SEOmoz PageStrength Tool Was Once Resourceful
The PageStrength tool, created and provided by SEOmoz, was an awesome tool of its time allowing webmasters to determine the “PageStrength” of their websites and web pages.
The tool used many factors to determine a website’s PageStrength, almost similar to how Google determines PageRank (though most factors for PageRank determination are still unknown) including the number of backlinks to a site, Alexa rank, and the number of EDU and GOV sites linking to your site.
SEOmoz PageStrength tool was once a valuable resource to the webmaster community, until SEOmoz recently announced that the tool was so popular that it was eating up the server’s resources and bandwidth. The popular webmaster tool has gone paid, and at a high price if that.
Now webmasters are faced to either retrieve one PageStrength report per day for free, or pay an absurd $299 yearly subscription to use the tool an unlimited amount of times and use other premium services provided by SEOmoz.
When comes the question “is it worth it?”, I think not. I will give credit that it was once a great tool and resource to webmasters, but these days it just seems that the webmasters of SEOmoz have went greedy. I’m sure a lot of webmasters would have made a donation to keep SEOmoz servers running for the tool, but charging an absurdly high fee for use of the once-free tool is just ridiculous.
Many are complaining now that the tool is also providing inaccurate results to its free users. Those who are speaking out against it are also reporting that SEOmoz has made special modifications to the PageStrength tool to demean the site’s PageStrength.
What once a great, resourceful tool for webmasters has gone paid, much like everything else on the Internet. The question you have to ask yourself now is, is it worth it?
References:
- SEOmoz PageStrength: A new example of pathetic?
- SEOmoz PageStrength is pathetic
- Should SEOmoz.org, more specifically PageStrength, be added to the Quick Buck Crew?
- Rand Fishkin, owner of SEOmoz added to the blacklist on the Quick Buck Crew
- SEOmoz PageStrength featured on the Quick Buck Crew
- Should we even refer to PageStrength anymore?
Posted in Rants
June 28th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Bottom line I agree that 299 is absurd. I do appreciate the free help available out here and I also enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work. *bookmarked*
June 29th, 2007 at 2:41 am
Justice – I know we struggle to provide accurate data in the page strength tool, but we really are trying our best to provide a valuable service with it. It’s just very, very hard to keep up with so many requests per day – the popularity is what’s really affecting the accuracy at this point.
No argument that it’s unacceptable for us to be showing such poor results, but despite putting a lot of developer time in on the tool, it simply doesn’t return accurate results much of the time. We’ll make requests for data to Yahoo! or Wikipedia or DMOZ or Alexa and the service will simply hang for a few minutes or come back with no data (i.e. they deliver a blank page) or with inaccurate data (i.e. they deliver a ridiculous page that shows 2 links or some such).
Believe me when I say that I’m doing my best, and though it seems like greed, we’re really trying to build a business. The premium content is much, much more than just the Page Strength tool, though. We offer guides, tips, a Q+A service, other tools and invites to special events (plus some cool video coming soon).
I know it’s very frustrating, but please bear with us while we continue to work to make the service better. Feel free to email me if you’ve got any specific suggestions – rand[]seomoz.org.
June 29th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Well Rand, I am not bashing you for charging for your webmaster tool, but instead am displaying how a lot of webmasters feel about the whole “charging for this service” type of thing.
Once your PageStrength tool went paid webmasters were outraged; a very similar instance to when SitePoint starting charging its users to list things for sale in their marketplace.
What you have to understand is the fee applied to the tool. A lot of the webmasters that were typical users of your PageStrength tool were only using that specific tool, and thus are not interested in any other services and tools your site might provide.
To them, your fee of $299 for 12 months of usage applies only to the tool they’re probably only interested in using: the PageStrength tool.
I recommend working something out with this tool. Not only will it gain reputable publicity to your site once again, but you’ll receive the visitors and returning users you once experienced.
Maybe do something like charging just for use of the PageStrength tool, or allowing webmasters to use the tool an unlimited amount of times free for everyone.
I know I would be up for sponsoring to the webmaster community.
Though, a link back to the sponsors will definitely accumulate both interest and more sponsors.
June 30th, 2007 at 2:16 am
Justice – someone else also suggested making a “page strength only” price and I think we might actually give that a shot. It will probably take until mid-August, but I think it’s a very good idea for folks who only really need (or want) Page Strength and not much else.
We’d want to make the tool robust and valuable enough to where a one year subscription at $50-$75 would truly be worthwhile, first, but I will bring this back to the team. Thanks for the recommendation.