Can SEO software hurt your site?

If Search Engines frown upon their use...

[afaik]

Is it possible that Google and the other search engines could take such a dim view of rank and link checking software products, being used to flood their engine with hundreds of keyword queries, that they might be tempted to penalize sites for which too many queries are run?

At least one such software has a feature that lets you run your queries in a manner that simulates a real person's queries, with random time intervals between queries... is this prudent, or a waste of time?

Would it be wiser in the long run to create our own checker using an API, or would the extra time and effort simply be reinventing the wheel already available in existing packages?

How many queries may start get you into the radar of being considered annoying?

[edited by: jatar_k at 7:20 pm (utc) on Feb. 26, 2008]
[edit reason] no specifics thanks [/edit]

[le_gber]

There is no real life example of any site being penalised for automated queries. What the software usually does is pass on the query and it then scrape the results and match it with your domain name locally - ie your domain name is never 'sent' to the search engine.

However, if you run automated software regularly - and you shouldn't use them at all - from one IP and then go and check your Google Analytics or Adsense account from the same IP - well Google can put 2 and 2 together - and may at some point decide to take action.

[MadeWillis]

I've heard of people not being able to run any more queries on Google because crossed a certain threshold. I have no idea what the threshold is, but this penalty only lasts for the remainder of that day. However, I've not heard any reports of penalties placed on an individual site. le_gber stated that the results are only scraped and matched up locally, which is why Google would look at the IP address. If it were the other way I could just as easily run queries against my competitor's site and get them into trouble.

If you are going to use software to do this be careful how often you run it, how many queries you are running it against (only run it for words that you could/should be ranking for, time between queries, and how many SERPs you want to look at. I've used a certain ranking software in the past and have had no problems, but I always kept the above in mind.

[afaik]

Good point about competitors being vulnerable...

Well, then it would seem to be a good feature to use, namely the ability to space out queries in a random manner that might simulate a human user.

That would be the wisest course, that and avoid using your domain name as one of the keywords your checking. But if you must, throw in your competitors domains as well... ;-)

[jimbeetle]

Back some years ago when GoogleGuy was active (wonder where he ever went off to? ;-)), and was giving specific reasons for site problems, one of the oft-cited ones was, "You used [insert fave SEO software here]".

[caveman]

This is an old issue:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[webmasterworld.com...]

Be careful. ;-)