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What happened to SEO reporting in SmarterStats?
Problem reported by Gary Steiner - 2/25/2015 at 8:50 AM
Resolved
I'm looking at several sites that have had SEO campaigns setup for some time, going back several years through the various versions of SmarterStats.  Checking the logs for SEO processing (Using Google, Ask, Bing, and Yahoo), the processing seems to be working, but the results don't show or SmarterStats doesn't seem to find the results.  These reports have worked in the past, and was fairly straightforward since the sites are in niche markets and are being compared to competitors who have been chosen for their high rank in the search engines.  Even those competitors appear as zeroes in all the SEO reports.  The only report that seems to show any numbers (other than zeroes) at all is in the field for Visibility By Competitor > Bing > Saturation.
 
So, why won't SEO reporting work in SmarterStats 10.1.5529?

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Employee Replied
Employee Post
Hello Gary,
 
Thanks for the information. Can you provide us more details on the SEO reporting in regards to when the results were visible.  Was there a specific SmarterStats build that you had installed that now does not reflect the information ?  Please consider opening a Support ticket to allow us to look into the details further. If there is any bugs or issues that result in a correction we will provide a credit for the ticket.
 
Thanks.
 
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Gary Steiner Replied
As stated in my initial post, the build to which I was referring was 10.1.5529.  I'm not sure about past builds, since I don't look at the SEO reports on a regular basis, they are emailed to my customers automatically, and I generally don't look at them myself unless one of my customers complains.  I first noticed this while setting up a new campaign for a new customer.  When I saw that the new campaign wasn't working, I went to the stats for other websites and saw that these old campaigns were no longer working.
 
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Shivam Parikh Replied
As per my discussion with support a few days ago, the Google Indexing Algorithms have changed against how SS looked for them. For us in India, we can't get any results out from Google India option. The entire SEO module seems almost unusable for us. We get 0's on all our reports for index keywords where the domain is actually on the first page.
 
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raja Replied
I have the same issue, no Search Engine reports for any sites and I use v10.5.5751. This have been working before in earlier versions of SS.
Our users and sites are in Sweden.
 
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raja Replied
Hi,
 
We still have same issue with this, SS does not render the search engine results.
I'm using SmarterStat Enterprise v11.0.59.32
 
Any feedback on this would be appreciated.
 
Kind regards,
raja
 
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Jack Schmidt Replied
If this issue was resolved, it is back again.  No SEO reporting at all on any site.
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raja Replied
Not resolved and it's frustrating!
.raja
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Jack Schmidt Replied
I had a chat with the powers to be.  They are working on it.  They are not sure how fast the fix is coming...but they are on the case.  So lets give them time.
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Employee Replied
Employee Post
Hi guys,
 
I'm sorry about the delay in responding to this thread; I'm coming across it for the first time today. 
 
First, I want to say thank you for the report about this issue. It seems that Google's change to their indexing algorithm broke the way SmarterStats retrieves the necessary data for SEO campaigns. Our developers are aware of this problem and discussing possible resolutions. Please understand that something of this magnitude may take some time and efforts until an equal alternative is available. 
 
We will keep you updated on the progress here.
 
Thank you,
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Gary Steiner Replied
Nice to know somebody reads these things, especially since it was originally posted in February 2015. The ticket I opened back then [0FF-1C83415B-0A03] has been left hanging since May 2015. Basically I gave up on it. I've posted several issues concerning SmarterStats over the past year, but it seems that this product doesn't receive the same level of concern of SmarterMail or SmarterTrack.
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Jack Schmidt Replied
don't be evil | Leave it to Google to break the motto. Maybe someday I will have an experience with Google that is pleasurable. But so far, so evil, so difficult.
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Hemen Shah Replied
SM Team,
 
Is there any further update on this part ?
 
Thanks
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Adam Hobach Replied
Andrea,
Has this been fixed in any new SmarterStats releases. I am currently having issues with version 10.2
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Employee Replied
Employee Post
Hi Adam, I unfortunately don't have an update on this issue. A build has not been released to correct this.
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Gary Steiner Replied
To anyone interested in this issue, please click on the "Vote" box at the beginning of this thread.  Maybe that will help it get more attention.  This issue has been sitting around since at least February 2015, an it doesn't seem like SmarterTools cares about it.  It seems strange that they would make SEO reporting a major function of SmarterStats, and yet it doesn't work.
 
SmarterStats is a great product, but it seems that it is the poor sibling of SmarterMail and SmarterTrack, and doesn't get the attention it deserves.
 
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Derek Curtis Replied
Employee Post
Over the years, SmarterTools put a lot of time and effort into the SEO functionality available within SmarterStats. However, in the SEO world, things change, and that change is dictated by Google, who dominates and manages search from end to end. And that's really too bad as more competition means greater advantage for website owners and online businesses as there's more opportunity...

These days, there are a number of things that have an effect on where your website shows up when someone searches on Google (or Bing or Yahoo!). Things like your search habits, your buying habits, the newsletters you receive, the searches you conduct and your actions post-search, your social media habits, whether you use mobile or desktop, and more are all used by Google and others to craft subjective and contextual search results. Rarely will 2 people see the same results these days because rarely do 2 people use Google, much less the internet itself, the same way. Then there are the other changes Google makes to their algorithm, as Shivam noted earlier in this thread...

These changes have caused us to rethink SmarterStats and come to the realization that we will have to remove SEO from the product. Even if the data we presented were still available, Google has changed the amount of information they'll allow to be returned when queried. These new limits have even caused IPs to be blacklisted from actually returning search results...period. This would be extremely unpleasant for customers using SmarterStats in their own environments, not to mention service providers and ISPs.

The use and analysis of web server log files is the core of the SmarterStats product, and we don't plan on deviating from that. However, we are looking for additional data points and tools to give site owners the most data possible for structuring their websites and for understanding the effectiveness of their online presence. 
Derek Curtis COO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Gary Steiner Replied
Derek,

Thanks for your reply. The problems with Google and SEO are well documented, and have also been discussed in other threads here in the SmarterTools Community. What's been particularly disheartening about this thread is that the questioning started in February 2015, and the ticket I opened in May of 2015 remained unanswered. It's nice that SmarterTools has come to a reasonable conclusion for this issue, but what would have been nicer would have been an occasional comment on the subject to let us know that the issue was not being ignored.

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