• Small Business Hub, Wednesday, October 10, 2007 1:15 PM

Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of the Web marketing software firm HubSpot, wrote this piece in defense of the company's WebsiteGrader tool, a free service that analyzes a site for a number of "vital signs" like traffic, navigational issues and common SEO factors, and rates it on a scale of 1 - 100.

While some bloggers have showered WebsiteGrader with acclaim, others like Michael Gray have taken the stance that Webmasters who use the tool can actually overlook critical errors that have a negative impact on their search traffic. Gray argues that WebsiteGrader can lull site owners into a false sense of security - and that it promotes a kind of automation that's bad for the SEO practice as a whole. Shah's piece offers a link to Gray's blog and then his rebuttal -- with a list of four reasons why automated services like HubSpot's should be part of every search pro's toolbox.

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