Private Question Shutdown

[KeriMorgret]

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

[BlueprintMarketing]

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

[SeanElkin]

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

[geoff.simon]

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.

[BlueprintMarketing]

That is truly wise advice network more I like that

[JohnW-UK]

Yeah it doesn't look very SEO specialist.... Any others people can think of?

[Alex-Harford]

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...

[Marcus_Miller]

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).

[jimthornton]

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.

[reisefm]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

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.

[NeilInFrance]

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

[MikeGracia]

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

[PropertyPortal]

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?

[JML1179]

Can I access the SEOMOZ forums/blogs with a free account?

[reisefm]

Hi Keri,

short feedback to explain a little bit my dilemma:

When I payed my $1000 for SEOmoz and the Pro membership the service was 100% for me! Since some month the problems started.

The Rank Tracking and Keyword Tool went down, two of the most important reseach tools for me here on SEOmoz. The "adding of tools on a regular basis" sounds there a little funny ... because the only SEO tool which is relevant for me and was added recently is Followerwonk.

You understand my dilemma? The development of SEOmoz goes probably into a direction in which I don't follow. The webinars + the few but very helpful tools and the crawls are the only things which let me come back to SEOmoz at the moment.

[KeriMorgret]

You can read the forums and blogs with a free account (or even with no account), but you do need a PRO account to be able to respond in the Q&A forum.

[Gordon_Hall]

Evidently it hasn't finished yet! What a hornets nest you've stirred up.

[NeilInFrance]

I'm Interested in keeping in the loop on the possibility of another "2nd Opinion" private service

Europe will be useful but not essential

Maybe we should be looking to create it

• Neil

[Andy.Drinkwater]

To those folks getting a little upset by this, do remember that SEOmoz aren't removing the staff from helping, just that the private function won't be available any more. They will still be monitoring and joining in with the public Q&A.

Saying that, you really do need to have a read through some of the answers in the public Q&A as there is a wealth of knowledge and quite often, it is good to get various answers so you can get ideas.

I think I have used Private once on all my time on SEOmoz - I tend to live in Public

Andy