Private Question Shutdown
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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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Can someone try them out while they're free, and report back? Maybe they have an SEO specialist covered under the online marketing area?
I'm in Europe and their times fall well outside of my office hours. I would ask them but their contact form doesn't allow enough room for comments.
Edit - perhaps they're not that SEO aware, otherwise they might have responded to these posts! It's an opportunity for them...
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I had a another thought about this in that if only 4% of folks used Pro Q&A then 96% of folks were not benefiting from these authoritative answers in public Q&A and lets be honest, the staff were not dropping in very often (especially on UK time) so hopefully, we get a lot more responses from these respected and experienced heads and the loss / benefit ratio sucks for the 4% if they really like that but it works out well for the other 96% (that is assuming everyone uses public which I know they don't).
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Good for SEOBook's private forum, and good for SEOMoz's content strategy, not that great for us but completely understandable that the energy could be better spent elsewhere. I vote for faster data exports. That's scalable.
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But then I have to ask for the value of the service. When I subscribed SEOmoz Pro, I came because of the support and the tools and the webinars. In the end I have only webinars left because tools are down and support soon too. This is a vast of money for me and i hope that SEOmoz is because of the changes in 2012/13 at least fair enough to have a special for the customers.
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Hi Falk,
Can you clarify about the webinars being the only thing left? Our tools are still here, and we're adding more on a regular basis. Support is still here, I just talked to two of them this morning. Please let me know if I'm misunderstanding, or if there's something I can do to help you.
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Hi
Just also to add how sad I am to see this feature go too!
I'm always wary of public forum replies. Difficult to give all the details of a problem in public (Hi clients - I'm stuck here) and you have no idea how knowledgeable the person answering is. Don't think I used it that much, but was very glad to know the option was there - and in buying individual PRO plans for employees it was one of my main selling points for them to use SeoMoz rather than their own favourite software.
Understand that its difficult to scale up and keep this quality though ; not enough experts around and not your core business to have those people around.
Can't you subcontract the job out to Distilled / Seer / though ?
Regards
- Neil In France
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Hi Rand,
Whilst I agree partially with what you say here, at the same time if Gamer paid annually, based on what the sales page sold him, and now you have revoked some of what was detailed on that sales page (and so sold to Gamer), then you really need to look at this I think.
Personally I will also miss the private Q&A, but it isn't a deal-breaker for me.
I do wonder about the pro-webinar's going totally free though, I didn't even realise that was the case. Still, I use followerwonk and OSE quite a lot in my work, so this also isn't a deal breaker.
HOWEVER, I pay monthly. Gamer paid annually. To be honest, as Gamer paid for a years membership to a service, and as you have changed that service considerably after he has paid a years membership, I would think that he should be given the option on cancelling - and having the rest of the year's fee refunded. At the end of the day, that would be good customer service, as he is no longer getting what he paid for.
Just my thoughts
Like I say, despite being disappointed re: Q&A and Pro webinars, I am not leaving SEOmoz - it's just too good
- I do also get what Gamer is saying though.EDIT: Just saw below that a Mozzer offered a refund etc -nice one
Moz being awesome as ever Still... it really is a shame that you can't support the private questions anymore.
4% is low I agree... but did you ask those 4% how important the questions were to them?
Also, SEOmoz does talk about community building - did the community get any chance to offer it's opinion of the webinars moving from Pro to free to all? - Just wondering
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Would it not have been a good idea to ask your paying customers how they value the private questions before you decide to dump it? Obviously, the majority who posted replies here did really find it valuable, and so did I. Indeed. We are not a SEO firm but a portal. We've had great use of the tools, but as of now when we're in the clear according to most Moztools, this particular service what a great part of the explanation on why we stay(ed?) on as paying customers.
The story that "it's not scalable" due to a huge growth in customer base sounds like sour economists to me. New (VC) shareholders making "wise" strategic decisions?
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Can I access the SEOMOZ forums/blogs with a free account?
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