WordTracker’s Backlink Tool vs. Market Samurai

Posted by Rochelle in Niche Store Tools on 06 12th, 2010 | 3 responses

Earlier this week I got an email from WordTracker stating they are now offering a backlink tool.  I was intrigued, and signed up for their seven-day free trial.  Here are my thoughts so far.

I had high hopes for this tool, since WordTracker is a respected name in the world of keyword research (although I think they are becoming less relevant because of tools such as Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai).  Unfortunately, I am not impressed.

Okay, to be honest, my dissatisfaction started before I could even try the tool.  After I signed up I was supposed to get a confirmation email that I had to click to activate my account, but I didn’t get this email.  So, after waiting a reasonable amount of time, I went to their website and clicked the “resend my cofirmation details” link to have the email resent to me.

Nothing happened.

So, I did it again a few hours later.

Nothing happened.

By this time, 24 hour passed and I was out one of my seven free days.  I emailed their tech support about this and asked that they either cancel my account or add an additional day to my free trial.

Nothing happened.

Then, at around 11:30 pm (while I was asleep), I received three, three, confirmation emails.  Because I was asleep when they were sent, I didn’t see them until the next morning.  I clicked on one and was unable to activate my account because the emails are time-sensitive.  Grrr!!!

I sent another email to their tech support. I explained that I did finally receive the email I needed, but that it was sent while I was asleep.  Since two days had now passed of my seven free days, I asked that they extend my free trial by two days.  I also stated that I had now sent a total of four emails to their tech support and that no one had responded to my emails.  For me, a simple “we are sorry” goes a long way.  Sadly, as of this writing, I have yet to get one.  Nor am I holding my breath.

Finally, two nights ago, I got a confirmation email that I was able to use to activate my account.  After more than 48 hours after signing up, I could access my free trial.

Did I get an extension to my free trial?  I have no idea.  It could be that the clock for the trial started ticking the moment I signed up or the moment I activated the account.  No one has seen me as important enough to respond to my emails to let me know one way or the other.

Needless to say, this experience has left a very bad taste in my mouth.  To make it worse, WordTracker’s Backlink Tool is pricey.  Their current price is $59 per month (give or take a few dollars).  Seems to me that they don’t care about me as a customer.  Therefore, I am going to cancel my account before my trial is over.  If they don’t care about me as a customer, why should I care about giving them my hard earned money?

Customer support says a lot about a company, for better or for worse, and I’m afraid what it has said for WordTracker falls into the worse category based on my experience.

At this point, you are probably wondering about how the Backlink Tool works.  Well, it works fine.  It does exactly what they say it does.

Simply put, you can enter a keyword phrase or URL, and the Backlink Tool will evaluate the backlinks for all sites that match the entered criteria.  It will also rank the quality of the backlinks, and let you create campaigns.  Campaigns are the ability to save specific sites that you want to post to (or already have), for the purposes of getting backlinks to your sites.  You can easily return to the sites that the Backlink Tool has located for you.

As to actually getting backlinks from the sites this tool finds, well, sometimes you can, and sometimes you can’t.  It really depends on the site.

It also has the ability to filter through the results.  For example, you can search the results for domains that end in .gov or .edu.

But, here’s the thing.  I already own Market Samurai (aka MS), and it does almost the exact same thing.  MS will find backlinks for any given site and display them for you, so you can see if you can also get backlinks from those sites.

The main difference that I can see between these two tools is that MS does not rank the quality of the backlinks, create campaigns, or filter the results.  Otherwise, the results are the same: both locate and display backlinks any given site.

And, here’s the kicker: I only had to make one payment to own Market Samurai, but I would have to make sizeable monthly payments to WordTracker for their tool to achieve basically the same thing.

Hmmm….  A one-time payment, or a monthly payment?  For me, the answer is simple.  Even if I hadn’t already made the decision to cancel my Backlink Tool account based on my experience with WordTracker’s customer support, I would simply because I think it is overpriced, and I can do 90% of what this tool does in Market Samurai (a tool I love and highly recommend), and I can’t justify spending $57 a month for the 10% that MS doesn’t do.

Who else has tried the WordTracker Backlink Tool?  And, what are your thoughts about it?