Should Seomoz.org (Page Strength) be added to the Quick Buck Crew site?
Faulty Product/Service June 10th, 2007Well they developed a cool tool Page Strength tool, that never delivered consistent results and now they give you a limit of 1 query a day (1 query a day LOL, please) and ask you for Premium Membership of $39.00 a Month to get unlimited access to the same crappy results, with the excuse of lack of bandwidth (lame excuse with the current bandwidth prices).
Well for me this looks like a quick way to cash in on the Page Strength tool, and a good candidate to be included on the Quick Buck Crew site.
June 11th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Wait - let me get this straight. We offered something for free, then limited access so you could only use it once per day to make results more accurate (yes, bandwidth is cheap, but scraping the engines a lot each day is not easy - it takes a crapload of IP addresses). So now we’re scammers.
Thus, by this logic, if we never offered it at all, we wouldn’t be scammers, but because we once offered unlimited access, then couldn’t support it, we are… This seems unreasonable. There are real crooks on the web, and I hope that our actions aren’t the kind of things that get lumped in with truly duplicitous scams.
June 12th, 2007 at 1:52 am
hey,Randfish,
i am the fans of PS,
but the limit seems to be cannot acceptable for all common user.
June 12th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I’m a bit confused. The PS tool was free, and not it is a part of the premium membership, but that’s just it. It’s a PART of the premium membership. It’s not the only thing/benefit you get from subscribing.
June 12th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Do we have a right ?
They are just doing business and i donot see any scam here.
Its just a matter of business strategy
June 12th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
[…] have a problem with the Page Strength tool are going so far as to push it to be included in the Quick Buck Crew, a “place where Internet scammers get […]
June 12th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
This is really ridiculous. Are you this desperate for content and traffic? What gives you the right to call anybody a qbc?
The guys are providing a service and they can charge whatever they wish.
June 12th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I cant not believe that you would even consider adding seomoz to the qbc and over the PS tool.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
[…] controversy has raged about whether Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz should be added to the blacklist of the Quick Buck Crew. The Quick Buck Crew is a site established to out the wost scoundrels of the web - people who […]
June 12th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
I just published a response to this post. You’re going to destroy the credibility of this site if you lump in people with whose legitimate business practices you disagree with scammers and fraudsters.
June 13th, 2007 at 12:29 am
In my opinion, they are not QBC at all. It takes money to run a service like that. The more popular it got, the more money it began to take. Do you expect them to loose money by offering the tool free? I feel it is completely reasonable for them to charge the fee. With that being said, I would like to see improved results, as I have discussed with Matt privately. Perhaps the paid engine could be hosted on a different server? Not sure if that would be the solution, but I hope to see one soon. Best of luck with it.
June 13th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I takes $100 to run a dedicated server
Even if they run 10 servers I think it is more than enough for them as they can use time delays in between to calculate the results
Also Google PR does not change in day ,for every query a day ,they are taking it from Google’s server
and currently I do not see any PR for my site which means Google may have banned the ip!
June 13th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
They cannot be called QBC though.
But making a querry Tool charged will not going to help them.
They are going to loose traffic, credibility and publicity they got from their PS tool only..
That will affect their own business.
June 13th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
They are offering a product free, once a day? Is that a scam? No more so than people charging for using services on other sites…
Not a scam, IMO, but you guys here better decide, because this seems to be one of those ‘all or nothing’ decisions that will have you listing plenty of good sites, and your credibility will be crushed if you go this route.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:03 am
I thinks they are not the QBCs or scammers. Initially they launch the tool for free and now they are charging for the same so thats fine. There is not any scam.
June 14th, 2007 at 3:37 am
My main problem with there tool is that it has never worked correctly for me one time. Some information is always missing or even completely incorrect. They have my title tag as something that it is not nor has ever been. Common sense tellms me if my own site is incorrect then I can’t use it as a reliable tool for researching other sites. If paying would enable them to have their tool work correctly I would be willing to pay a few bucks a month or a one time charge of $39.00. The information you theoretically can see so quickly is very conveniant. There is no way I would pay 39.99 monthly.
That being said I don’t think they are QBC. They just released a tool with high potential that was able to create them many inbound links. Now they want to cash in on what they created. Unfortunately, the way they are doing it I think will just make their tool obsolete.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Although they are charging for the tool, i dont think they should be included in this QBC list.
They are making money, but not shelling it out easily, it is a hard and great work done by rand and others. Let this be unique and not be taken into QBCs.
June 17th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Yes, as MM pointed out, they must be getting a strain on their servers and little in return.
However, there are more way of monetizing a site and earning from it, than charging a huge amount for a free tool.
They could start a directory, and earn from paid submissions. They could sell adspace.
There are many ways. I would like to know who is paying for their premium membership. I certainly won’t be.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Rand, this is really sad. I am fan of your site but this is sad when i heard you will charge ppl. While there are still a lot of way to monetize your PS Tool.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
[…] SEOmoz PageStrength featured on the Quick Buck Crew […]
July 28th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
[…] The discussion was about the fact that should SEOMoz’s Page Strength tool be put in the Quick Busk Crew, this website lists the people who cheat, scam and do everything for […]