Private Question Shutdown
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Yea, was totally kidding Keri. I should of added a <sarcasm>tag there, my bad. Cheers!</sarcasm>
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Hi Sean,
Thanks for your feedback and suggestion. We've found that people use private Q&A for asking questions they don't want public, but also when they want to make sure they get an answer (an answer is not guaranteed in public Q&A). We actually do see identical questions in public and private Q&A from the same person, as they seek an answer from an SEOmoz associate. When SEOmoz associates have more time to devote to public Q&A, they'll be able to answer more questions, and endorse and clarify existing answers.
We are looking at adjusting which questions are indexed in public Q&A, but it would be along the lines of only questions that are marked a "good answer" by the original poster or have an answer endorsed by staff would be in the index. This would help make sure that people coming in from a search engine would see just questions that have good answers. I will pass your suggestion along to the team to see if there's a way that could be TAGFEE for us.
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Hi Geoff,
So sorry about that! We've actually had requests almost that extensive in private Q&A.Without giving specific details, we've been asked for site audits, reviews of business plans, implementing features, and developing work plans for temporary help.
I'm only on the first cup of coffee for the day, and it's already been a long day, so I totally missed the implied sarcasm.
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" think you are simply trying to get attention by implying I am questioning Dr. Pete's honor I have a great deal of respect for him and everyone at SEOmoz "
I am not trying to get attention but it's clear to me that it's you who is trying to get attention by praising and defending SEOMOZ in every single post. So if it's ok with you, I would like to ask about a service that I have purchased. If it's not ok with you, then maybe we should be given the right to talk to SEOMOZ about this in private without you interfering.
What is it that you don't get here? I paid annually for a service that promised 1 private questions a month, which means I have already paid for 12. I don't think we live in a world that service providers can change the product description without offering a compensation.
This is getting ridiculous. You're talking like I am asking them to continue offering a free service or something. Meanwhile in your long post, you have the nerve to tell the community to stop complaining? Who gives you the right to tell a customer to stop complaining? You are not INVOLVED in this. You are a 3rd party and I don't know why I should stop complaining just because you say so.
How is this any different from another service provider suddenly changing the service? Let's say SEOMOZ's web hosting provider emailed them tomorrow morning and said "Sorry we can't scale this anymore, so we won't be offering postgresql anymore". That wouldn't make SEOMOZ happy, would it? Would it be ok if that hosting provider said "Only 4% of our users are using pgsql and others don't".
Why do I have to care about what 96% is doing and not doing. I purchased a product and paid annually. Is that so abnormal that I am expecting to get what I paid for?
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Kind of sad when the Real world knocks on the door and reminds us that success can bring the odd negative along with all the positives.
On the other hand, this is also a reminder that it's time to step up my game and be ready to bump into some of my favorite people in the world more often!
WooHoo!
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Hi! I think Keri did answer that in her original post by mentioning that it's simply not scalable for us anymore
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Hi Eric,
In regards to the questions being answered in public Q&A by staff, everyone who currently answers questions in Private Q&A, will now be spending their time in public instead. We're not discontinuing Private and then removing all of the staff, but simply moving their time over to public instead.
Thanks!
Jen
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Hey David! I see you've only asked one question in pubic Q&A though... you should give it a shot! I think you'll be surprised by the responses you get here as well.
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Way to scare the hell out of Keri, Geoff.
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Gamer07, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts about this. You make a very valid point about what you purchased in advance, and the functionality that was advertised when you made that purchase.
We absolutely do not want anyone to feel that a prepaid membership has changed substantially from when it was originally purchased. For those annual PRO members who subscribed primarily for Private Q&A, it's clear that this is indeed the case.
We'd be happy to work with PRO members on a case by case basis to resolve this as best as we can, either by providing a refund or credit to your account. We don't want any member feel obligated to continue subscribing to a service that isn't providing what you originally signed up for.
If this is the case for any PRO members, please email help@seomoz.org and let them know. I've spoken to our customer help team asked them to do everything we can to resolve this.
I know this doesn't result in us keeping Private Q&A around after March, but I hope it least it will help reduce any hard feelings about this decision.
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Hi Jamie,
Thank you for putting this nicely. This is the type of attitude I have expected from SeoMoz to begin with. It's still reassuring to be reading your explanation and resolution.
As I said before I am not really looking for refunds but I was looking for this. An explanation and a compensation/refund offer on the table to anyone who would choose to cancel a subscription. Good to see someone has decided to make this right. I appreciate it.
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Glad to hear it. We thought long and hard about this decision, and I know we weren't able to think through every concern that might arise, but I can assure you we're listening and want to be responsive to anything that comes up.
As an side note, I actually used Private Q&A as a customer once or twice before joining SEOmoz in 2010-- I know first hand how valuable it can be. But since joining the team and seeing our customer base grow to where it is now, I've also seen the effort, time and attention it's taken for us to keep up with Private Q&A-- even when we've been firing on all cylinders I've felt like we've never been caught up or able to meet or exceed expectations with every answer.
I know saying "great stuff is coming" is a bit of a cop out-- but I cannot wait to release some of the new features we have in the hopper. We expect it will add significant value to PRO membership.
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This is very unfortunate, as asking private questions is often a way to ask for a quick site audit and be fairly sure your competitors won't see the strategy you are using, especially in highly competitive niches. Maybe that's naive of me to think, but asking private questions assured me of an unbiased response that was not given to promote someone else's SEO services. Time and time again I have seen grandstanding and borderline advertisements from people answering Public Q&A questions, from people who couldn't be bothered to actually look at the site in question, but instead delivered a regurgitated 'best practice' such as a 'create amazing content.' I also think the argument that <4% use the feature works against itself - if the feature isn't being used much, why not keep it? I understand economies of scale and that its easier to provide a service to 96% of the members than a higher end service to the 4%, however I think the 4% that DO ask these questions, are members that are more VESTED into the site, and are its more avid promoters. If you think about it, these are people who are committed to bettering themselves through SEO and utilize Seomoz to its fullest - why would you want to take it away. If anything, I would quietly revoke this from new membership offerings, but I would retain it for grandfathered members until the end of their billing cycle, and phase this out gradually. You have added new features so its a fair trade, however its only fair that you retain this for those of us that pay for this and who originally signed up BECAUSE of this service.
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Gamer,
I no longer wish to have you believe I'm talking to you and just you. I put your name in the title simply because you referenced me above.
You & I are a part of the community's just like everyone else here I did not tell you specifically to stop complaining nor would I simply suggested that if we thought of ways to save this or make work it would become a brainstorming session that could possibly produce an answer was my single goal. The fact that you take that as me speaking to you personally is something I did not intend and I apologize if that's the way you felt. I am not a third-party I have every right to speak on this as you do so I can give suggestions just as you can. I am not trying to turn this into anything other than an answer for what you just stated. And I'm not looking for an answer back from you this is seomoz and I do not want to make this personal nor will I please respect that and know that I respect your right to complain.
just so everyone's on the same page this is what I said that I hope no one here is taken personally.
"If I can ask Rand & the entire staff along with affiliates and partners please at least look over some of the suggestions I've made and if any of them even have a flicker of hope maybe we can work something out where that spark of ingenuity is lit and the solution is possible.
Thank you all for listening to my long request and I appreciate everyone's time. But to the community let's think of ideas guys: don't waste time complaining they're not going to reverse it over that I don't believe."
when I say the community I mean every member as a whole not an individual.
I am a Pro member as well I have the right to speak my mind politely and respectfully I hope this is the end of us communicating regarding this subject.
I apologize to anyone who has to endure reading this. I don't want more negative reactions to something I am trying to help with.
Respectfully,
Thomas Zickell
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Thomas,
I think thread this is getting a little beyond the scope of the announcement. Let's discuss the announcement, but not get into personal discussions here.
Also, I think there is an autocorrect program that isn't working quite right and is substituting words. You may want to do a little extra proofreading, and possibly edit the message (I believe you meant "your name" instead of "here name", for example) to make sure that it's clear.
Thanks,
Keri
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Hi Keri,
I could not agree more and appreciate you pointing out the error for me.
I had posted a longer reply however they keeps giving me an error when I post.
Thank you for your help.
Respectfully,
Thomas Zickell
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Thanks Keri. I think you're half way there in what you suggest. There is a distinction between a good answer and a question/answer the submitter would want others outside of mozzers to find. You can have one or the other or both.
What I am suggesting is that you simply allow the person asking the question to decide if it should be found by the search engines.
If we are talking about issues specific to an industry, brand, website or specific URL we often may not want that discussion to appear on the radar of people tracking the same. I am sure I am not alone in this.
Site visitors at seomoz.org would still be able to search for, read all Q&A etc. but by giving the OP a choice to disallow indexation, you are removing the likelihood of those outside of this community finding a conversation(s) that may strongly prefer not be open to the world.
I like the quality assurance aspect also (good answer, endorsed by staffer), but serves a different purpose. It would be not difficult to have both I think. Include a checkbox that is checked by default that says "allow this post to be be indexed by the search engines" and you can still implement your Q/A process for what appears on seomoz in Q&A, but allow OP to decide on indexation.
SE
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http://expertcircle.com/ has private questions, but it's very new, cant vouch for the quality of the professionals that they use, but it's worth looking in to if privacy from client eyes, or whoever is what you want.
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That is truly wise advice network more I like that
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Yeah it doesn't look very SEO specialist.... Any others people can think of?
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