Software Type: Desktop Software (Windows)
Cost: $97

TheDowser is a piece of software that has been gaining a lot of publicity lately. I was able to get a pre-release copy to review to see what all the fuss was about. I have heard lots of promotion and read lots of sales copy and teleconference transcripts harking its praises. I was keen to see if this software really lived up to its promotional efforts, or if the praises were more motivated by the strong affiliate program.

I installed my copy of TheDowser Professional, fired it up and set to work. Here is what I found.

My Experience

I opened up the software and I was welcomed to a very nice looking, but complex interface. It was one of the most professional pieces of software in the review from an aesthetic standpoint, with a very modern design looking much like a piece of software Microsoft might have designed.

I looked through the settings to see if there was any proxy set-up. They had a very nice way of doing this by allowing multiple proxies to be set up and the software would automatically and randomly choose which one to use. This is an excellent feature that stops any negative attention from the search engines. This helps to avoid getting your IP address banned.

Once I had this set up to my liking, I jumped in and started using the software. This was a bad move. It became quite confusing very quickly and I ended up with too many keyword lists that became of little use to me. I had folders upon folders of keywords in no logical order and often they were completely off target.

Despite my normal aversion to help files, I had no choice but to look through these because I was feeling a bit lost. They were generally good, even though they left out one or two key steps. Nonetheless, I was able to get moving with the tool in a more organized way.

I went through it as the help files outlined and began my research. It brought me back a couple of keyword lists as compiled in the folder structure on the left.

I noticed that it wouldn’t populate the data automatically. You will notice in the screenshot only a few of the lines in the data grid were filled. Basically, you had to press update for each of these individually. Most software will go ahead and fill it for you.

I had a hunt around the settings and I couldn’t find anywhere to make this work automatically. I then tried to highlight all of the keywords/ phrases and press update, but it gave me a message telling me that I was unable to process that many keywords. It said that Google would lock you out after 40 processes.

This is certainly true, but I think this problem should be handled by the delay settings and proxy switches that are available in the software itself. This software has excellent methods for circumventing this and I think they should use it more so that it doesn’t add two extra steps every time you want to process the keywords in this way.

The actual data it did grab was really quite good. For each search it gave:

• Similar drill down of keywords (which was generally lateral)
• Specific drill down of keywords (which was other specific key phrases that included your original key phrase)
• Popularity (which was just the same as search volume)
• Competition Information (bids, bid cost, the actual ad with the full text, as well as search results)
• Wordtracker Import Data

The Wordtracker import was excellent as it allowed you to either copy the Wordtracker web page, or else the emails that they sent (even multiples at a time). This imported the keywords well, but didn’t import any of the other data that Wordtracker provides very well, if at all.

The export features were above average with the ability to export as text, CSV and HTML as well as be able to print your lists.

I must admit the biggest problem I have with this software is not the features. They have put some excellent features into this package and I hear they have plenty more in the pipeline. Nor is my beef with the interface. On the surface the interface is very nice, with pretty icons, nice warning messages and it is well laid out. My biggest problem with this software is the usability.

I found it quite clumsy and the way things are done seems counter intuitive at times. I have been known to be a bit strict on usability in the past. Perhaps it comes from my psychology and HCI (human computer interaction) background. So perhaps I am being a bit hard on the software in this way.
However, I think that this software would be a lot better if things were done slightly differently. I found my keyword lists to get out of hand very quickly and they lost their value as I was unable to get the kind of information I was looking for from them due to their size. I prefer to work with single groups of words and then drill down based on filtering and labeling methods. I find the usability of folder systems break down very quickly. What is the use of lots of large keyword lists if I cannot mine the valuable data from them easily?

Now in saying this, they have built in a huge amount of flexibility into this software, with the ability to merge lists, add columns and other keyword management strategies. I am sure there will be people out there who might like to work in this way. For me personally, I didn’t and I think that only a select few will be able to get the value out of this flexibility. I think most people will find it too difficult to use in a meaningful way and will prefer to use other more intuitive software.

Summary

So what did I end up with after using TheDowser?

• Thousands of relevant and quite irrelevant keywords with Supply, Demand, KEI, Ad Data, competition data, lateral keywords as well as imported Wordtracker data.

Strong Aspects

The strong points of this product:

• Visually pleasant.
• Good use of proxy server.
• Can potentially generate very large lists.
• Can work with the data in flexible and powerful ways.
• Can save sessions.
• Wordtracker importer.
• Extra data that many others don’t have e.g. see the actual ads etc.

Weak Aspects

The weak points of this product:

• Not intuitive and gets unwieldy quickly.
• Slow to use.
• Long learning curve.

Who is it ideal for?

This software is suitable for more advanced Niche Miners, and PPC advertisers due to its more complex interface, and corresponding learning curve.

Ratings

For Niche Miners:
For Search Engine Optimizers:
For Pay Per Click Advertisers:
For AdSense Publishers:
Usability:
Value:

Site: Visit TheDowser Now!