Hi All, I've just been reading the G webmaster guidelines, there is a section where it says not to use automated tools for your website. I know not to use the autosubmission ones, there is no point as I see it anyway. But, I sometimes check the number of backlinks, predicted PR etc (as I'm sure most people do) Do you have any idea which type of tools I should be avoiding?
Google says that they don't recommend tools like WebPosition Gold that send automated queries to google to check rankings or do submissions. This would include similar products like WebCEO, SEO Elite, IBP and probably all the online ones that don't use your google api. I can't remember if you can enter your google api in these products but I use webceo and seoelite and have never had my ip banned or anything because they have algorithms that emulate human behaviour so the search engines can't tell whether it's automated or not.
Most SEs will let you know if you are doing anything unacceptable prior to banning you. By this I mean that you will start to get funny results and messages from the SE that say things such as "your cpu may be infected with spyware" or that you have been temporarily banned. This is probably a good time to STOP what ever you are doing. I have had trouble with Yahoo when checking backlinks and rankings with SEO Elite since it does not provide an area for a Yahoo API key. On the other hand, I don't believe that Google has a problem with a person using automated queries as long as they use their API key.
there are enough free ones that use the API, so I wouldn't even look at Web CEO or similar programs anymore.
Thats a shame, I had a nice little set of toys which I've been using, but the only one which uses my API is the DP keyword checker. I'll see if I can find replacements, just in case! Thanks all
Thats a shame, I had a nice little set of toys which I've been using, but the only one which uses my API is the DP keyword checker. So it's not the site it potentially be all my sites if it's IP based ???? I'll see if I can find replacements, just in case! Thanks all
I've been using webceo for over a year without any APIs and never had a problem. Although I use the free ones once in a while, WebCEO can keep track of many things all in one place and is more reliable than some of the free ones out there. It also has a number of features that probably aren't out there in the free market. If people were getting banned for using programs like WebCEO, I think we'd hear more of it and, anyway, as mentioned above, your IP would just be temporarily banned from making those types of queries. It's not like you wouldn't have access to the search engines at all or sites hosted on your ip would be removed from the SERPs as far as I know. Just to be clear, if you are wondering whether using webceo or webposition gold or whatever for checking rankings on your website is going to affect the websites you are checking and you aren't hosting the website where you use these programs from then that is definitely a 'no.' If that were the case, I could put all of my competitors out of business. The same goes for any of the tools online whether you use your api or not. If a tool online doesn't use your api and gets temporarily banned then all that will happen is that site will be banned. It won't have any effect on your website.