Thanks guys/gals sooooo much. This launch went crazy good. In fact it was downright record setting.
We almost double sold out in 2mins 21 seconds. We managed to stop the registrations at about 250 members(The tool can easily handle more than that). The server looks great, even though it underwent what can easily be considered a digg effect X5. Thanks to everyone who sent in reports of anything not working. We fixed them all and a few minor changes will be made to make sure everything is in perfect working order.
Couple things:
The domain errors was a result of not being able to find the whois information for a domain. This was fixed but some bugs may possibly remain with .co.uk and .c* domains until further notice.
Most of the accounts have been activated and been made to full member status. If your account isn’t activated by tomorrow please send an email to rob [at] robstool.com with your account email and paypal email information.
If you accidentally double paid through paypal, just email rob [at] robstool.com and let us know your account email and paypal email and we’ll make sure your account gets activated and properly credited.
The analysis tool is 100% free and uses no credits. So go ahead and use it at will, if you don’t have a subscription just create a guest account and you will still be able to use it.
The bunny in the logo is my real life bunny named Roady. He’s a 4lb fully grown 5 month old dwarf rabbit. He is potty trained, loves people, and makes the best mascot ever.
If You Missed The Registration
Send a blank email to waiting [at] robstool.com. This will automatically add you to the waiting list. Then as slots open up we will systematically move through the list on a first come first serve basis and give out invites to those next in line.
I’m always open to constructive criticisms. If you have any suggestions or feature requests definitely let me know. Any ideas to make this subscription gain value month to month is more than welcome.
Also, many people want a private forum here. This is being moled over however most of you already know that I am adamantly against people paying for SEO information. However, this place has a huge amount of very very smart readers, and I think a place where the readers here
can network with each other and share ideas privately would be great. So in the next couple days I will be opening a chatroom up. It’d also be really nice to meet some of you and get to talk to you outside of email.
Thanks so much and enjoy,
Eli
PS. Sorry for the long string of announcements. Lets get back to some SEO shall we?
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Thank You Eli.
jon
i’m shocked that i was even able to get a subscription, but happy about it.
that said, how will the SQUIRT tool affect already highly trusted, already popular sites/blogs? should it make a difference or is it mostly for newer sites with no link history
It works optimally with brand new sites (since a lot of what it does is in gears with indexing and deep indexing) but it gives a nice boost to older established sites as well.
I don’t want to create a false sense of results or create a hyped build up but one of my beta testers jumped up huge in all his rankings for an established site and gained 3k visitors/day within four days of submission.
i’ll let you know what happens.
Eli,
You mind sharing some of the case studies with us…
Dare we ask for a live example even?
ranked number ___ before
ranked number ___ after
a little somethin’ something’
thanks for the tools, looking forward to it!
Its just a harmless bunny!
Eli, that sounds awesome! Maybe you could setup a (members) forum? That way we don’t have to ask the same questions over and over, if it was already solved.
Just a heads up to anyone interested in the .co.uk tld problem.
The “Analyze Site” isn’t doing anything with the .co.uk’s
The “Promote Site” seems to be accepting the sites but not showing the “Estimated SEO Rating”
Hey Eli,
It would be great if instead of jumping to the next seo piece We could go over the new tool step by step. Right now I’m submitting sites and keywords with no clue what is happening and no sense of what’s supposed to happen from an analytics stand point. Also, I thought the tool was supposed to provide “Deep and very accurate analysis of your site.” is 30/60 it and if so what does that mean? It would also be great to see from the tool what sites I’ve been added to and how the tool is progressing with it’s work. Just some thoughts
AJ
Thats a good idea. If you read the main page you’ll get a better idea of what it does. However I think a deep explanation as far as how it works in terms of SEO would be very educational, therefore a great post.
thanks
Congrats on a great launch! I had a small problem (my fault) but Rob had me fixed in no time.
I don’t believe a chat room would be good.
What happens in the chat room stays between those who chatted. All other member won’t be able to see what was discussed, and won’t be able to benefit from the information.
A forum would be a much better solution for all subscribers, at least to discuss various uses of SQUIRT.
I see no reason why squirt can’t have its own forum.
I’ll talk it over with rob
Totally agree. Forum would be much better suited, since it’d archive all of the information that people are sharing.
I agree 100%.
A forum is much much better then a chat room.
Yep, I had a couple of emails back and forth with Rob. He was very helpful and extremely quick considering how bust it must be around there today.
Thank you for this,I did manage to sign up for a member account. I paid the $ even though alot of this stuff is over my head. I plan on learning from scratch as most of my SEO is whitehat. The reader base here is some of the smartest people I have seen on the net and seem like cool cats.
Eli,
Am I right in thinking that Trackback Solution is not a good idea for White Hat sites even if used in a sparing way?
Looking forward to the chat room, also signed up for the waiting list.
Eli,
Give the people what they want (forum)…
Unless you want about 400 comments per day on your blog
Eli, just some food for thot.
It would be nice to track SEO analysis values for submitted domains. Click to update similar to updating Alexa rankings at TLA.
One more thing I would love is text file upload for 10 daily submissions (queue and run when load is acceptable) and text or CSV download of submitted domains.
Obviously I don’t have results yet (still submitting my daily 10) but if it’s half of what it is meant to be, some more functionality would put this WAY over the top.
I think a forum would be better suited than the chat room. It doesn’t have to be private, so the information could be openly shared. It would slightly prevent the same questions being asked over and over, most of us don’t have time to sit in a chat room, but to follow and contribute to a thread in our free time is possible, also it’d give you lots of additional user generated content. Think it over.
Well it should be private to the SQUIRT users. Users should just be able to login using their same Squirt logins. Case studies or Newsletters specific to this group would be very useful. Also as the collective develops bringing on some people as Paid (or free membership) guides would be great. When people are spending 100 bucks a month for something you want to make sure that they feel like they got bang for their buck at all cost. I spend quite a bit of money on different groups and always for the most part feel like the info was cool but not great and certainly not consistent. I’m not a newbie and this is my full time occupation so I’m always looking for tools and groups that will help me get to the next level. The stuff you’ve given for free has been excellent. I expect the stuff I’m paying 1200 a year for to be even better.
excellent. It’s done then. I’ll start working on getting a squirt forum going.
It may take some time, but i don’t see how it wouldn’t be a benefit.
Eli,
Let me know if you need help in setting up the forum. I have a vBulletin license lying around as well if you wish to go that route. I have set up a few forum in my day…;-)
Lee
lol I guess if anyone in the world would have the necessary experience to pull a forum off you’d be the man.
I’m a piss poor forum designer and organizer so yeah, thanks I appreciate it, and I’ll email you tomorrow about it.
Ok, Someone’s got to do this and I can’t be the ONLY one with this problem.
I don’t know what to do with the stuff in the vault. Ok, so I’m a dip-shit dumb ass. The Squirt tool is way cool and worth the fee to me. But, I know I’m only scratching the surface.
Who can help?
It doesn’t have to be Eli unless…
no one knows how to use this stuff
tia and
all the best, jon
Mysql databases are just big chunks of content that you insert into mysql. Like for instance if you’re using the Lyrics database. It has hundreds of thousands of lyrics of various songs by artists all organized and available. So you can easily build your own lyrics site simply by importing the database into your site’s mysql and just getting a programmer to make a site based on the information.
Once you have the actual content and information it makes building huge high quality sites very easy and fast.
Before I spend hours googling this. Is this something I can use with wordpress? Yes, I am that much a newb.
try looking up whatever coding language you want to learn or already know with mysql.
So like: “php mysql”
then play around in phpmyadmin (inside your cpanel) or something. It really helps to learn what your using before you try to use it.
I know you are super busy right now…but PLEASE post a quick tutorial on the keyword submission field. The one word per field thing has got me stumped…how can I maximize my results when only three words are available?
Example…
Three Terms to Target:
Long Term Care Insurance
Long Term Health Insurance
Long Term Care Insurance Quote
How would you recommend using the tool with this example?
Definitely will do, I plan on having a post that may be a bit of shock about how the squirt tool works.
if you have more than 3 keywords (boy talk about going long tail) than just group your two most important. Like i would go:
1) long term
2) health care
3) insurance quote
or whatever. The 3 keyword limit is really only a limit on the analysis tool. The promotion itself couldn’t care less how many keywords you have or even if you put them all in the same box. It just worries about getting all your keywords in and around your anchor text.
Some great features would be:
1. Starting SEO Info
The tool would give you your PR, Backlinks, ranking for specific key words and key word phrases, etc. at the time you start the process and each day give a status report on those things so we can track the effectiveness. That report should be able to be downloaded to excel csv format
2. Long Tail Recommendations
Perhaps the tool could spit out something like “you could potentially increase your daily visits by 3,000 users if you target the following related keywords:”
3. Competitive Analysis
The tool would give information on the top 10 sites in a keyword phrase and recommendations on how to beat each one or achieve the #1 spot.
Hi Eli,
the Analysis tool doesn’t work here, I add one site and one keyword for it, hit submit but nothing happens
And please.. don’t setup any of those web chatrooms. If a chatroom, then an IRC chatroom on some popular network like EFNet..
I LOVE YOUR BUNNNY!
Hi Eli,
Based on your posts, SQUIRT seems to be a very promising tool to me. What I’m at the same also wondering about is if there are any risks involved using the tool? Since I don’t know exactly what’s happening behind the (my) screen, I really can’t estimate this risk myself.
What I do know though is that Google is really checking everything and the guys in Mountain View are getting more and more clever by the day.
For example overpromotion of sites can harm your credibility and therefor your PR. If Google notices a couple of hundred back links that suddenly appear each and every day with a certain rythm, they could be triggered to keep a close eye on a certain web site. Did you build in a randomizer to give the tools a human touch?
Can you explain if you feel like there could be any risks using the tool.
- Did you already set the number of allowed submissions per day?
- I thought you would only allow 100 subscribers to SQUIRT, but I read you finally accepted 250 members. Why did you change this number?
First of all I think it’s very clever and wonderful for you and Rob to make 25K per month. I only say this with in the back of my mind that too many submissions from one system could also trigger Google, Yahoo, MSN and … more easily to flag certain web sites to have a human editor on it to follow exactly what’s going on, to ifinally find a way to prevent SQUIRT to stay effective.
These guys make billions and they have the ability to watch and match everything. IP Gmail submission =? Adsense submission IP/name/CC number =? Adwords account name/IP/acoount number =? Google toolbar IP =? Blogger IP =? Whois domain name registration info =? etc.
I’m very careful (proxy switchers, ADSL C-class change and cooky cleaning etc.), but still Google closed one of my Adsense lately based of an above mentioned match.
Anyway let’s not be too dark, but Eli do you have a idea if and what the risks are of using SQUIRT and what did you do to prevent the SE’s from identifying SQUIRT.
Keep up your great blog posts.
Cheers,
Marc
I’ll be making a post letting you know exactly what the tool does in a couple days.
In the mean time keep this in mind. If there was a way for someone like me (who doesn’t have ftp access to your site) to negatively affect your rankings than I wouldn’t worry about getting my sites UP in the rankings I would just move the other sites DOWN. This used to be possible. It was coupled with Google bowling. So you see Google isn’t this huge all powerful controller of sites. Only onsite SEO (you) can get your site banned or devalued. Never someone else, because the moment it became possible it’d be the biggest loophole to high rankings ever.
i was wondering about this. thanks for clearing up that there’s no method to do this.
I really don’t agree with you Eli. Yes, Google USUALLY don’t penalize sites due to off-site factors.
Although I must admit that I’ve seen it happen a quite some times. It can especially happen if you either buy a LOT of links or have an unnatural link growth.
Of course I am not implying that your tool does this, Eli.
I don’t want to know, keep it a secret!!!!
Oh com’n
I’ll be fun I promise
Sounds sexy!
Would this tool be able to decide whether or not a site is subject to any penalties, be they automatic or synthetic?
I think I already know the answer, but it’s worth a shot!
still waiting to be upgraded from ‘guest’ to member…
Please send an email to eli[at]bluehatseo.com and include the email address on your squirt account and your paypal account.
Eli, does all the promotion happen as soon as a site is added, or do things happen over a period of time? If so how long?
Thanks
certain stuff happens over a period of time. but the majority of it, including the indexing tricks happen upon submission.
So when does the 10 page deep crawl happen? I only see your bot hit my index page when I promote a site. Also I have seen no increase in spider activity since promotion, is that normal?
look for the ip 75.126.200.220(be sure to filter if your using cloaking). It doesn’t actually crawl “10 pages deep.” It grabs the main page and grabs up to “10 deep pages.”
If you didn’t see any increase in spider activity in the first 72 hours, definitely run it through the tool again. Just like on the QUIT tool. There are several small time glitches that can happen. Like for instance if you submit the moment before the site network that was going to host your link temporarily switches and rotates out to the next batch. Or if the social bookmarking sites just happen to get flooded by some spammer right as your link goes in. So no harm comes from submitting the same site more than once, I’d just wait to make sure its actually needed before you do.
And of course any sites you submit during opening week be especially weary of, we still have to work out any kinks within the network and the tool. Everything so far seems to be working smoothly but we’re still catching some sites slipping through. If yours happens to be one of them and you see no increased activity just resubmit.
Eli, I see no hits from 75.126.200.220.
I see 4 hits on promotion of a domain from this:
lwp-trivial/1.41 75.126.199.186
Is that you?
I have put that IP in my list so please confirm it for me as I never see any hits from 75.126.200.220
Thanks, chuckie
I see 6 hits from
75.126.199.186 about the same time I submitted my site thru the tool…
time will tell…
Got a membership and keeping an eye on how effective this will be.
The only thing that really irked me was the 200 vs 100 memberships. Part of the pre-sell appeal to me was the “exclusivity” part of the deal.
I’m sure you’ll add value to all members but I can’t help feeling a bit let down. Sorry.
Sorry win,
This is a clear cut case of me talking the talk but failing at walking the walk.
Like I said we double sold out in 2mins 21 seconds. By the time the first paypal transaction showed up 130 more showed up at the exact same time. By the time we could gracefully shut down the registrations we were already at 200 and about 50 more leaked through after closing. The only way to keep the 100 is to take everyone who’s transactions went through after the first hundred and deny them the subscription. Who feels like having a riot at their door?
The magnitude of the tool’s affectiveness span really makes an extra 150 subscribers(even if they ALL submit the full 10 sites/day) look really miniscule. So even though I had no idea preannouncement that we would even sell out the hundred, it was still expected and compensated for just incase it happened.
So all in all, yeah I know I said a hundred, it wasn’t some big marketing ploy, i was being honest. However due to the circumstances(and considering there are already over 150 people on the waiting list) I in no way feel guilty about it. I originally wanted 200 but after talking it over with a few people who have experience with launching SEO products they assured me 200 would never happen and I might as well just cap it at 100 and hope it happens.
So as far as my thoughts go on it; there are over 4k regular readers here. I want to help as many as possible while keeping the tool’s integrity up. 250 works for me, so I have no problem keeping it there.
Eli’s Stats:
25k in 2:30
166.67 per sec.
10,000 a min
600,000 an hour
14,400,000 a day
Being an SEO GOD: Priceless
So Eli, maybe I missed it but, how’d your stats look for yesterday compared to a normal day? I couldn’t have been the only person F5ing non stop waiting for the link…
Has anyone been able to get the trackback solution to work?
A lot of hardcoded values I had to change, its finally working however not very well.
I believe it was mentioned that they’re going to be updating it with an installer and such, from the update page “- I will make a installer script for the trackback solution script.. This will check your permissions and help you set it up.”
so I’d just wait for the next update and play with it then, no use installing it again later when the new version comes around .
Yea I know, i’m just impatient.
someone emailed me about the hardcoded stuff yesterday. I chagned the readme file and reuploaded it.
the only additional hardcode you have to chagne is in cgi-bin/includes/settings.pl
So what does the tool do? I’ve submitted a few sites but now how can I verify that anything has happened?
I’m totally confused about what I paid for. The teaser blog post said that “the tool determines your weaknesses and strong points and automatically determines the perfect promotional campaign you will need to reach the top 10.”
Are we supposed to just trust that inputing a URI and three keywords will move our site into the top 10?
I guess I just expected to see more. For now I’m skeptical, but I love your blog and its honestly so I’m trusting that the tool is gonna work some magic. We’ll see…
You’re not gonna see the full results for a while. It’s been just 36 hours since the launch.
Any idea how long it will take until we see the benefits of using this tool?
Still trying to get that trackback script to work..
Eli,
I was just wondering if I have Whois Guard on the domain does that cause SQUIRT a problem?
My submissions seem to have gone ok but I just want to make sure I’m giving the tool the best chance possible.
Sorry guys I’m going to close the comments here. They are better suited over at www.robstool.com. So they can all be answered in a more organized and confined way.
As far as the results, wait 72 hours, if nothing than resubmit. We are still working out a few kinks that came into light from the launch, but for the most part most of the sites went through perfectly.
We’re still working our way through the logs to find any oddities and rob is hammering out his todo list.
Thanks guys.