Private Question Shutdown
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what you just said is true if you did bring up a competitor's name or if you brought up some new ideas that you think is going to revolutionize search engine optimization.
"The value was the asking of a private, sometimes strategic, question and the development of an answer that could lead to an advantage over a competitor."
However in no way shape or form is this the real case for only private questions this could easily be the exact same thing with a public question there are no NDA's being signed prior to a public or private question meaning if the person answering your question thinks their answer is relevant to somebody else's problem they will most likely give them the answer that worked rather be private or public they want to do the right thing.
I'm not attacking your stance on not wanting to lose private it is a special thing however we can't ask everyone associated with this company to spend their extra time answering our questions without compensating them more than we compensate them now.
Respectfully,
Thomas
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First of all, I think SEOmoz team took decision after long time planning, and although it is a hard decision in long term it will pay back to the community. Now we will have even more people answering in the public Q/A section and helping to deliver faster responses there.
For those who said that they will miss private Q/A, I think there will be mozzers (and friends from the SEOmoz community) out there who you will be able to private message from time to time to discuss about the latest strategy ideas (and once again, I don't think anyone will refuse to discuss it with you).
Last and not least: as part of the community our job is to support them in order to get supported by them, so let us behave like that!
Istvan
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Hi Marcus,
I agree with what you're saying about essentially the table of your peers it would cost probably $1000 a question to realistically get the people you do here in public Q&A to surround and answer your questions.
I think public and private are 2 very different things people plan for private and use it for things that cannot somehow had the wrong answer because there is this might hinge on whatever it is they're asking. I do agree you can ask things that you would not want to ask in public maybe they can set up a PM system You get X amount of private messages related to your public Q&A the downside is the public does not get to learn from it and that's a lot of what poet Q&A is.
I think the ability to have each was a great synergy and I can't wait for somebody to ask in a private question "how do we get private questions back on seomoz" hopefully no one will waste their time doing it. But when you look at the tools, community, staff, combination of advice and software is seen nowhere else on such a scale so regardless of what happens I will still be happy with seomoz I definitely don't think that them giving things away to people takes away from us that pay obviously if we were getting nothing more it would not be very fair however that is so far from the case I believe you are right when you say if someone's in a true jam the staff will help out I hope they will however been assumed that not anything more.
Thumbs up good response man
sincerely,
Tom
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Sorry if this has been answered already. What will happen to the questions that are already private? Will they now become public?
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Hi Keri,
That is a shame but as many of the other Pro Members have commented it's not a deal breaker. Dr Pete used to answer most of my questions so I'll miss him dearly but the the public Q&A is sufficient for most cases.
Can I ask is the Public Q&A open for indexation by Google or do you need to be cookied in to read the questions? I'm trying to understand if Google alerts or clients searching for their site will pick up questions about them when mentioned? It's always great to get another opinion on certain subjects but of course some clients may not want their indexation issues or site crawling issues 'out there' for everyone to see.
Thanks
Bush
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Cheers Tom
I have asked a few sensitive questions, but as it goes, the responses were never able to solve the problem, it was almost helping with a crisis of confidence or direction really rather than an out and out solution. In the end, I stopped asking private questions as I just got more from public Q&A.
It's a shame I guess and I do get it but if folks need private consultation they are going to have to get private consultation now I guess.
Have a good one!
Marcus -
That's a real shame, but it makes sense.
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Hi Marcus,
you are right when it comes down to it if you have a real project that you have to get done there's no substitute for hiring a individual, firm or combination I have had great luck with companies like distilled, Portant, evolving SEO and skyrocketseo. For a real project one question will help but it will not answer everything that needs to be answered or assist you with a lot of the work.
I can understand if you're under a lot of pressure and that private question has to be right and you need it yesterday why that would out a lot of stress. I do agree questions get answered much quicker and public then private however I do think it's like the lottery with public and you're right sometimes you get it right off the bat sometimes you have to wait with that as well. I don't understand how we will have more people in public when 4% of us were using a private but I could be very wrong because I'm assuming the private questions were much more complex and time-consuming.
All the best,
Tom
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The Private Q&A has probably been the most valuable aspect of SEOmoz PRO for me. I've asked 8 questions in 17 months but each question has contained details that can't be divulged publicly, and that would have been really difficult (impossible in some cases) to phrase or receive answers to in a public forum, without giving sensitive information away. It is a huge disappointment for me and the company I work for - I would say it might be a deal breaker in our case
- but I understand why you've done it - it makes sense from your point-of-view, and the public forum does seem neglected at times in terms of endorsing answers.If 4% of your paying subscribers have used Private Q&A, how many use the Q&A in general?
Does anyone know of any alternatives, for someone who doesn't want a full on consulting contract, but would have occasional important questions?
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What is the Timeframe?
You'll still be able to ask private questions through March 15th, meaning all PRO members will have at least two more chances (February and March) to ask a private question. You'll also be able to see all of your old questions in your account through at least the end of March. We encourage you to save a copy of these questions for your future reference. -
Public Q&A is indexed by the search engines.
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Thanks Alex,
Your question from earlier is interesting regarding a similar service for private Q&A. A pay per question service would be welcomed as drilling down on clients issues privately is very important. I'd happily pay more or pay per question on certain issues.
Cheers
B
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But that doesn't say what happens after March. Do we assume they are deleted?
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Public is still public.
That's exactly the point.
@SEOmoz - at least be honest about it and say what we all know. The time/value does not match for your side of the qa.
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We would never, ever make the questions public. We will keep the private questions available to you as long as we can, but at some point they will be removed from our system.
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We are recent members. In 4 months used only once and would like to continue using. I believe that the main difference from private to public QA is the comfort in moving some data.
We hope that decision came to the best of all members, having most intense discussion and the same quality of the private QA.
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I wish you would reconsider the decision or at least adjust as I suggest below.
Having private Q&A is much different in my mind than public Q&A.
The logic/argument that making it all public helps everyone misses the point of private Q&A entirely. Those that choose to use private Q&A do so precisely because they do not want their questions public. Why is that? For me, there is almost always specific mention of URLs in my questions. Not only do we not want to raise red flags and reveal issues for potential COMPETITORS to find, we often do not want CLIENTS to be aware of the conversation as we work to resolve issues or make changes to improve performance.
The other reason I like the Private Q&A is that the quality of private answers is simply higher and more reliable in our experience. Having a fallback resource has been a great comfort when we step out of our areas of expertise. Losing that is a negative, no doubt.
ONE WAY TO LESSEN THE EXPOSURE OF A QUESTION THAT NOW MUST BE PUBLIC (but that we do not wish to be public) would be to add in an optional check box that disallows indexation by the search engines. That way, it at least makes it harder for those outside seomoz.org to discover the conversation.
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" what you just said is true if you did bring up a competitor's name"
Yes, exactly The big value in private is being able to ask questions with detailed competitive information. For example, asking a question about why our competitor ranks for a specific term, but we don't, even though we think we should.
i understand the scalability challenge with this (I have a payroll to make myself...), I'm just surprised that this wasn't anticipated as a potential issue when first offered. It wouldn't have been hard to calculate the cost/time of providing this service long term.
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I agree with what was stated above. I'm also saddened by this loss as I think it was one of the things that set SEOMoz apart; however, I also think that the public Q&A forum is very valuable and also makes SEOMoz a tremendous value.
My concerns are two-fold. One concern, which was stated earlier, is that sometimes you need to ask questions about clients with information that can't be shared publicly. The public Q&A won't help these types of questions.
My second concern is that I've asked a number of questions on the public Q&A and very rarely have had SEOmoz staff answer them. I'm wondering what SEOmoz's goal ratio for participating in the public Q&A will be? Will SEOMoz staff have a goal for participating X% of the questions?
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Ah I think I only asked maybe 3-4 questions since I first joined in Sep 2008... but I've often found answers via private channels far more detailed and faster and it's often from other SEOs who are also PRO members which shows the importance of networking and knowledge sharing...
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