FirstPlace Software, creators of the popular web site marketing software WebPosition Gold, recently announced the forthcoming release of the long-awaited version 2 of their product. WPG v2.0 is already available in Beta format (see link below) and boasts an impressive number of new features to help web masters ensure their web sites are spider friendly, ranking highly and submitted to the most appropriate search engines and directories worldwide.

I decided to review the BETA version of the new software and share my findings via this article. I have limited my review to the new features and enhancements provided for the options I use, rather than concentrate on all features of the product. For ease of reference, I've also listed my analysis of the new features under the same headings used by WPG here: http://www.webposition.com/wpg2upgrade.htm .

General Enhancements

1) More Engines

Support for an additional 60 search engines and directories is probably the most newsworthy feature of WebPosition Gold 2.0 and a major convincing factor influencing existing users to upgrade to version 2.0 and non-users to become customers. The added support for regional search engines in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Spain, Mexico,
Latin America, Russia, Italy, China, Japan, Scandinavia and the Netherlands is a major selling point because it allows users to check their rankings on, submit to and design their web pages for search engines and directories in these countries.

Over time, WPG has probably lost significant market share to TopDog, reporting software that offers support for over 200 regional search engines. But this WPG enhancement, combined with existing features, makes WPG more attractive than ever before. A few observations: the BETA version of WPG v2.0 does not yet offer support for New Zealand or Mexican engines, despite the listing above. I'm hoping these will be added in time for the full release. Also the claim that the search engines of Spain and Latin America are covered is a bit misleading because the BETA version only covers three Spanish language engines under Spain/Latin America rather than country specific engines. Also there appears to be a Scandinavian engine Passagen lumped in with the Spain/Latin American engines - obviously a temporary glitch. Also, some countries are represented more fully than others, for example, 10 engines are listed for Germany, but only two for China and Russia. Hopefully these numbers will increase with future updates.