Revisiting SheerSEO One Year Later
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Last week, I was browsing through some Search Engine Journal posts from last year when I came across the following post by Ann Smarty – SheerSEO : Another Way To Track Your Google Rankings. After reading her post and noticing that the tool had some very interesting features, I decided that I wanted to try it out for myself. Although Ann wrote a great post, it was written nearly a year ago, so I thought it would be useful to share my more recent experience with
Since I do all my work on an iMac, the first feature that I liked about this tool is that it is web based, so it will run on Mac and Linux systems in addition to Windows.
After exploring the tool for awhile, the thing that really started to stand out in my mind was the amount of SheerSEO features that can really be useful for SEO agencies. To begin with, you can see all of your current positions in one table:
However, as their demo shows, one of the features that could provide a lot of value for an SEO agency is their tracking of historical positions. Clients expect to see progress, andSheerSEO makes it easy to show it to them:
If you want to use this tool to provide information to your clients, you can also take advantage of their white label feature, which allows you customize and brand the information that you show to your clients:
In Ann’s original review, she noted several shortcomings of SheerSEO. However, it looks like they have responded to her constructive criticism. Below are the shortcomings that Ann noted in her original post, along with information about any responseSheerSEO has made to them:
-direct links to the aggregated data: There are now links to these pages in the Position? column
-more backlink data: Although their Backlinks Watchdog feature could come in handy, I agree that this is one area where the tool could still be improved
-more sorting and filtering options: Currently, you can now select the Date Range, Search Engine and Search Term on the Historical Positions page
-the ability to track multiple projects: It looks like SheerSEO solved this issue by introducing a Master Account feature
One other main difference between when Ann reviewed SheerSEO and now is that while it was completely free to use when Ann reviewed it, a new pricing structure has been introduced for the tool. However, not only can you use the tool without paying for a full three months, but their paid options after the trial period are quite reasonable, as you can see from the table below:
After my experience with this SEO tool, I feel comfortable recommending that all of our readers sign up for a trial account. Given the fact that you can useSheerSEO for a full three months before paying a single cent, you should have no problem deciding if this tool fits your needs during that period of time.
When you try out SheerSEO for yourself (or if you have done so already), be sure to leave a comment with your experience for us all to read!
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Tags: Sheer SEO
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Does using this tool violate google’s TOS?
Their quality guidelines say you aren’t supposed to use software that monitors pagerank, eg webmaster gold. I can’t see how they could expect everyone to know that or would penalize sites for using a service which seems very legitimate though, like this one or a server-based tracker like pagerankalert.com ??
gruvr music map,
There was almost the exact same question on Ann Smarty’s post a year ago. While I honestly can’t speak intelligently about Google’s tos regarding this type of service I’ll simply quote the response on Ann’s original SEJ post.
“Google should not have any say regarding automated queries since this is exactly what they do! Are SEO experts expected to sit down and perform gazillion of search queries manually and put them in Excel?! – that would also consume the exact same resources as an automated query tool.
Other than that – sheerseo never sends the domain together with the search queries so there is no way to know who is the originator of those queries.”
-Eyal
Its not a question of whether goog should or shouldn’t do what they do – I agree with your opinion, but google is a monopoly and can force webmasters to conform to their idea of ‘quality’ to the detriment of their competitors.
GOOG does penalize sites for violating their TOS or quality guidelines – and they block IPs who do automated scraping without using an approved API, e.g. webmaster Gold. What’s to stop them from blocking users of SheerSEO ?
gruvr music map’s last blog post..Map of hausham concerts
This service has nothing to do with automated scraping. I’m not sure how that made it’s way into this conversation. I Personally despise automated scraping programs and I report them to Google when I find them scraping my content
hi gerald, sorry I used the wrong term – I would actually like to try this tool but have had sites penalized before, possibly due to the TOS issue.
I had asked in the google webmaster forums whether a similar service was OK to use, and their answer was that unless the service was accessing a supported google API, it was not OK. One difference was that the service in question was reporting toolbar pagerank, not just SERP postions.
I can try hunting down those posts/replies if you’re interested.
gruvr music map’s last blog post..Aiden tickets
Thanks for the link
Your review is definitely more detailed than the one I did last year.
Good tool and very low rates, so everyone just should try it out and see if they like it.
Ann Smarty’s last blog post..How (and Why) to Maintain Several Online Identities
Nice article G. Thanks for (re)pointing out this resource :~) My [day] company is on the verge of spending a good chunk on additional reporting tools, a 3 month trial should provide additional insight so we can make the most informed purchasing decision possible.
Thanks,
~ Jim
~ tweet: @seo_web_design
… to clarify what I was saying, although you don’t transmit the domain name it’s still easy for GOOG to correlate your domain by noting the IP address of a SheerSEO user is the same as that which manages a domain in the GWT tool…
gruvr music map’s last blog post..CHIODOS tickets
This service does not strike me as something with malicious or black hat intent. i.e. It’s purpose is not to manipulate Google results but only to check existing rankngs. I see no harm in that. I think you are being over paranoid my friend.
Hi Gerald – I agree that I may be overly paranoid, but my experience is one cannot be too paranoid when one company controls the vast majority of your search traffic
Still, I don’t mean to raise undue concern and would like to try this tool myself.
In fact, I noticed that just today Google Webmaster Tools introduced historical SERP data (just for the top 20 searches) – which is very like the data captured by these tools.
For reference, here is the actual language from the Google quality guidelines: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en
“Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.”
It would be much easier if google did not say both that these are ‘just guidelines’ and that they can be ‘violated’
gruvr music map,
let me play devils advocate and throw this out there regarding rank checking software….
How could Google tell the difference between you (the site owner/webmaster) checking your own rankings and a competitor checking your rankings via one of these tools? IP detection? doubtful, you could always just go to the public library or a friends house and use their computer. If they penalized sites or banned sites for using these tools, then I (and lots of other SEOs) would be continuously checking my competitors rankings every day with one of these tools so that they would get penalized.
Simon,
I actually had the same thoughts. Thanks for putting it into the comments.
Great comment. Paranoia over. I was getting worried there for a second myself, but this seems totally amazingly useful, and free to boot for a long trial period.
Well it’d be just like goog detecting you clicking on adsense ads on your own site. They can and do detect/penalize this.
Sure, some would evade by using public computers (not just different locations with your same laptop/cookies.. ) but that becomes quite inconvenient especially if you rely on downloaded apps.
The malicious attack doesn’t work because IP/cookie correlation would only match to your site’s GWT account etc…
gruvr music map’s last blog post..NICKELBACK tickets
I think Google has some good plans for their analytics tool which has already rolled out with some new features over the last few months. I ti sin their best interest anyways, that info is valuable.
Nick Stamoulis’s last blog post..Submit Your Sitemap To Ask.com
Automatic scraping stinks.. Be are ripping off other peoples hard work. and if you don’t report them they get the upper hand with the search engines… PLEASE REPORT SCRAPPERS!
Ryan Nelson´s last blog ..SEO Consulting Firm