1) Enhanced Meta Tag Control

2) Improved Help

3) Anti-Spam Features

4) Smarter Page Generation

5) Easier Engine Management

6) Auto-Import Keywords

I don’t use WPG’s Page Generator tool, so I don’t really have a yardstick to use to compare versions and I’m not comfortable reviewing a tool that I don’t use and don’t approve of. But above I’ve listed all new features offered within WPG v2.0’s Page Generator tool for reference. Personally, I don’t think there is a need to auto-generate pages designed for specific search engines. These days with emphasis on relevancy and link popularity, it is my experience that a well designed search engine friendly site with lots of relevant content and a logical directory structure will rank well across most search engines, without need to generate extra 'optimized' pages. 

Page Critic Enhancements

1) Expanded Advice Advice provided in Page Critic now covers 85 search engines and directories worldwide. WPG claim theirs is only product in world that offers ranking improvement advice for so many engines - I don’t doubt it! Not having used Page Critic for some months, I was surprised to see depth of advice offered in v2.0 BETA. The addition of a link popularity check was a pleasant surprise, however I had to scroll through pages and pages of general suggestions to get to my page analysis scores. While providing so much advice is admirable, it makes you wonder if new users of software or persons with little experience of search engines would be able to understand all information provided. I also found some of advice to be a bit misleading. For example, when running a Page Critic check for a particular keyword ranking on Google, software came up with this suggestion:

'Purchasing and setting up multiple domains can be a great way to increase your visibility on Web and if you cross-link your domains, you can improve your link popularity for each site. However, it's best if you host cross linked domains at separate Web hosts so that first 3 blocks of site's IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx) are different. Some engines may ignore link popularity if IP addresses of sites are too close together numerically.'

You see, I just don’t agree with assumption that purchasing multiple domains is a good way to boost search engine rankings. In fact, if you set up multiple domains containing same content and search engines discover this, many will at best, ignore duplicate domains and at worst, remove your site/s from their index. 'Hiding' other domain at a different IP address is not going to protect you from this. Besides, unless you are providing substantially unique content on different domains, you are doing nothing more than filling search engines with irrelevant spam and not adding value for searcher. This particular advice was provided together with a link to FirstPlace Software’s domain store, so attempt to boost domain sales via WPG was not lost on me. I guess moral here is - take Page Critic advice with a good pinch of salt and try not to do anything that subverts search engines.

2) Enhanced Link Popularity Support  

As mentioned above, Page Critic in WPG v2.0 BETA now includes ability to check your link popularity on any of search engines you are analysing for. It also provides average link popularity scores for top ranking pages on same engines. Detailed advice is then given on how you can improve your link popularity score.   3) Smoother Interface  

The Page Critic interface has also been changed to make missions easier to set up. There are fewer pop-up prompts - these have been merged with main interface. You now also have option to save mission automatically and suppress partial matching prompt.

4) Improved Accuracy  

An interesting enhancement to Page Critic in v2.0 BETA is ability to determine if top ranking pages have changed since being indexed by search engine. A new feature in Page Critic will try to detect page changes between cached version of a top ranking page and current actual page. If it finds a page has changed, it will be excluded from analysis to prevent statistical inaccuracies. I have yet to see this feature in action, but I imagine it would greatly increase accuracy of Page Critic advice.   Upload Manager Enhancements

1) Built-in FTP Support

WPG v2.0 BETA includes its own (optional) FTP program, removing need to load 3rd party FTP programs when uploading files. When you create your missions, you can now select to have reports uploaded automatically, once generated. This is a very convenient feature that helps save time and streamline campaigns. I envisage this feature alone will save me hours per month.   2) New Report Processing Options (Pro Version Only)   As discussed above, Upload Manager in WPG v2.0 BETA (Pro Version) now allows you to remove non-ranking keywords from Concise Reports. This is a feature I don’t really like, for reasons stated above.

Submitter Enhancements

1) More Engines 2) Better Multi-Domain Support

3) Easy URL Importing

4) Built-in Spider for Quickly Gathering URL’s

5) Customize Submission Limits

6) Full Submission Verification

7) Complete Submission History

8) Easier Directory Submissions

9) Auto-Import Keywords

10) Expanded Submission Interface

11) Add Custom Engines to Submitter Assistant

12) Advanced Browser Emulation

Another feature of WPG that I don’t use is Submitter, so I won’t be reviewing enhancements to this tool. But above I’ve listed all new features offered within WPG v2.0 version of Submitter for reference.  It’s going to take a lot to convince me that submitting sites to search engines using software is better than submitting by hand. I’ve seen too much evidence to contrary. 

Traffic Analyzer Enhancements

1) Expanded Engine Support

I decided to review BETA version of new software and share my findings via this article. I have limited my review to new features and enhancements provided for options I use, rather than concentrate on all features of product. For ease of reference, I’ve also listed my analysis of new features under same headings used by WPG here: http://www.webposition.com/wpg2upgrade.htm .

General Enhancements

1) More Engines

Support for an additional 60 search engines and directories is probably most newsworthy feature of WebPosition Gold 2.0 and a major convincing factor influencing existing users to upgrade to version 2.0 and non-users to become customers. The added support for regional search engines in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Spain, Mexico, Latin America, Russia, Italy, China, Japan, Scandinavia and Netherlands is a major selling point because it allows users to check their rankings on, submit to and design their web pages for search engines and directories in these countries.

Over time, WPG has probably lost significant market share to TopDog, reporting software that offers support for over 200 regional search engines. But this WPG enhancement, combined with existing features, makes WPG more attractive than ever before. A few observations: BETA version of WPG v2.0 does not yet offer support for New Zealand or Mexican engines, despite listing above. I’m hoping these will be added in time for full release. Also claim that search engines of Spain and Latin America are covered is a bit misleading because BETA version only covers three Spanish language engines under Spain/Latin America rather than country specific engines. Also there appears to be a Scandinavian engine Passagen lumped in with Spain/Latin American engines - obviously a temporary glitch. Also, some countries are represented more fully than others, for example, 10 engines are listed for Germany, but only two for China and Russia. Hopefully these numbers will increase with future updates.  

2) Easier Engine Management  

Now you can quickly choose search engines based on location, importance or personal preference, thanks to new drop down lists. Search engines have been divided into global and regional sections, then categorized by country and importance - primary or secondary. You can also set up your own preferred list, selecting only those engines you consider important. This preferred list can then be quickly selected for multiple mission files. For someone like me, needing to run between 10 and 15 missions per week, this feature is very convenient.

3) Vital Statistics  

Now when selecting which engines to include in your Reporter missions, a box appears listing important statistics about that engine, such as URL, link popularity and a brief description.   4) Better Help  

I haven’t had to use it lately, but FirstPlace Software claim their WPG help file has been greatly improved and expanded. Certainly index seems at least twice as large in v2.0.

5) Better File Management   You can now define a default mission directory to make file management easier - a logical improvement.

6) Faster Downloads  

Updates now tend to download extremely fast, meaning your mission is not interrupted and you get access to latest WPG version almost immediately. While updates to program may download faster, I did not notice any difference in time for report completion in new version. I tested this twice by setting up identical Reporter missions and timing how long each took using WPG 1.60.5 and WPG v2.0 BETA. Each time I ran test, mission running on WPG v2.0 finished in 5 minutes, while mission running on older version finished in 4 minutes.

7) Powerful Multi-tasking  

Another big feature of v2.0 is ability to run more than one instance of WPG at a time. This means multiple reporter missions can run concurrently - a huge advantage for persons needing to run ranking reports for multiple clients. I haven’t used this feature very much in BETA version, worried that running more than one mission at a time would overload my flimsy dialup connection. But few times I’ve tried it (running two small missions together), it worked just fine, with both missions finishing within seconds of each other. The other nice thing about this feature is ability to set up new missions while running others. You can also work with other parts of WPG, for example using PageRank in one WPG window while running one or more reporter missions in another. Perfect for those of us who are born multi-taskers.   Reporter Enhancements

1) Reduced Disk Space

A long awaited option in V2.0 BETA is ability to conserve hard disk space by selecting box marked 'delete actual results files after reports are generated to save disk space'. Selecting this box ensures detailed search pages downloaded by program are automatically deleted once information from them has been extracted for your reports. This particular feature has already saved me countless hours spent deleting detailed search engine results that tended to eat up my free disk space via old version. A very sensible (and much appreciated!) enhancement.

2) Advanced Browser Emulation