Rank checking tools blocked by Google
Monday, October 20th, 2008
Most people don’t know the sordid history of automated query tools with Google.WebPosition Gold and Google- The SAGA:
Penalize you for using web position gold: (April 2003) http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/12118.htm
Google and position checking software: (Jan 2003) http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/8573.htm
Whats the status of Google vs WPG Users? (July 2002) http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum5/1231.htm
What exactly gets banned using WebPositionGold; (June 2004) http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum5/4799.htm
Web Position Gold & Google IP bans (May 2009) http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum39/3337.htm
By the way, it isn’t just web position gold. It seems that every rank checking tool out there has been affected by this. There’s a number of people who think it’s silly for Google to be blocking access to rank checkers. But I’m pretty sure I know why they are doing it now. Rank Checkers have a huge impact on “impressions” and skew the search data significantly. As Google uses this data more and more, they have a strong motivation to make sure their impression data is more accurate for search results.
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