Market Samurai: WTH Man?

36 replies
Ok I've been using this tool for awhile now as I find it great for reversing what my competitors are doing. The problem lies in it's reliability.

When it comes to the Rank Tracker module...I think this is where MS falls short...very short.

I've been forced to ask people from all over God's Earth to tell me where some of my keywords are ranking as I can no longer rely on the results produced from MS.

Anyone else having issues with this? :rolleyes:
#man #market #samurai #wth
  • Profile picture of the author trytolearnmore
    Hey Don,

    Yes MS's Rank Tracker has been way off. A good alternative is this Rank Tracker from SEO Powersuite. It's free and 100% correct.
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    • Profile picture of the author frodo77
      I use scroogle, and its also free.
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      • Profile picture of the author Don Halbert
        The problem for me is...I'm a Mac Guy! So those solutions are not that good for me although I could run them in Parallels but... :confused:
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        Don G. Halbert - Inbound Marketing & Direct Response Copywriter
        "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
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  • Profile picture of the author Don Halbert
    then again...it pays to see for yourself I guess...its for Mac also.
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    Don G. Halbert - Inbound Marketing & Direct Response Copywriter
    "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
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  • Profile picture of the author Don Halbert
    hmmm accurate? not too sure. Ok for example...

    Goto Google.com and search for "Costa Rica News" without the brackets. Make sure you are not logged in to Gmail or anything either. Tell me what www.costaricanewssite.com ranks at.

    Because MS and Rank Tracker are reporting relatively the same data but the real world is saying something all together different.
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    Don G. Halbert - Inbound Marketing & Direct Response Copywriter
    "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
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    • Profile picture of the author ahefner33
      you can use seo rank checker if you use firefox. its a addon
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      Adam Hefner

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    • Profile picture of the author dave6859
      Originally Posted by Don Halbert View Post

      hmmm accurate? not too sure. Ok for example...

      Goto Google.com and search for "Costa Rica News" without the brackets. Make sure you are not logged in to Gmail or anything either. Tell me what www.costaricanewssite.com ranks at.
      Ranks at position 9
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    • Profile picture of the author Raindance
      Originally Posted by Don Halbert View Post

      hmmm accurate? not too sure. Ok for example...

      Goto Google.com and search for "Costa Rica News" without the brackets. Make sure you are not logged in to Gmail or anything either. Tell me what www.costaricanewssite.com ranks at.

      Because MS and Rank Tracker are reporting relatively the same data but the real world is saying something all together different.
      I see it at number 7
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  • Profile picture of the author Don Halbert
    And many others see it at #3 and #4. So what is it I wonder?
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    Don G. Halbert - Inbound Marketing & Direct Response Copywriter
    "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
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  • Profile picture of the author Don Halbert
    I find it interesting how the recent update from Google virtually renders your typical SEO...useless. Imagine if everyone sees different results? What then happens to organic search?
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    Don G. Halbert - Inbound Marketing & Direct Response Copywriter
    "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
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    • Profile picture of the author mikeroosa
      I've seen this with MS as well. I've quit using MS for the most part to check rankings. I've been using scroogle.
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    • Profile picture of the author DFM
      Originally Posted by Don Halbert View Post

      I find it interesting how the recent update from Google virtually renders your typical SEO...useless. Imagine if everyone sees different results? What then happens to organic search?
      So,are you using proxy and used same country you live in ??
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      • Profile picture of the author keepkalm
        The rank tracking has never been accurate. It was better before Google blended the SERP with their Places listings, but it was never 100% accurate.

        I haven't seen anything that is 100% accurate because the SERPs change frequently & Google personalizes results based on history & location.

        So if the search experience is different for each user, there isn't any tool that will be 100% accurate in the sense that it is what everyone will see.

        So in the end, 100% accuracy isn't worth worrying about. MS is good for keyword generation, SERP dissection, etc. Rank Tracker is nice, I wish it was more accurate but it's fine for what it is.

        There are filters to setup in Google Analytics that will track the SERP position , but they aren't 100% either.
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    • Profile picture of the author Clyde
      Originally Posted by Don Halbert View Post

      I find it interesting how the recent update from Google virtually renders your typical SEO...useless. Imagine if everyone sees different results? What then happens to organic search?
      It's called geo-targeting, Google have thousands of servers spread out across the world.

      You want to rank high to your target market so if your visitors are from Costa Rica you want to rank high to users searching from there.

      Also, the more you visit your sites, the higher your site will show up on Google. (personalized results) You need to clear your cache and cookies before you search again to get a more accurate results.

      and don't log into your Google account while doing it.

      IMO, as long as you're ranking #1-#3 across all Google's nameservers you're good to go!
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      • Profile picture of the author bobbyp21
        Originally Posted by uniches View Post

        It's called geo-targeting, Google have thousands of servers spread out across the world.

        You want to rank high to your target market so if your visitors are from Costa Rica you want to rank high to users searching from there.

        Also, the more you visit your sites, the higher your site will show up on Google. (personalized results) You need to clear your cache and cookies before you search again to get a more accurate results.

        and don't log into your Google account while doing it.

        IMO, as long as you're ranking #1-#3 across all Google's nameservers you're good to go!
        Its actually even worse than Geo-servers. There is a talk on TED about how Google is doing the same thing as Facebook and using an algorithm to help decide what it thinks you would like to see. So if you always look at chocolate cakes if you do a search on bunny rabbits it will probably find you a chocolate bunny rabbit cake.

        This is messed up in so many ways, not just SEO wise, which totally sucks for us. But it narrows the world to your likes and removes or moves farther away your dislikes. How this will affect our business is going to be very interesting.

        I love MS btw. I don't blame them as much as Google and the trends of the internet all together.

        Just my 2 cents,

        Bob
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  • Profile picture of the author ElMundodelExito
    Ranks at position 11 (1 in the second page).
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  • Profile picture of the author checkm8
    I have aslo gotten conflicting readings with Sam. Dunno
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  • Profile picture of the author strategia
    I get your site at 9.

    I own a few of the main software packs and have to disagree with trytolearnmore as RT is wildly wrong and terribly slow for me. Tonight I checked my site for about 100 keywords that I rank for and RT hardly got any of the correct positions. Matter of fact over the past couple of weeks RT, Samurai, WebCEO have all been wrong. Now even my favourite, Traffic Travis, is going through a bad patch. But at least it is super fast, has no captchas and gets the right rankings when it gets them. Lately it is missing ranked spots in some kind of random pattern. Good thing though, is that TT support is fantastic.
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    PeterGuiliano Local Business Marketing Melbourne
    I don't sell anything on Warrior Forum but I may as well use the link.
    Last count, my 4 month old site had over 130 first page keywords on google.com.au plus A and B Places, Press Releases, YouTube videos and my YouTube page listing along with many of my Local Directory listings — all page 1. And I'm happy to help you if I can.
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  • Profile picture of the author zigstonk
    Lately I've been getting really weird SEOC out of Mkt Sam. For example:

    whitening teeth - 230K SEOC (Mkt Sam) vs 1.02M in Google (both are phrase search).

    That's just one example, I've got many more examples. Anybody else experiencing this? Any insight? (And I already understand the different data centers, etc., but the number of keywords with these big differences seems to be growing).

    Does it matter if I'm using paid proxies? Thanks for any insight.
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    zigstonk

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  • Profile picture of the author Zeb
    It's common for google to show different results for different countries. It's due to their geo targeting feature that they've got going on. So while for "costa rica news", you might be top 3 in costa rica, in US it could be lower down or in 2nd page or so.
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  • Profile picture of the author cypherslock
    The MS team has re-introduced several filters: SEOUC (URL Comp) SEOTC (Title Comp) SEOCTR. Key difference: once you've filtered your keywords you have to hit the "check" link to get those metrics. This was done to avoid big G having a hissy fit and banning your ip. They also squashed some RT bugs. Hopefully, they'll do a full blog post later today. I found all this out cuz, well, I opened her up.
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  • Profile picture of the author xtx361
    Have you tried Traffic Travis 4.0, you can try basic version which is free and you can check Search Engine Ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author cypherslock
    And you can do the same in MS. I wasn't aware that 4 had a basic version. I may go check it out.
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  • Profile picture of the author seankaye
    New update to MS today that brings back a bunch of features in the Keyword Research area.
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  • Profile picture of the author socialmassmedia
    I use SEO Quake which you can use as add on to various browsers works great with Chrome and firefox :-) and its free!
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  • Profile picture of the author ktshoppe
    Many fellow bloggers are bought and using this. Never heard of any problem. Just thinking to buy or not when came across this post. Thanks for the list of free products. Nothing wrong in trying the free ones first.


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  • Profile picture of the author traderbenji
    I noticed the problem with rankings when I went to Thailand recently. I checked with both local google and what I thought was general google and they brought back different results, but when I was in Thailand I got completely different results. And when I use a proxy ( I was curious to see what happened) or several proxies spread throughout the world same thing, different rankings. Sometimes rankings went up, sometimes down. I tried using MS and also MNF and got different numbers as well. Interesting and I would like to know why.
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  • Profile picture of the author sylviad
    I see it at position 5 in Google. That's using Firefox. Don't know if that makes any difference. And then I checked at a site check site. Does this help?

    http://www.rapidsitecheck.com/result...anewssite.com/

    Sylvia
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    • Profile picture of the author Carol_A
      Just purchased MS about a week ago and now am hesitant to even go thru all the tutorials to learn it all...

      hmmm
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      • Profile picture of the author Marty S
        Originally Posted by Carol_A View Post

        Just purchased MS about a week ago and now am hesitant to even go thru all the tutorials to learn it all...

        hmmm
        The Rank Tracker Module is merely one of the many additional features that MS has added over the years. Market Samurai remains the most full featured keyword research software on the market and imho it is VERY much worth your while to go through the tutorials, on this well supported product that will be your goto research tool for years to come.

        BTW doesn't anyone just use the incognito feature in Chrome's browser to get untainted search results?
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      • Profile picture of the author seankaye
        Originally Posted by Carol_A View Post

        Just purchased MS about a week ago and now am hesitant to even go thru all the tutorials to learn it all...

        hmmm
        Carol,

        If you're doing keyword research and considering a niche, Market Samurai is the best thing out there. All of these cries of things broken are not down to the guys who write the software, its Google making changes without notice and it impacts all of these kind of tools. From what I can see, the Market Samurai guys do a good job of adapting as does Brad Callen who has a few products in the keyword/niche area.

        People complain about the OCI being "removed" from MS when the truth is, Microsoft stopped provinding the service. Other things like SEOTC, SEOUC and SEOTRC are back in, they just require an extra step to comply with a change that Google made in the amount of data you could pull in.

        A few months back MS servers came under attack and it slowed down a bit, but again, they worked diligently to fix it and changed their license to give everyone the ability to install on 3 machines instead of 2 as a way of making it up to people.

        I reckon I could get away with Google Keyword Tool and some parameter searching on Google, but the average IMer trying to save some time with Keyword Research won't find a better product than Market Samurai.
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  • Profile picture of the author cypherslock
    Agreed. What he said. I bought MS in 2008 and though I've looked at other KW tools, I've always stuck with it. People seem to forget that when MS removes certain features, it is because Google has changed something. Google is constantly trying to make life hard for KW software developers. And I can't even begin to guess at how difficult it must be to (a) keep up with the changes, which the team has done) and (b) simultaneously code new features in. I've not once regretted my purchase and remember MS does a LOT more than "just" keyword research. It also comes down to your preference as well. I prefer to be able to look at the metrics and decide for myself whether or not I want to go after a particular niche and set of keywords. I mistrust ANY software that "does it for me." This doesn't mean that the software is no good, it just means I prefer to do things a bit independently. Trust me: you will not go wrong with MS.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Banks
    Originally Posted by Don Halbert View Post

    Ok I've been using this tool for awhile now as I find it great for reversing what my competitors are doing. The problem lies in it's reliability.

    When it comes to the Rank Tracker module...I think this is where MS falls short...very short.

    I've been forced to ask people from all over God's Earth to tell me where some of my keywords are ranking as I can no longer rely on the results produced from MS.

    Anyone else having issues with this? :rolleyes:
    hahaha, well Don that is because it WILL rank differently all over god's green earth. You site will rank differently on google.com .ca .co.uk .fr etc, etc

    Are you located in costa rica?

    My suggestion is to add your site to google webmasters as it gives you a pretty good idea how your site is ranking for every keyword and you can set filters depending on the country, and type of traffic (I always set mine to web, and USA)
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  • Profile picture of the author veeco
    BTW, have you noticed that Market Samurai is the longest Commercial BETA version that floats around... you can't blame them for the software lackness as this is BETA version (BETA version is not for real production)...

    After BETA, we usually go to RC (Release Candidate)....

    While MS's beta version took years of making, i wonder when the Final Version would be ?
    i guess Market Samurai is the best top selling for beta version category...
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