Yes, there’s definitely more than enough hype in this industry. The way I see it: It works in the short term, but in the long run, the hype-masters are shooting themselves in the foot, because people don’t trust their messages anymore, once they’ve been disappointed a few times.

PS I am tired of products that are so hyped up and I then I purchase it and end up being dissatisfied.

Thanks for your comment.

Awesome that you got some results with the authority codes! Way to go! I bet that 90% of people only read the report and then do nothing about it…

The software is definitely a “made for freebie” kind of thing and judgeing by the comments on the launch blog, it worked to impress a lot of newbies. Marketing tool rather than market research tool, I guess.

I thought Ryan’s report was one of the best on SEO that I’ve come across this year. His theory does make sense and I wouldn’t be surprised that it was true. It is speculative but like you said he does have a lot of test data that he bases his theory on. I did try out his authority codes on one of my sites which suddenly got a boost from page 2 to page 1 on Google but it remains to be seen how long it’ll stay there.

Like everyone else here, I thought his software was a tremendous let down. It’s funny how this is 2nd software I’ve come across that is supposed to be over 10k and it’s built on Adobe AIR. I didn’t know AIR programmers cost so much. ;) It’s definitely not a tool I’d use in my market research because it’s too limited in it’s function. There are plenty of good alternatives as mentioned by others.

Does activity help? Sure, I think that’s a mark of any healthy website anyway. The takeaway for me is, like Ryan says, with any site make sure you cover all 3 aspects: content, links and activity. Simple but effective I think.

Still, just using Comment Kahuna (free) will get you those types of comment links much more easily.

I’m a bit disappointed with most of the launch, but I reckon the product itself will be pretty good. I’ve seen some of Ryan’s stuff and that guy is smart. Like, very smart.

He definitely knows what he’s doing, marketing wise.

Of course, with the price tags of these products it’s always a question of whether they’re really worth it.

I could go on about pricing, but I reckon I’d better do a separate blog post on that topic. :)

It probably did have some effect a few years back, but today, I doubt it makes any difference.

To sum this entire launch until now, I really didn’t see any valuable information being shared. The first report was good but the activity thing was the only “new” stuff that was revealed and I don’t buy that.

The cherry picker probably cost $100 to make and Traffic Travis gives you more information for free.

The last part about this codes is even worse than the first two. This is truly as basic as it gets.

But, Shane is right, after all this is said and done, Ryan is probably still going to make a killing with this product thanks to the “beginners” in the market.

As for the authority codes, I think you’re right. It is pretty basic stuff, unless he offers a new twist, somehow. Apart from anything else, I think that .gov and .edu are vastly overrated.

I don’t think it has anything to do with assuming the prospects are stupid, though. You need to realize that in Internet marketing, about 90% or more of the market consists of “beginners”, because so many people come into the market every day, so many people take forever to make any money and so many people give up, before they get anywhere.
I think that’s one of the main reasons why almost every product is targeted towards beginners.

I agree that it makes some sense, in theory, to take human activity into account. Then again, how can G determine whether activity is “real” or not? I could deactivate my spam-filter and get severeal hundred comments a day, for example. :P

As for the future things coming from this launch… I guess Deiss is going reveal some “secret authority codes”, as he calls them. In his launch blog I think he mentioned that these codes will be some search queries to find edu and gov sites, and things like that… Really really basic stuff, at least for many people. Well, I guess Deiss just thinks his prospects are idiots, or something like that.

A lot of what he says makes sense, although I don’t know if I agree with him completely on the importance of “activity”.

From an end user, factoring in human activity on a website would certainly be beneficial for better quality searches, although at this stage I haven’t really seen any evidence for it.