Beware of automated ranking checkers

Okay, I am not going to use this thread as a way to bash SEO Elite as please believe me when I say it is an awesome tool and I am extremely happy with this purchase I made a few years ago. However, I want to share my experiences with program 5 which everyone should be aware of.

A while ago, I had a site deindexed from Google immediately after checking it's rankings using SEO Elite program 5. I am not one for a knee jerk reaction or anything like that, in fact part of me thought it was purely coincidental that the site should be completely deindexed literally immediately after using SEO elite program 5. Of course I checked with Google through my webmaster tools account and they eventually told me that I had been using an automated checker which goes against their TOS and that was the reason.

Fast forward to today and for some stupid reason I decided to open up SEO Elite again and use program 5 to check just a few keywords for my European cruise blog. Lo and behold almost immediately after testing these keywords the blog has dropped down into oblivion for its main keyword phrase "European cruises". It is still indexed but down into the deep recesses of Google's index. I am hoping this is only a temporary thing and it will bounce back as just another episode of the Google dance.

Now, I know a lot of people will completely disagree that SEO Elite prog 5 could have done this but it has happened twice to me now. I know I should have just left prog 5 well alone after my previous problem but it was a stupid mistake of mine.

Now for the really important common denominator between the two episodes that has just occurred to me. Both times I was logged into my Google webmaster account when I fired up prog 5.. I understand the way prog 5 works in that it passively opens a browser in the background and checks keywords as if a human was doing it but what if you are logged into your webmaster account? It wouldn't take a lot to correlate between automated keyword checking and a site in your webmaster account to see what keywords it ranks for.. I have no proof, but as this has now happened twice to me I am seriously thinking that prog 5 is the problem.

Like I said at the start, SEO Elite overall is a superb piece of software that I still promote and I will continue to use every other program in it because it has helped me with everything from niche research to finding awesome backlinks but prog 5 has a red flag for me. I don't want to single out SEO Elite as I am pretty sure that if I am right then all automated ranking checkers would be the same. I am only telling you as a warning which you can either heed or write off as the ramblings of a crackpot but either way it is important enough to be known.