Joplin, MO - August 16th, 2001 – WebPosition Gold, the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings has released a significant new update to its award-winning software. All WebPosition Gold customers may update to version 1.60 for free.
Version 1.60 adds support for five new pay per placement search engines:
- FindWhat.com – Partners with Excite, MetaCrawler, DogPile, and others. FindWhat claims to be the second largest pay per placement site after Goto.com, claiming 600 million searches a month.
- Kanoodle.com -- Kanoodle.com has grown to receive 260 million searches a month, serving paid listings to CNET, Dogpile.com, Metacrawler.com, Mamma.com, and 9100 other search enabled sites.
- Ah-Ha.com – Partners with MyFamily.com, DogPile, and others to receive over 150 million searches a month.
- 7Search.com – Partners with Mamma.com and others receiving over 90 million searches per month.
- Bay9.com – Claims to receive over 110 million page views per month.
WebPosition Gold supports twenty additional major search engines and directories including Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Goto, Sprinks, and others. Version 1.60 now gives WebPosition Gold users the power to produce consolidated ranking reports for the major search engines, directories, and the top seven pay per placement engines.
Version 1.60 includes an all-new WebPosition Traffic Analyzer service. This new service, powered by HitsLink, tracks the number of visitors to a site along with dozens of other vital statistics such as:
- Top referring web sites
- The average paths visitors traveled
- Browser, operating system, and screen resolution used
- Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly comparisons
- Major referring countries and languages used.
- Referring search engines and keywords used to find the site
- Percentage of visitors supporting Java, Cookies, and other technologies.
- The top entry and exit pages
- And much more!
There are literally dozens of features introduced in the new Traffic Analyzer including charts and graphs, the ability to export results to Excel, and a unique "multi-account" feature for SEO firms or consultants. The multi-account feature allows the user to setup an unlimited number of sub-accounts each with their own user name and password. This allows the client to retrieve their own traffic statistics in real-time. Therefore, Web development, SEO, or other companies can now offer in-depth traffic counting services to their clients. They may either bundle the service into their other offerings at no cost to their client, or they may bill the client as they see fit.
The new service is built on proven HitsLink technology, making it significantly more reliable and accurate than WebPosition's previous service. Since the pricing for the new service will be very similar to the old service, the transition path for existing customers should be smooth.
The new WebPosition Traffic Analyzer service is available to everyone for a free 30-day trial (up to 20,000 hits) from the software itself or from the following URL: http://counter.hitslink.com/webposition/
WebPosition Gold customers will receive an additional 90 days of service (up to 20,000 hits) for free from the following URL: http://counter.hitslink.com/webposition/promo-90.asp. In addition, WebPosition users will receive substantially discounted pricing over regular HitsLink.com customers. This makes the service much less expensive than similar services such as HitBox.com or WebTrends Live. Once the free trial periods are exhausted, service may be continued for free indefinitely if a small HitsLink banner is displayed. If the "no banner" option is chosen, pricing starts at just $9.95/month based on traffic volume.
Since demand for this new service is expected to be high, FirstPlace Software will be rolling out the service to its customer base in stages. Those wishing to activate the new traffic counting service today with version 1.60 will need to open the Traffic Analyzer window in WebPosition Gold and press CTRL-ALT-N to create a new account. Existing users will be able to continue to access the old traffic analyzer service during a transitional period.
Other benefits of WebPosition Gold 1.60 include enhanced browser emulation in the submitter. This feature allows automated submissions to look precisely like a submission done conducted manually in a browser. WebPosition Gold continues to support other advanced submission features such as a "slow submit" option, validation of the existence of all URLs being submitted, and enforcement of submission limits to avoid accidental spamming.
Also included in version 1.60 is a new Page Critic knowledge base offering the latest advice and tips for how to enhance a business’s rankings on the major search engines. The advice is custom-tailored for the search engine, keyword, and page that the user selects. The Page Critic has undergone many enhancements over the years. Advice offered includes everything from the number of recommended keywords to place in the title tag to flagging items that could be considered spam by the selected engine.
The 1.60 update also incorporates fixes for various issues reported by WebPosition users during the last few months. FirstPlace Software’s priority is to make WebPosition Gold as accurate and reliable as possible. FirstPlace continues to offer a "$50 bug bounty" credit to the first person to report a new compatibility error or other problem. In addition, FirstPlace has gone against industry norms by continuing their ten-year tradition of offering free product support by phone, fax, or e-mail.
WebPosition Gold continues to support an integrated suit of advanced search engine optimization modules including a Page Generator, Page Critic, Upload Manager, Submitter, Position Reporter, Traffic Analyzer, and Scheduler. A free trial of WebPosition Gold 1.60 may be downloaded from: http://www.webposition.com
About FirstPlace Software, Inc.
FirstPlace Software, Inc. produces WebPosition Gold, the first software product to track a Web site’s rankings on the search engines and to help you improve those rankings. FirstPlace Software, Inc. is a privately held corporation that has successfully identified market needs and provided tools to meet those needs. FirstPlace Software gained national recognition as winner of Deloitte & Touche’s Technology FAST 500 several years running, naming them one of the fastest growing technology companies in the United States.
