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Anyone had any experience with 'Cognitive SEO'?

by aliduncan
21 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've recently come across this tool and was wondering if anyone here has any experience with it for backlink checking:

http://cognitiveseo.com

It claims to combine data from ahrefs, majestic seo, seomoz, blekko and seo kicks which seems to be the most comprehensive of all the backlink checking software that I have seen previously.

With plans starting at $99 it's around the same price as majestic or ahrefs on their own which is making me consider switching.

So, anyone tried this software? Was the backlink data as comprehensive as the site suggests?
#cognitive #experience #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Originally Posted by aliduncan View Post


    So, anyone tried this software? Was the backlink data as comprehensive as the site suggests?
    I considered them but never went for it because they have a fairly low cap (for me at least) of backlinks you can check.

    If you check alot of domains you will hit the limit real quick. If only a few then it looks good
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  • Profile picture of the author aliduncan
    Thanks for your insight Mike. Do you happen to know what the limit is for the amount of backlinks you can check? On the website it says it will check 10,000 per site (on the professional plan) but I can't find a value for the total number of backlinks that you can check per month.
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  • Profile picture of the author aliduncan
    Anyone else used this software at all? Would be good to get an idea of whether the backlink data is better than using an ahrefs subscription on its own.
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  • Profile picture of the author linkbuildr
    I use it here @Linkbuildr for our clients and team and it's really quite slick in my opinion. I like the interface quite a bit and the PDF reporting is easy enough for the non-seo type of client.

    The ability to use majestics data is enough for me but you can pull in your backlinks from anywhere.
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  • Profile picture of the author STLSEO
    cognitiveSEO is definitely my favorite backlink analysis software out there today. Raz and his team have developed a (in my opinion) groundbreaking piece of software that gives website owners and webmasters more information about the links pointing to their site.

    They just released an http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/2668/un...de-case-study/ tool that is VERY accurate.

    I've written a few blog posts that detail some of the capabilities of cognitiveSEO. Feel free to check them out below:
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    The thing about the unnatural link detection is that it flags almost every single private blog network link as unnatural, and obvious that's true in a certain sense but that doesn't take a way the fact that Google uses a completely different approach and that those links are still as strong as they always used to be.

    As a result people start sending link removal requests as well as disavowing links that are in fact the links that are responsible for their rankings and not for their tankings.

    I had a client who bought a permanent homepage link at one of my PR6 sites, an insane strong domain that I paid $1000+ for about 6-9 months ago, after we placed that link it pushed an insurance related keyword with a few thousand exact searches from the middle of page 3 to the bottom of page 1.

    Cognitive SEO flags the link as unnatural, while that is one of the fewer sites that I put some extra attention on to make it look more legit.

    I mean you really want to disavow or remove a link that is so powerful cause some tool says so.

    Right now that site has about 30 posts, each of them contains 1 or 2 links to some insurance related or finance company. Would adding 5 or 10 posts without links make any difference to Cognitive's algorithm? I know that it wouldn't matter for Google.

    @STLSEO: Is there some page on cognitive's website that explains what it uses to determine if a link is unnatural or not? Like a list of nodes?

    You mention something about links at PR n/a or PR0 pages, but when you add a new post to Wordpress it's automatically a PR n/a, despite that it's featured on a PR6 homepage, somehow that tools seems to completely ignore that but once the PR n/a url gets removed it will also not be visible at the homepage anymore. Especially now that Google didn't update their Pagerank for a long long time.
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    • Profile picture of the author STLSEO
      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

      The thing about the unnatural link detection is that it flags almost every single private blog network link as unnatural, and obvious that's true in a certain sense but that doesn't take a way the fact that Google uses a completely different approach and that those links are still as strong as they always used to be.

      As a result people start sending link removal requests as well as disavowing links that are in fact the links that are responsible for their rankings and not for their tankings.

      I had a client who bought a permanent homepage link at one of my PR6 sites, an insane strong domain that I paid $1000+ for about 6-9 months ago, after we placed that link it pushed an insurance related keyword with a few thousand exact searches from the middle of page 3 to the bottom of page 1.

      Cognitive SEO flags the link as unnatural, while that is one of the fewer sites that I put some extra attention on to make it look more legit.

      I mean you really want to disavow or remove a link that is so powerful cause some tool says so.

      Right now that site has about 30 posts, each of them contains 1 or 2 links to some insurance related or finance company. Would adding 5 or 10 posts without links make any difference to Cognitive's algorithm? I know that it wouldn't matter for Google.

      @STLSEO: Is there some page on cognitive's website that explains what it uses to determine if a link is unnatural or not? Like a list of nodes?

      You mention something about links at PR n/a or PR0 pages, but when you add a new post to Wordpress it's automatically a PR n/a, despite that it's featured on a PR6 homepage, somehow that tools seems to completely ignore that but once the PR n/a url gets removed it will also not be visible at the homepage anymore. Especially now that Google didn't update their Pagerank for a long long time.
      They just released their unnatural links detection tool, and thus they're still filtering out the inaccuracies. Like I said, I've used/tested it on multiple clients of mine, and it's very accurate for the most part.

      If people are sending disavow .txt files to Google without receiving an unnatural links message in webmasters, there's a good chance Google won't even consider their disavow submission. Refer to Google Webmaster product forums if you want further info on that.

      If you know a link is powerful, why would you disavow it? I mean you have to use your own knowledge and common sense. The tool's obviously not going to be 100% accurate. The only way that'd be possible is if cognitiveSEO had access to Google's algorithm, which is not possible.

      Quote from Razvan:
      http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/3068/automatic-unnatural-link-detection/

      "I am not going to share the algorithm that is used in order to classify links as natural or unnatural but I can tell you that this algorithm does not use external metrics and it relies on AI, in-depth content and link profile analysis in order to segment the so called "toxic" links from the natural ones. The rule set we use is based on the official Google Guidelines."
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by STLSEO View Post

        If you know a link is powerful, why would you disavow it? I mean you have to use your own knowledge and common sense. The tool's obviously not going to be 100% accurate. The only way that'd be possible is if cognitiveSEO had access to Google's algorithm, which is not possible.
        Well, when people have let's say 1000 back links, and Cognitive flags 900 as unnatural, then I don't think people will double check and cross reference to see if there are any solid ones among those 900 links. If that was the case they wouldn't need a tool in the first place so accidentally the good links will get removed cause the tool says so.
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    • Profile picture of the author linkbuildr
      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

      The thing about the unnatural link detection is that it flags almost every single private blog network link as unnatural, and obvious that's true in a certain sense but that doesn't take a way the fact that Google uses a completely different approach and that those links are still as strong as they always used to be.

      As a result people start sending link removal requests as well as disavowing links that are in fact the links that are responsible for their rankings and not for their tankings.

      I had a client who bought a permanent homepage link at one of my PR6 sites, an insane strong domain that I paid $1000+ for about 6-9 months ago, after we placed that link it pushed an insurance related keyword with a few thousand exact searches from the middle of page 3 to the bottom of page 1.

      Cognitive SEO flags the link as unnatural, while that is one of the fewer sites that I put some extra attention on to make it look more legit.

      I mean you really want to disavow or remove a link that is so powerful cause some tool says so.

      Right now that site has about 30 posts, each of them contains 1 or 2 links to some insurance related or finance company. Would adding 5 or 10 posts without links make any difference to Cognitive's algorithm? I know that it wouldn't matter for Google.

      @STLSEO: Is there some page on cognitive's website that explains what it uses to determine if a link is unnatural or not? Like a list of nodes?

      You mention something about links at PR n/a or PR0 pages, but when you add a new post to Wordpress it's automatically a PR n/a, despite that it's featured on a PR6 homepage, somehow that tools seems to completely ignore that but once the PR n/a url gets removed it will also not be visible at the homepage anymore. Especially now that Google didn't update their Pagerank for a long long time.
      Well all those link styles you mentioned are spam/against TOS, so it seems like it should flag those.
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by linkbuildr View Post

        Well all those link styles you mentioned are spam/against TOS, so it seems like it should flag those.
        Although it might be against Google TOS, every type of link building is against Google TOS.

        My point seems to be pretty clear. A tool helping you to get rid of links while you would've never ranked in the first place without those links.
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    • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

      The thing about the unnatural link detection is that it flags almost every single private blog network link as unnatural, and obvious that's true in a certain sense but that doesn't take a way the fact that Google uses a completely different approach and that those links are still as strong as they always used to be.

      As a result people start sending link removal requests as well as disavowing links that are in fact the links that are responsible for their rankings and not for their tankings.

      I had a client who bought a permanent homepage link at one of my PR6 sites, an insane strong domain that I paid $1000+ for about 6-9 months ago, after we placed that link it pushed an insurance related keyword with a few thousand exact searches from the middle of page 3 to the bottom of page 1.

      Cognitive SEO flags the link as unnatural, while that is one of the fewer sites that I put some extra attention on to make it look more legit.

      I mean you really want to disavow or remove a link that is so powerful cause some tool says so.

      Right now that site has about 30 posts, each of them contains 1 or 2 links to some insurance related or finance company. Would adding 5 or 10 posts without links make any difference to Cognitive's algorithm? I know that it wouldn't matter for Google.

      @STLSEO: Is there some page on cognitive's website that explains what it uses to determine if a link is unnatural or not? Like a list of nodes?

      You mention something about links at PR n/a or PR0 pages, but when you add a new post to Wordpress it's automatically a PR n/a, despite that it's featured on a PR6 homepage, somehow that tools seems to completely ignore that but once the PR n/a url gets removed it will also not be visible at the homepage anymore. Especially now that Google didn't update their Pagerank for a long long time.
      Wow, if that tool can catch you, imagine what Google can do?
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by PerformanceMan View Post

        Wow, if that tool can catch you, imagine what Google can do?
        If Google can do then why don't they?

        Personally I think it's too time consuming for them to build such thing into the algorithm, or in other words it eats too much cpu power.

        It would also be very unreliable.

        My point is that cognitive SEO is extremely unreliable as it only seems to flag based on stats from external sites like PR0 or PR n/a (which is not up to date) or other stats from Ahrefs/Majestic and such which is also not very up to date.
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  • Profile picture of the author smodha
    Originally Posted by aliduncan View Post

    I've recently come across this tool and was wondering if anyone here has any experience with it for backlink checking:

    http://cognitiveseo.com

    It claims to combine data from ahrefs, majestic seo, seomoz, blekko and seo kicks which seems to be the most comprehensive of all the backlink checking software that I have seen previously.

    With plans starting at $99 it's around the same price as majestic or ahrefs on their own which is making me consider switching.

    So, anyone tried this software? Was the backlink data as comprehensive as the site suggests?
    Why would Ahrefs, MajesticSEO et al share data with a competitor?

    Ahrefs is hands down the best with a massive gap to second - MajesticSEO.
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by smodha View Post

      Why would Ahrefs, MajesticSEO et al share data with a competitor?
      Why wouldn't they? Majestic gives you API access if you pay £250+ per month.

      It's in their interest to get integrated to web and desktop tools. You can use your Majestic subscription with AWR, for example.
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      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
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  • Profile picture of the author offline master
    I am pretty sure majestic (and maybe ahrefs) is in partnership with them, so they get a chunk of every sale...

    Why do you say that. Please support the ahrefs>majestic. I am looking to get one of these backlink checkers so I am curious as to why you say that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Amod Oke
    Why would Ahrefs, MajesticSEO et al share data with a competitor?
    Ummm... if you don't know how "services" work, here's how > they charge money for it.
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    • Profile picture of the author FranksToys
      Originally Posted by Amod Oke View Post

      Ummm... if you don't know how "services" work, here's how > they charge money for it.
      Why bump a thread this old?

      Cognitive SEO is not a tool I'd recommend, especially for the price. Take a look what people are saying about it on the web, lackluster reviews at best.
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  • Profile picture of the author anoopsparx
    I have used the coginative SEO tool, but you will have to check the links before sending to google disavow tool, because sometime they show good quality links to spam. But overall this tool is good to other one.
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  • Profile picture of the author garmahis
    I signed for a free trial with Cognitive SEO and then was spammed to death with "Why did you abandoned your registration?" messages when in fact their payment system failed.

    Guest what they did when I told them about it? Cancelled my account and asked me to sign up again. And then in a week started another barrage of spammy reminders. Totally inadequate guys.
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  • Profile picture of the author multiplecloud
    How can they combine all backlink analysis? I just do not believe that claim. Each service, ahrefs, majestic, moz should protect their data.
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by multiplecloud View Post

      How can they combine all backlink analysis? I just do not believe that claim. Each service, ahrefs, majestic, moz should protect their data.
      Please read the posts above. They're all in the business of selling the data, not keeping it for themselves. Charging for API access can be a lucrative business, and you can skip stuff like end user support.

      There seems to be only handful of companies who spider, collect and organize link data to sell it, even though there's dozens of SEO tools. And it makes sense: it's not that easy to set up large scale web spidering, and keep it running.

      Sorry, I didn't realize this thread was so old when writing my previous comment.
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      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

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