Can Your Site Be Banned from Google by Using Web Position?

You may have heard this claim, but it is ridiculous in our opinion. Web Position even came under fire during our session on search engine optimization and marketing at last year's official Miva Conference. How would Google know if it was actually you that was checking the rankings of your site? If it were true, you could easily get all your competitors banned as well. That would be something if the folks at Web Position started to market their software with "Use Web Position and get your competition removed from Google!".

Here is what Google says about Web Position in their guidelines:

Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

As you can see, the first two sentences are about many programs and not just Web Position. The final sentence even says "use of products such as WebPosition". Since Web Position is a leader in its field, it makes sense that Google would use them as an example. Here are some things to ponder on the issue.

1. WP has never required that you check Google for your rankings.
2. WP has constantly added features to simulate actual browser queries, just as if you were doing it manually, waiting periods of time between searches, and other features to not abuse Google.
3. Most users have an ip randomly assigned by their internet service provider which has nothing to do with their website. As implied before, you can do individual site ranking checks on your competition's website. So it is pretty absurd to think that Google could detect the actual person using Web Position in most cases and ban their website or the website being checked.
4. Web position now has the feature of using Google's API which does not violate their terms of service.

So it turns out that Web Position is not as evil as some people think. It can even be a great supplement to the search engine marketing of your website.

Jason Henderson is the world's leading authority on search engine optimization and the Miva Merchant shopping cart. Miva Corporation has invited him to speak on the subject for three years in a row during their official conference. More information can be found at http://www.jmhonline.net/searchmiva. For more information on Web Position, see http://www.jmhonline.net/wp