Leading SEO software developer WebPosition issued a series of unclear and apparently contradictory statements about the status of premier product WebPosition Pro v. 4 this week. These statements have left SEO professionals who use WebPosition wondering if they have a working product anymore.
WebPosition is the world’s leading SEO application. It is the used by most SEO companies to measure the positions of their clients in the search engines.
The first product of its kind, in many ways WebPosition defined the SEO industry. Exact assessments of its marketshare vary, but it is estimated that over half the SEO industry use WebPosition Pro.
Earlier this year, WebPosition launched an online version of their product. Lacking many of the capabilties of the existing application important to SEO professionals, such as the ability to add their own branding to reports, most SEO professionals have stayed with the traditional Pro package.
Recently WebPosition started to say they would eventually discontinue support for WebPosition Pro. On Tuesday, July 13 WebPosition tech support started telling customers that updating of WebPosition Pro would be wound down any day:
“We do not have a final date set yet, but at some point in July, we will no longer be publishing the updates that reconfigure the Reporter to correctly interpret search engine results. Over time, the Reporter will start to have some inaccuracies in its ranking results, and may not be able to query certain engines at all. “
Since this statement was issued in the middle of July, WebPosition were effectively telling customers their product would cease to work properly within A fortnight. This provoked a furious reaction from some SEO companies, angry at the very short notice and who would be forced change systems, with all the disruption associated.
“Our earlier statement that we are ending support in July was incorrect; we have no plans to end WP4 support in July.”
However, later that same day customers were still receiving messages from tech support stating that updates for Pro would cease at some stage in July.
When asked about the apparent contradiction, WebPosition issued a blog which they said would clarify the matter. However, the blog merely describes what new features will be added to the online version and says nothing about the future or current state of WebPosition Pro, nor does it address the confusion caused by different departments saying the opposite of each other.
As one SEO specialist said, “I’ve seen two contradictory statements from WebPosition today. If I want to use it now, I have to bet that their PR people know more about how the the product works than their techies. I just don’t know if I can trust it anymore.”
While the current situation may be uncertain, what is clear is that WebPosition Pro faces a limited lifespan. At some stage it will start to become inaccurate and effectively useless. At this time users do not know when, or how, this will happen. It could have already happened.
The situation has left some customers wondering if WebPosition is already switching off, but backtracked in the face of customer reactions.
Few SEO professionals consider the online version an adequate substitute. WebPosition have admitted it may not provide accurate results.
Measuring all search listings from a single location, WebPosition has admitted the online version cannot cope with search engines, such as Google, who tune their results according to the country from which the query comes. In other words, if your SEO business is located outside the United States, WebPosition is unlikely to provide accurate results.
Furthermore, the online version lacks the ability to survey many search engines available in the Pro version, is limited in the number of search engines it will examine in a single report and lacks the report customization and archiving capabilties of the Pro version.
While the online version may not be a substitute, many Pro owners believe they have no choice but to move to an alternative product as fast as possible. Having been told their core business tool would be switched off at only a week or two’s notice has made them jittery about exactly how much longer they can depend on the product.
Since the update process is hidden under the hood, users may not know when the accuracy of their reports starts to degrade. WebPosition’s contradictory statements about its premier product may be all the warning most customers need to dump it immediately.
Source:http://www.adotas.com/2010/07/webposition-confuses-users-about-softwares-functionality/
