Raven Tools Review
What Will I Learn?
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IMPORTANT UPDATE: Jon Henshaw from Raven Tools posts his response.
One of the motivating factors for starting this blog was because I was sick and tired of seeing the reputation of the internet marketing/SEO industry getting trashed.
I’ve taken a close look at Majestic SEO along with SEO Link Monster in the past.
When I asked Matt Cutts what he likes & dislikes about the blog he said-
I have to agree with him – the best posts are the ones that cut through the underbelly of the Internet Marketing world.
So now it’s time to turn my focus to Raven Tools deceptive practices.
What you read here doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of their tools and I urge you to check out their 30 day free trial and make your own mind up!
What Will I Learn?
On January 11th 2013 I published a post to find the best backlink checker which included Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, SEO Spyglass, SEOMoz & Raven Tools.
Out of a possible 516,771 backlinks the tools managed to find a combined total of 178,242 – 34% of them.
| Backlink Checker | # Total Found | % Total Found |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | 48,619 | 9.41% |
| Majestic SEO | 36,911 | 7.14% |
| SEOMoz | 39,411 | 7.63% |
| Raven Tools | 34,206 | 6.62% |
| SEO Spyglass | 19,095 | 3.70% |
This caused all sorts of controversy – Majestic SEO got their knickers in a twist but the SEO Spyglass team handled it fantastically.
On the same day I published the post – I also applied to the Raven Tools affiliate program.
Jeremy Rivera – the Raven Tools affiliate manager at that time followed me on Twitter a few weeks later.
When I did my backlink checker test I was actually very disappointed with the backend of Raven Tools.
The front end looked very clean and well-polished, but the backend left an awful lot to be desired.
At that time I had no plans to follow up and take a closer look.
However I knew Raven Tools were working hard to improve the service and when they released the beta of their new Site Auditor they reached out to me for a review.
Jeremy acknowledges that my review of Raven Tools as a backlink checker was pretty poor, but he accepted it was fair & thorough.
Nearly 2 months after publishing the post and applying to the affiliate program – my application was approved!
Jeremy then very kindly reached out to me to offer his full support and any help with promoting Raven Tools.
They went on to highlight the fact that building honest & detailed reviews of Raven Tools was the best way to promote them.
Unfortunately in 11 months my honest review didn’t drive a single sale after 350 clicks and 72 trial signups.
But that was to be expected really due to their poor performance as a backlink checker.
In my April 2013 income report Jeremy kindly dropped by and left a comment.
We went back and forth a little discussing how Raven Tools could improve its affiliate offering.
As you can see Jeremy is very open and honest about the situation and we have a great relationship!
He even offered his advice on how to increase the conversion rate of the trials.
Jeremy was doing a great job as an affiliate manager. Since the initial post was published we had built a positive relationship!
We also discussed a follow up post comparing SEOMoz & Raven Tools after I had received requests from readers to create a more dedicated Raven Tools tutorial.
At this point I felt I had a great relationship with Raven Tools.
The original post mentioned the fact they offer a full suite of tools to manage campaigns – but checking backlinks was still part of their front end sales proposition.
Sure they didn’t perform that well as a backlink checker but they acknowledged that the test was fair but were working hard to improve their service.
Everything was great and I had spotted that Raven Tools had completely overhauled the back end, something I was previously very disappointed with.
They have also been adding new features to the suite nearly every week which is impressive by anyone’s measure.
So a more dedicated follow up post exploring the progress Raven Tools had made was certainly on the horizon!
Readers were asking for it & I like to give my readers what they want.
On October 30th, more than 10 months after publishing my case study to find the best backlink checker they terminated my affiliate account without warning.
I was pretty shocked by that, I was under the impression we had a great relationship!
As you can see I copied Jeremy into the reply and even used my bestest /sadface
At some point it seems Jeremy Rivera left the company and with it, so did my positive relationship with Raven Tools along with the companies affiliate management skills.
This was the reply I received to my /sadface
It took them less than 30 minutes to reply and destroy what was a positive relationship with someone that could have been a key affiliate.
An affiliate with an audience that wanted to hear more about Raven Tools.
OBVIOUSLY when I wrote the backlink checkers post I wasn’t trying to see which was the best one. I went to all that effort purely to find a way to rubbish Raven Tools in order to promote others… Apparently.
Interestingly this email came from one of Raven Tools founders, notice the use of the phrase ‘my company’.
A person that is in charge of key business decisions and the future direction of Raven Tools.
The direction they have chosen to take, is not a good one.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it had come from an affiliate manager, but the fact it has come from a key decision maker in the business sets off alarm bells left, right & centre.
They are certainly taking an aggressive approach to negative reviews.
The key quote from that email is this-
I seriously don’t mind fair criticism (which that was not) and I also don’t think it’s my place to tell you what to write. However, until we’re removed from that article, I have no desire to have you as an affiliate.
In essence, until I write something good about them, they are holding my affiliate account hostage.
Previously Raven Tools had told me my test was fair & thorough. Now they are telling me that it’s a misrepresentation & I was just looking for an opportunity to unfairly rubbish them.
They also don’t feel like it’s their place to tell me what to write but in the same sentence tell me to remove my honest review from the original post.
This certainly challenges their earlier communication to affiliates that stated the best way to generate sales was to provide an honest review.
What they actually meant to say was:
If you don’t write a positive honest review, we will shut you down.
Perhaps that’s why the affiliates that don’t write ‘honest’ reviews perform so poorly, because they don’t have an affiliate account anymore.
Sloppy drive by emails like that certainly don’t encourage me to write anything nice. But I will be honest.
So with that in mind, how can you trust any positive Raven Tools reviews?
They are actively scouring the internet and threatening people to remove any form of negativity about them across the web.
This sort of practice really grinds my gears.
Previously they were reaching out to people, building relationships and looking for ways to improve. What happened?
Although this email doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of their tools, you should check out their free trial and do your own evaluation!
I wanted to find out what was going on and had suddenly caused this threatening backlash.
So I responded with this email-
A pretty reasonable set of questions I thought.
They didn’t agree and ignored the email entirely! After throwing their toys out of the pram they wanted nothing more to do with the issue.
Over the next 2 weeks I sent them a few emails, each of which were ignored.
It really baffles me how we went from a positive relationship to this.
The Raven Tools founders were happy to slam me with threats and hold my affiliate account hostage. But when challenged on that, I might as well have been speaking to a brick wall.
I gave them plenty of time to fix the relationship and after being continually ignored it was time to take action.
I sent them a final email this morning-
And I jumped onto Twitter to shine some light on the issue-
Taking the issue to Twitter certainly caused some alarm internally at Raven Tools.
Very quickly I received this email from Jon Henshaw – one of the company founders and coincidentally the chief marketing officer.
Notice the subject line of the email chain leading up to that is Matthew Woodward which involved Nate (user support specialist) and Courtney (community manager).
There had obviously been some internal discussion about this.
But instead of being straight, Jon went with one of the oldest tricks in the book claiming ‘for whatever reason he didn’t receive my responses’.
Raven Tools have created some of the world’s leading Internet Marketing tools but their founders & support team haven’t grasped email yet?
It took them 30 minutes to reply to my original email asking why my account was terminated.
It took them 2 weeks, 3 emails and a tweet to stop ignoring my questions.
Something doesn’t add up.
In their initial response it was clear I had touched a personal nerve of one of the company’s founders. They spat their dummy out said their piece and then flat out ignored me.
Only when they realised I was going to expose the fact they are strong arming affiliates were they interested in speaking to me.
As a former slave to the corporate world – this is pretty standard corporate behaviour.
How can you trust a company that is either trying to force its affiliates into writing good things about them or to remove anything they don’t like?
That sort of attitude breeds a certain culture within businesses and as you can see.
Users trust their businesses and livelihoods with Raven Tools to help them make good business decisions.
Why can’t Raven Tools just be honest with us?
I reached out to some other affiliates in the industry to see what they thought of this kind of practice.
Matthew Barby – FindMyBlogWay.com
I’m really surprised that a major player in the market would essentially deny affiliate access of an account based on not performing well within a test. I read the article that was written on the blog that ran a full comparison of all the tools and it seems to be a completely legitimate test?
This is a shining example of how not to manage your brand’s reputation, whether it’s openly across social media or privately within email, you’ve got to be fair and open to your customers.
Suggesting that negative results around your product be removed in exchange for an incentive isn’t a way to deal with an issue (yes, that isn’t explicitly stated, but I think we all know where they were going with the email).
The solution is to take on board the comments from a user and adapt your offering.
Jacob King – JacobKing.com
As affiliates, we deal with this type of crap all the time. 99% of affiliates lay down and take it. It can often be a powerless position giving us few options when wronged. Unfortunately for Raven Tools, Matthew is that 1%.
This situation obviously should have been handled differently. Although I must say this is an interesting approach to rep management, strong arming affiliates that rank for brand related terms with poor reviews.
Bottom line is we aren’t powerless if we speak out, so let’s make this real simple, reactivate Matt’s affiliate account and step your game up.
Charles Floate – GodOfSEO.co
Now, I’m not one to get under people’s boots (hehe) but this was pretty stupid. There is some pretty reasonable things to assume out of this though. Either when their old guy left they’ve bought in some one new and he’s basically not been told what is going on OR (excuse my use of a Google footprint) the new email correspondent seems to of read your blog post and taken a Majestic stance even after building this relationship, though at least Majestic don’t call you ignorant and a few other insults thrown into the mix.
I’ve actually spoken with a few of the main guys at Majestic before, Raven just runs of Majestic’s API but only tends to update their index from the API every few months, and let me tell you Raven spend a quite large chunk of money on running through said API.
Also, a follow up to add onto this is that maybe we shouldn’t be promoting these damn marketing suites. This is the 2nd time I (and by my remembrance) Matt has been screwed by the exact same product, just by another company – Without any pre-notice (aka warning) Moz randomly shutdown their affiliate program when they were changing their brand from SEOMoz to Moz. In my opinion that was more to do with as they change brands, they get a ton more traffic from news/blog style sites and wanted to keep all that good PR money feeding their new bankroll.
Devin Santos – IMDevin.com
It seems like Raven Tools completely went about this the wrong way. If this were my software or service receiving a less than stellar review of my product, the first thing I would do is reach out to the author to see if we can work together on improving the product.
Hell, I would even offer some compensation to the author just to provide me a list of all the areas they feel would make the biggest improvement with my product.
The way I see it is when something like this happens the company has a few different choices.
1) Talk to the author about working together and making improvements towards their product
2) Ignore the review of their product completely
3) Become defensive, ignore the opportunity for product improvement and make negative accusations towards the author.It’s unfortunate to see a well-established company like Raven Tools took the latter route.
There is no doubt that this will end up hurting the company more in the long run then if they would have just reached out in the beginning and worked together to improve their product, but I guess even well established companies need to learn a lesson every once in a while.
Tom Ewer – LeavingWorkBehind.com
While one can argue the accuracy/fairness of your post if they want to (although from what I can see, one would be silly to), what you can’t argue with is that Raven Tools’ management of this incident has been terrible.
Put simply, from a brand management perspective, you shouldn’t — nay, mustn’t — treat people with anything other than respect, regardless of the way they treat you.
This situation reminds me of someone who left a review on Amazon saying that a Kindle book I was selling contained no useful information and was a “bait and switch” ploy. This was from someone who hadn’t actually purchased the book, and the product I was supposedly trying to bait and switch people into buying wasn’t even mentioned in the book.
I responded in a respectful manner in an attempt to clarify that I wasn’t trying to rip anyone off, and I still got torn to pieces by a bunch of people who couldn’t wait to get involved. Sometimes you can’t win, so at least do yourself a favour and give yourself the best possible chance!
You can be a complete angel and there’ll still be people out there trying to get you. Or you can screw up or provide a poor service and be the “victim” of some savvy reporting. It sounds like Raven Tools are in the second camp in this case and have dealt with the situation in a pretty shocking way. It’s a great example of what not to do.
Well you have to give it to Jon Henshaw – he has handled this like a true gent.
Matthew, after reading your post I have a much better idea of why you’re upset. I don’t think any of this would have happened if it wasn’t for me. I was having a bad day, saw your post and did something stupid. It’s easy to be passionate about something that is basically your baby.
I personally screwed up several times. First, I cancelled your affiliate account without having a dialogue with you first. (I just fixed that mistake by restoring your account, and I hope to talk to you person-to-person soon.) Second, I sent you a reply that was not professional. Third, I had communicated internally at the office that I was monitoring and communicating with you, so my team assumed that I had seen your followup messages that you sent to the affiliate email account. I didn’t see those until yesterday.
This really isn’t a Raven thing, it’s a Jon thing. Unfortunately, my actions are also connected to the company, so I also let down the amazing people who work here, along with my partners.
I want to publicly apologize to you and my company for how poorly I handled the situation. As you stated in your post, it’s an example of when a co-founder gets in the way of a good company trying to do good things.
It’s great to see that Raven Tools can be honest with us after all =D
Kudos to Jon and the rest of the Raven team.
Jon has provided us and other businesses with a shining example of how to deal with things like this.
He took ownership of his mistake with great courage and lets be honest, he nailed it.
I haven’t had time to speak to Jon directly yet as I wanted to get this update published ASAP but we will catch up soon 🙂
Thank you again to Jon for stepping up! Perhaps you could share some tips with Dixon Jones or Amys Baking Company!
There is great opportunity to create a very unique case study off the back of this 😉
Don’t let Jon’s bad day reflect on the quality of the tools Raven Tools provide.
While I haven’t tried them myself, they do offer a free 30 day trial so you can make your own mind up!
Raven Tools Review
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Hi,Ahhh I see, me and my British sports knowledge (which isn’t much lol)
Hi,Theres a lot Ravens marketing team can do with this – an opportunity to explore for sure!
Hi Kenneth,I think they will be moving forward from this positively!
Hahaha ^^
The only reason for the apology is because of how public you made this. Do you think that same would of happened without this post…?
Highly unlikely ^^
Hi, Matthew Woodward!I am so shocked when reading this article. I do also work on online business but just several months recently with little experience. So, this article is actually useful for me that help me beware of whether I should give it a try or not. Thanks for sharing. Look forwards to reading more useful information from you. Great job!
Cheers Tony!
MatthewGiven that a nice reply doesn’t change anything that happened….Will you be making use of your reinstated affiliate account and promoting a company that “Must Not Be Trusted”?
Well nothing changes the past, but it can change the future!The account was reactivated so the backlink checkers post still has the links but I won’t be switching these over to affiliate links.
I had an account with them for a while, cancelled it because:A: There are other tools that do what they do but better.B: They are expensiveWell done Matt, their customer service is appalling and there is one thing I really hate it is poor customer service
Hi,What other tools do you recommend based on your experience?
Haha, Good to see a non affiliate link to Raven’s site with an anchor text “their free trial” ;)btw, is that a dofollow link.nice to see this issue got sorted pretty quick.Kudos to both Matthew & Raven 😉
Hi,Yes it’s a dofollow link that they earnt naturally 🙂
Yup! The internet is barely old enough to drink let a alone lose it’s virginity 😀
What plugin or tool do you use to make the redirects on your site?I see all these domain.com/get/link how do I get this as well? Is this a I house plugin or hard coded software?
Hi,I’m using https://searchlogistics.com/get/thirstyaffiliates/ which also auto replaces text with links in the forum and plugs in Google Analytics event tracking!
Boom – what a post, and what a follow up.Thing is, the reply to me doesn’t seem genuine – it just sounds like someone scrabbling to put the fire out that they just lit. What can you do in that situation? Well I’d say not acting like a total tool and mouthing off over email to someone would be the best start, then you’d never had to try and deal with embarrassing situations like this./me also secretly notes to never p1ss Matthew off or sell any sub-standard products lol
Hi,Actually coming out and saying it was a Jon thing is a pretty big statement to make.
Hey Quentin! I have transitioned to a local agency in franklin as their Senior SEO. It pained me to see the relationship I’d built get damaged, but I did appreciate Jon owning his mistake(Take a moment to read the update!). I still use Raven tools at my new job and hope you still give them a shot 🙂
Hi Matt,Wow you went to town here… you got stamina that I can tell. :)I just completed my Raven trial … And I am not a happy bunny. It leaves so much to be desired … I am comparing with the new WebMeUp, MOZ and SEOProfiler – My point #1 I am not there to read manuals… If I have to.. I can watch a video… But page after page… Nope!Raven lost – Actually MOZ big time! – Then I boight SEOProfiler – That gotta go again… I ended up with SEO PowerSuite (desktop) and WebMeUp …Thx for your share here… It’s a good read!Peter
Hi Peter,Sounds like you would be in a pretty strong position to write an awesome comparison post ^^
Matt, I’m so glad to see Jon taking the courage to admit his actions and to publicly apologize. This is how the management should act in order to turn unfortunate events into real life examples. Wishing there could be more people out there to follow the courage. In the end, as I said before, to err is human. It’s good when everything is settled. 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_derby – Probably one of the strangest but most entertaining sports of all time. His twitter bio in the screenshot you posted says he’s a referee for that sport!Regardless, he seems like a good guy. I was just wondering if he had any words on why he left Raven Tools that might give you further insight into the tomfoolery going on over there. Could be interesting.Good post though.
Excellent response Jon Henshaw @Raventools, now seize the opportunity that lies before you… before its gone!Hint – who came bottom of the pile in the “Majestic” test and how did they gain an advantage!
I know what I would do, Raven could turn this into a full blown case study from there end. How to dial with bad PR 101 ^^
Yup that was my point to be harsh because I don’t like bullies of any kind. This is your blog and you can write about anything you choose and how you convey that message. You provided an opinion based upon a set of parameters. Raven Tools scored poorly compared to the others. Simple and straight forward data analysis. If someone tries to censor me because they didn’t like an open and honest review – I tell them exactly where to go and how to get there. Business is business and if there tools are not up to par – then they have some work to do now don’t they? Perhaps Raven will get their shit together and realize you are actually trying to help them make a better product. Cheers dude and as always appreciate your in depth articles..
Whoah man! I was sitting on the edge of the couch! I am so glad that Jon followed up and ate cro…Raven with a personal apology. I do regret I wasn’t able to get your first email but not working there (I work for http://caddisint.com now) meant I didn’t have access to that email. I hope that everyone that saw the post before the response gets a chance to re-read and check out the update. BTW I think you acted like a sir! I put together my thoughts into a gif laden post (WHo doesn’t like a good GIF?): http://jeremyriveraseo.com/seo/mea-culpa-raven-tools-pulls-it-out-of-the-fire/
Thanks for jumping in and updating Jeremy 🙂
You make a great point Matt. It’s us affiliates who are in the trenches everyday getting feedback from our customers. What I don’t understand is why they (Raven Tools) don’t see this as constructive criticism. I believe this speaks volumes about how much influence you have in the affiliate marketing space. Have an awesome weekend!
Taking advantage of the controversy surrounding the banning of your affiliate account to create a lot of ‘buzz’ and consequently lots of traffic for your blog was an excellent execution of a golden opportunity. Well played sir, well played ;).
Thanks ^^
There you go 🙂
Hi,I suppose its fine line to walk as a blogger. I have to remain impartial while managing positive relationships with negative associations. Imagine how awkward it was when SEO Spyglass came last after the company had just given me thousands of dollars of prizes =/ At the same time I have an audience to educate/engage. It’s like being a teacher, a journalist and an entertainer at the same time. Its very hard to balance!
Thanks for the share!
I apologize for the shameless promotion, but here’s something I built a few months ago using Excel and any backlink provider which allows you to find common sites that link to your competitors but not to you: http://moz.com/blog/competitive-link-analysis-link-intersect-in-excel (basically a replication of Moz’s Competitive Link Finder / Link Intersect tool).It’s not entirely free I guess since you do need a backlink provider, but I think it’s something along the lines that James is talking about.PS: Awesome post Matt! Pretty sad that happened, I’ve met Jon Henshaw in a few of Max Minzer’s hangouts which I really enjoyed.
Yeah, I do get that it was Jon for that initial round. I was referring to the second one. But yes, I’m actually not surprised he responded and the reasons seems fair enough as well from his end. They DID drop the ball anyway and it’s turned into a bit of a mess and that’s Jon’s fault for sure. I also agree that it’s completely fair that you check their backlink tool — after all, it is advertised. However, I can also see WHY they felt there was a slight misrepresentation in the review. I agree with the other person who made the comment about LTP. I suppose a small disclaimer paragraph would have been good but you can’t always cater to all needs/wants. I do really look forward to a full review of the product! 🙂 Still – – do you not think your headlines and tweets were a little too News of the World? I suppose it’s a good way to get readers to check out the blog. Considering how many emails I’m getting about followup comments I’m guessing it did the trick!
Hi,Take a look at he update Roxana 🙂
Just checked it out. Talk about owning up. He did a great job at admitting mistakes. I wish more companies were like that.
They would all make more money fo’ sure!
The questions are, has this episode damaged the brand? Will that affect jobs at Raven? What happened to Jeremy? And, do you still think they should not be trusted?I suppose the confusion is that of trust. If they are not to be trusted, then why look at the update? How does that change the trust? Do they make a humble apology to try to win it back? And if not, why not? So many questions and so little time.
Wise words 🙂 We all start somewhere and there is rarely a one size fits all solution.
Have a look at the update. Responsible they are!
Well it could be that the tools are good – thats what the trial is for 🙂
I actually talked to Jeremy and he was a pretty nice guy. He did a great job of outreach. He was the one who encouraged me to check to out Raven Tools. It was ok when I tried it. It’s too bad that they took a turn for the worst. Also, it’s very surprising how terrible they reacted. Good on you for telling it like it is Matthew.
Hi Iain,Be sure to check out the update 🙂
😀 Thanks Iain for the kind words, even when you’ve left a company it’s nice to know you left a positive mark.
Thank you for your candid insight into this situation.They got your very-valid questions Matthew; they just couldn’t be bothered to respond to them.Sadly such experiences are too common. Affiliates are way too often treated like dirt (it’s one of the reasons why the majority of affiliates I’ve come across in my 16 years in affiliate marketing have left the industry) and suffer their frustrations in silence. That’s why it’s laudable that you have aired how you’ve been treated.
Hi,Yeah we usually get the shitty end of things as affiliates, but affiliates have the power the make or break!
Great write-up, Matthew.I remember reading your post about backlink checkers and didn’t feel that Raven Tools came off that bad, actually. I know others that have had a good experience and found value, so your article didn’t particularly push me in one direction or another…I just thought it was interesting.THIS post, however, shows me they seriously don’t have their shit together over there – some serious communication issues.Bravo to you for not cowering in the corner and laying out this horrible customer service experience here with us. This is a great lesson for all of us that deal with customers regularly.
Thanks Justin – I agree we need bad and good reviews to make a fair judgement!
I REALLY love it when you dish it out like this Matt. Makes for seriously good reading 🙂
Cheers Greg – if only you knew what was coming next 😛
Sooo… How’s Jeremy doing these days? Still a roller derby ref?
I have no idea what that means but I hope all is well with him!
Ha! I haven’t had a chance to put on skates since my daughter was born, but as soon as she is old enough we’re headed to the rink to practice together so I can be in good enough shape for that.
Seriously interesting read Matthew, having spent time on the Affiliate side of the equation, I can’t understand why they wouldn’t put heavy intrinsic value into their clientele. Seems like a shoot yourself in the foot move to me. I think the serious issue that seems to be skirted around is more so the denial of a poor product by Raven Tools, ignoring a fair analysis from a leading industry player just seems idiotic, I would have thought a better way for them to have responded when faced with a scathing report from someone with the clout of Matthew Woodward would be something along the lines of:”Hi, we saw your fair and thorough report of Raven Tools that was posted on your blog, whilst we have some reservations about some of the testing, we’d love to know how you think we could improve the tool so that we can avoid poor write-ups in the future.”Not:”We don’t think you’re right, shut it down or we’ll smear you.”Haters gonna hate.
Hi David,I have worked with a number of products/services to improve their proposition in the past. Why do you think GSA SER has tiered linking support for example ^^
I do not have a relationship with Raven, but I have spoke with their managers a few times at conferences and I’ve heard fantastic things about their tools, which makes me so sad to read this post. I’ve been doing affiliate management for a long time and one of the things I’ve learned is that you can almost always take a bad situation and turn it into an extremely positive situation.Some of the best relationships I have with affiliates started out negative: I had to work that much harder to prove that there was value behind what I was representing.I have a feeling that this is a terrible case of having the wrong person in the wrong seat at the wrong time. I know your main point throughout this post is not to bash the tools, but to make people aware that the reviews they are reading may be biased because of a negative response by Raven, but I’d bet a few dollars that if that were actually the case this would have come up already.I appreciate the time you put into your post and Raven definitely deserves a slap on the wrist for the situation they’ve put you and themselves in, but overall I think this was just a bad timing. Them ignoring your email is absolutely ridiculous and that’s a management issue on their end they need to take care of.Again, nothing again Raven and I wish them the best, but they need to learn from this and make some policy changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Probably wouldn’t hurt to write a follow up to you either :)BTW, your link is messed up in this paragraph:”What you read here doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of their tools and I urge you to check out their 30 day free trial and make your own mind up!”
Wise words Luke 🙂
WAY to GOOOO, Matt! I can’t believe how they treated you even after all of the respectful banter between you and Jeremy that occured well beyond your not-so-stellar review of their backlink checking abilities. It didn’t even “rubbish” their company.. you focused on other backlink checkers much more heavily in that post. I would be very hesitant/concerned for my own reputation/brand when it comes to exposing such a big player like this. Good move gathering what other industry members think as well.. and thank you for posting this!! 🙂
Hi,No worrys 🙂
Your article raises another issue that transcends the antics of RavenTools. Isn’t it high time for an alternate income-generating model in the blogging world? A reviewer who is – either at the time of the review or thereafter – an affiliate for the product he reviews, creates the perception of conflict of interest, regardless how fair and impartial the review is. {Underline “perception”} To put this into perspective, a doctor is not permitted to receive perks from a drug company, even if he does not prescribe the drugs they produce…because it creates the perception of conflict of interest, period. The alternate model: I’d prefer to pay for a review by a reviewer who does not have an affiliate link. Hey, I do this already, by subscribing to Consumer Reports, LemonAid, etc.
Hi Stan,Very valid points but just because someone is affiliated with a company doesn’t always present bias.Eg SEO Spyglass also featured in the backlink checkers post. They had just given me thousands of dollars of prizes for the readers, I’m also their #1 BuzzBundle affiliate. They came last.
No, I never used Raven Tools. I meant I was planning to buy this because there were lot of reviews that saying Raven was good. But I wonder this is how they get good reviews? thanks for Sharing. : – )
Thanks for this Matt! Once upon a job, I was the head SEO for a US-based fitness franchise, with an assistant in local search and brand/reputation management. One of the tools we had available was Raven, which we ran alongside other comparison tools for our data, and wound up killing off Raven and going with Backlink Monitor/get/Ahrefs highest tier account to compile the data we needed. It just wasn’t cutting it for the type of volume we were doing with linkbuilding and SEO in general. This was around March last year, I’m sure they’ve changed the back end.But all things aside, I’m waiting to see a company response as graceful and accommodating as Amy’s Baking Company come from a marketing company.Keep it coming!
Hi,That is a problem with all backlink checkers. For example-1) None of them provide a complete view2) None of them provide live dataIt’s basically a case of choosing the best turd.
Pretty worrying if a company only wants affiliates to promote positive comments. I used Raven for 6 months, I also tested their affiliate program with Share A Sale, didn’t do well with either. Good article regardless, keep up the good work.
Thanks James!
Completly agree with you. I quit using them a while ago. I don’t like companies that don’t respect me…
What problems did you face?
http://www.reactiongifs.com/popcorn-gifs/
Anom nom!
Maybe Raven should have written your review for you instead??? After all, if they wanted your opinion -they would have told you what it was. “Raven Fools” will be off my list. Thanks for the honest share and outing of these charlatans.
Touche ^^
you would think tools like raven would embrace affiliates especially SEO affiliates because most buyers are doing online searches first comparing tools than just buying as “cold” traffic. Warm buyers are the ones who will convert to sales rather than the cold traffic just bails after free trials.
Well the search results for ‘Raven Tools’ and ‘Raven Tools Review’ look a bit different now.
Matt, what a great write up and very thorough. We shouldn’t take this bullying from companies who get most of their revenue from hard working affiliates. I sense a new website coming – “Affiliate Programs Exposed” lol
What would you feature in that?Test they are tracking commissions properly etc? I know who my first target would be 😉
Well that could have been handled a tad better.
Take a look at the update!