Link Assistant SEO Powersuite – Rank Tracker Review from a Customer
Okay, I have not been able to write for the past several months because I have been really busy with work and my hobby (baking =) ) but I think I have to really write a review on this one or I’ll surely forget about it.
Our company bought a tool called SEO Powersuite from Link-Assistant 6 months ago. We have been using its free version for about 4 months and it has served its purpose pretty well that we finally decided to buy the paid version. We have been so happy with the free version of the tool that we bought two licensed versions, one professional and one enterprise.
One particular tool that proved to be invaluable is their Rank Tracker. Serves like any other rank checking tools out there but it gives you the results faster. Having 1,500 sites under your wing, our company wants anything that makes you do things fast. And Rank Tracker falls in that category.
You maybe thinking what’s the difference between the free and the paid version. Well, the free version allows you to run keywords and get their ranks on Google, Yahoo and Bing immediately, but it won’t let you copy the results or export it (yep that means manually putting in those numbers in your spreadsheet..not so fun).
The paid tool on the other hand, allows you to easily copy and paste the results and also allows you to generate historical, monthly reports of your site’s rankings and schedule each rank check with no fuss. So there.
The only downside with RT is that when you run the tool frequently, and/or put in 100+ keywords on there, there is a BIG possibility of getting temporarily blocked in Google.
And that’s not very fun for us. But that did not prevent us from buying the tool since we usually monitor only a few keywords per client and only use the tool 4 to 5 times in a day.
The problem started when we purchased the paid version and we started scheduling rank checks on Rank Tracker. Exported reports would show no data, simply because the tool was blocked by Google. We have emailed their support and in turn told us that they have another service, Anti-captcha that types in the captcha for you once Google asks for it. Yeah, another paid service.
We did not like this option. No, the tool was expensive enough. And Google, after you type in series of captchas, will show this one:
So paying for a service that won’t really solve the issue is definitely a “no go”.
After a series of email with their support team, we have been asking a lot of questions (their site has very little information about the nits and grits of their tools) and their support have been answering questions in staggered basis, sending a reply one question at a time, which somehow annoyed us.
After 6 months of exchanging emails with their support team on how to schedule reports on the enterprise version (while using the professional tool for daily rank checks), we have finally got a way to schedule clients on RT and do rank checks without getting blocked by Google.
When we have finally added and scheduled 56 test sites on the tool for a dry run, for some reason the tool won’t work. It stopped doing its thing. No results. Instead we got this:
Did the tool just say something about a subscription?
Uh.. what?
Did anybody say there’s a subscription?
Not that we know of! So for the Nth time, we hurried and send them guys an email.
It was a lengthy rant.
We have not received any thing from them, until I sent another ticket!
And they said they are very sorry and tried to console us by giving 1 month subscription free.
We want to get our money back but with a company that can’t be reached via phone, no office address, I guess it would be hard for us to track them.
Moral of the story? I guess you already know.
My recommendation? Use their free tools but don’t ever ever buy their paid version.
They sell the tool and they charge you monthly. That’s charging twice for the same product.
And for you guys in Link-Assistant, you keep on saying the subscription is needed for algorithm updates etc..
Well that’s just lame, because your free version provides rank checks just the same. The only difference with the free and the paid is the ability to save and export data.. which part of the Google algorithm is needed in that? But you keep on saying hey, once the subscription expires, you can’t even do a rank check. That smells like deceit to me.
Please beware of Link Assistant.
