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This is part two of a three part series on rank checking tools. 

In it I look at Agent Web Ranking, documenting the different parts of the program along with my opinion on it.

As with the previous article, I think it’s important to stress that rank checking is a foundation to good SEO.  While Rank shouldn’t be the only motivating factor for you, it should play a large part in your SEM decisions.

Therefore I decided to look at a few of the top rated rank checking tools to give you my input on choosing the one thats best for you.

Agentweb takes rank checking to a different level than it’s competitors.  That’s because it offers a few different features that other rank checking tools don’t have.

While Webposition offers doorway builders, and a few other not so useful features, AgentWeb tries to make itself the website owners interface with the SEO world.

When you first launch a freshly installed version of this program, the first thing it does is go through the time consuming process of updating its search engine database.  While this is important, I feel this is a step which could have been done later.

Mostly because I’m the type that likes to get in and play with a program as soon as I install it.  And with this program I had to wait what felt like forever (when it was really about 5-8 minutes) for the update to happen.

But once the update is done you are provided with a host of features – not just rank checking but other handy items that a good SEO needs.

For example you are shown a series of folders in which you’ll find links to SEO forums and Blogs.  You will also see links to search engine news and even other search engine tools.  Finally there’s a link to various keyword research tools.

While these are handy, I do find them a bit lacking in some areas.  For one thing, some of my best news sources aren’t listed there, but like any other bookmarking system you can add your own.

This program isn’t as intuitive as Webposition was.  It took me a bit to figure out how to start a rank checking mission to run.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s article, one of the first selections with WP is to start/run a mission.  This isn’t the case with Agent.

In fact, even if you use traditional Windows commands “File/New” or “File/Open” you still can’t tell where you should go.  Under new you have 2 options - “search” or “browser.”

To save you the time of having to find out in the help file what it is, let me tell you.

In order to start a new keyword ranking report you have to select the “search” option.

A note to the designers/programmers of this program:  I would bet most users of it would be like me “Instructions?!?  I don’t need no stinking instructions!!”

I’m a guy – instructions are a last resort.  So you should make this program a little more intuitive by changing “search” to “ keyword ranking report” or something similar?

Anyways back to my critique of the program.

Another less-than-intuitive part of it is when you are actually creating your reports.  There isn’t a lot of help to walk you through this process as with Webposition.

In fact it took me a little experimenting to actually get one to work.  I assumed there would be some search engines already populated, but it turns out I had to pick them.  And even then it was difficult.  Because if you go to the “Selection” tab under “Search Engines” there is no way to add them.  Even right clicking doesn’t help.

No, you actually have to use the “Global List” tab and select each and every engine you want to use.  Talk about a time consuming process.

So here’s a tip – if you are going to use this tool, be sure to save your engine list so that you don’t have to manually recreate it every time you want to run a report.

Once I got through that, I stuck in a few keywords and the URL I wanted to report on, selected check boxes at random (remember, I’m a guy – I don’t pay attention to this kind of stuff), hit “Run Report” and I get some warning about selecting only Performance or Performance Summary.  So I deselected one check box, and still got the same warning.

I tell you, if I was only demoing this program for any purpose other than writing an article I’d have already uninstalled it for these reasons.

The program also offers little in the way of support during this report creation process.

Overall, I found this to be a “middle of the road” kind of package.  While it does have some good ideas, like providing many links to various SEO resources, I find the real purpose of it – the rank tool – lacking in usability.

In the end it’s like all the other rank checking tools out there – it automatically queries the engines and produces a report for you, so there’s nothing special there.

There are 2 versions of this application available – Business and Pro – and both offer similar features.  However, the Pro version is geared towards professional SEO companies while the business is targeted at the single site owner.

You can compare versions on this page and for pricing and order information check out this page.

Overall, of the three products I’m reviewing this is the middle of the pack version – it’s less expensive than Webposition yet to me it’s not as functional as Webposition.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com