8) Remove the URL verification feature from the reporting software. That is sure to cause issues with certain users.
>URL verification is nothing more than a unique text search. It does not pass the domain nor the URL to the engines. It is no different than any keyword phrase search on the engine.
9) Don' t get me wrong, WPG was a great program in its time. I think its time is coming to an end. You were able to capitalize on the market at a time when WPG represented value. I' m not too sure that is the case in today' s SEO market place. You won' t find many top SEO' s using it the way you describe above.
Actually I know of easily 50 or so, SEO companies off the top of my head that use the software in some form. And in fact two of them are the single biggest SEO companies out there today, that do positioning for Fortune 500 companies.
10) The main thing we might use it for is the Reporting Feature which in my mind is the only thing left of any value. And, even then, you are taking a risk if you don' t understand what to do, and what not to do. Good luck!
Again you are making a generalization here. I do not agree. Every customer has his or her likes and dislikes. To say you think a module is useless, therefore it is useless for everyone is rather short sighted. I speak to, email and post to hundreds of customers every day and I can tell you for a fact that each one has their own favorite modules of the software and some have modules that they don' t use at all. It is up to each individual user as to what is and is not useful to them. We provide all the tools in the software so that our users have the best possible software we can give them, with the most options we can give them and they can pick what works for them and what does not.
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