With my renewed focus on SEO, I've been needing a new, industrial-strength rank checker. After Raz's recommendation, I checked out Advanced Web Ranking. Though he uses the cloud solution, I'm more of a local PC app kind of guy, so I opted for the desktop version. I typically try to avoid software built on Java, but this app doesn't have the same feel and general clunkiness that usually accompanies Java based software. It is smooth and responsive enough to the point that I really don't care how it was written, or which platform it was written on.
Reporting is as advanced or simplistic as you would like it to be. When you run a campaign update, the application shows your rank for each keyword, and the movement since the last update. All of this is listed on the ranking overview section, and with a click this report can be converted to pdf and emailed right from the application. You can dig deep on historical rank, and tweak graphs to punch and pull the data into whatever type of report you would like. Then, spit it out in html with custom headers and all of that jazz to keep things looking slick for presentation to the client. Keep in mind, you will need at least a Professional license to have access to all the reporting features.
For backlink data, links are pulled in via SEOmoz and MajesticSEO, which covers two of the big players, but it would be nice if integration for Ahrefs and Raven Tools was included. I haven't used this feature a lot myself, but it's there when I want it. I typically track backlinks by knowing the ones I have acquired and then just checking the indexing on them, but this will be useful when taking on a new client with an existing backlink profile.
One area I haven't worked with in-depth yet looks pretty keen is the social media reporting. You can monitor twitter accounts, facebook pages, and track social shares. Have any of you used AWR for tracking anything with social media?
The one issue I do have with this application is how it handles proxies. Unless you have an Enterprise license, you may only use one proxy, which is rather limiting. There really isn't much reason to use a single proxy (regional rank tracking being the only one I can currently come up with), unless you worried about burning your main IP. A single proxy will burn out just as quickly as your single main ip, but I guess it's better to burn single proxies instead. Also, if you are on the Enterprise edition, and you want to add multiple proxies, you have to do so individually. When using authentication, you enter the ip, and you have to manually enter the user and password for each proxy in form fields. It would be much easier if you could just paste the data in a proxyip:port:user:pass or some similar format. If you are using multiple proxies with authentication and flushing them regularly, this could become quite a hassle. All in all though, this is a minor niggle, and didn't keep me from picking this app.
Thanks Raz for pointing out this option, great solution.
Sure thing bro. Glad you like it.
I really like the cloud option as I dont want to bother with proxies and making sure the computer is running etc. It's a great product if you're multilingual and covers many languages/countries.
Quote from: Drastic on May 08, 2014, 12:16:27 PMThe one issue I do have with this application is how it handles proxies. Unless you have an Enterprise license, you may only use one proxy, which is rather limiting
That seems weird. We use multiple proxies - I didn't think we're using enterprise but we might have been. If we are it must mean it is cheap (because I am cheap!).
I didn't like their cloud solution much. It seemed to drop lots of features.
Use Balance as a "proxy" to your proxies. http://sourceforge.net/projects/balance/
>I didn't think we're using enterprise but we might have been. If we are it must mean it is cheap (because I am cheap!).
Enterprise is 800, pro is 400. They recently went on sale for 1/2 off.
>Use Balance as a "proxy" to your proxies. http://sourceforge.net/projects/balance/
Awesome, thanks Jason!
It seems like webmeup might have transformed to webtitsup. No ranking data for about a month now. I was about to move everything to AWR desktop, but based on the above I might give cloud a try.