The historically popular search engine ranking software, WebPosition, has reportedly been blocked by Google from checking rankings automatically.
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that WebPosition is no longer able to process one's search rankings as of August 5, 2008. Old time WebmasterWorld member, Barbara 'WebMama' Coll, who has been a member of WebmasterWorld since 2002, said:
Has anyone else noticed that after years of threatening it appears that Google has now blocked WP Gold from reporting rankings through their tool? We called the WP support line and they said they are waiting for Google to 'do' something and have NO ETA has to when it will be fixed.
There is no estimated time when the software will begin working again. This software has been around forever and I believe Google has threatened to block it many times. In fact, Google has named WebPosition Gold in their SEO guidelines saying, "Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google."
So maybe Google did something about it finally? Or maybe not. Time will tell.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.