02.28.10
Has TrafficSeeker lost the plot?
We are fans of TrafficSeeker from WebGrip, since the days nearly ten years ago that it was called TrafficBuilder. Back then, it had very few of the SEO bells and whistles that later versions offered. It was a site submission tool, one amongst many, but it did the job efficiently and quickly. An even earlier incarnation of TrafficSeeker was SoftSpider from PBD Technologies which we first used in 1997! What made this software unique for its time was its ability to submit your url simultaneously to up to 20 FFA pages or Directories.
The serious competition for TrafficSeeker came from heavyweights like SubmitWolf from Trellian and WebPosition from WebTrends. Other products such as FFA Blaster, mainly geared towards submission to FFA (Free For All) pages, were also around.
TrafficSeeker 8.0 has been a very stable product, first launched as a paid-for upgrade in 2006. This version comes with dozens of useful SEO functions in addition to URL submission. It will advise you on your Meta Tags (if you are still bothered with them), validate your HTML, find out where you rank on the Search Engines for a given keyword, even create your Google sitemap for you. A user-friendly ‘Quick Start’ screen shows all available tools, nicely classified under ‘Project Settings’, ‘Submission Tools’, ‘Analyse’, ‘Optimization Tools’, ‘Ranking Tools’ and ‘Utilities’.
Alas, four years is a long time for a company that doesn’t sell software annual support and maintenace to rely on new sales for its income. So, version 9.0 had to come out!
We decided to upgrade to 9.0 AND upgrade from Pro to Platinum (the latter being a very worthwhile upgrade).
However, all the excitement turned to disappointment when we faced one hitch after the other
- the unlock code would keep the product level to ‘Pro’ instead of ‘Platinum’
- instead of 700,000 Search Engines, Directories and FFA nets, the program could only see 55
- the user interface had been completely screwed up in an effort to make it look sufficiently ‘different’ and various essential options were nowhere to be found. The laconic answers I got from ’support’ indicated that this was ‘by design’!
We paid $125 for the combined upgrade and in the end we requested a link to the version 8.0 code. TrafficSeeker 8.0 is now running very happily in Platinum mode and doing a sterling job!
My advice to WebGrip is to start charging a small annual fee for minor program updates and database updates. The fee would be related to whether one owns the Standard, Pro, Platinum or Enterprise Editions. This way there wouldn’t be much pressure to release artificial ‘new’ major versions that are a step backwards!
It’s a great product and we highly recommend it (we are not even affiliates!)