BlogRush is as good for the blogger as the visitor
Before you groan at yet another post about BlogRush (which I’m trying out at my Family Relationships blog right now) this post may be a little different.
Though the primary aim of BlogRush is to get your articles displayed on other web sites within your niche, based on how many people visit your own web site, I’ve found that the widget is quite a useful snapshot of other relevant blogs and articles that I don’t already have in my feed reader.
I’ve already found several new web sites, or at least useful articles, as a result of simply clicking through what was displayed on the widget when I visited my home page (I’ll admit I was looking to see if one of my own articles was being shown – it wasn’t).
Fortunately there’s no penalty for clicking through on these links as there would be for something like AdSense. Neither do I keep refreshing my home page for more impressions (I’m sure these would get filtered out to stop people trying to game the system).
Just thought I’d share this little discovery.
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September 18th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
[...] BlogRush is as good for the blogger as the visitor [...]
September 19th, 2007 at 5:58 am
While it can be a convenient way for your to find new relevant blogs, it just isn’t worth it.
Relevance for all headlines that show up on your widget is not guaranteed. You don’t know what kind of unsafe blogs you’re linking too.
And as many have found out, you don’t get the kind of traffic that the service suggest you would.
If you need a way to find relevant blogs, I would suggest Technorati.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Granted. At least the links made aren’t directly to the target blogs, but via a BlogRush script, so at least the originating site shouldn’t be penalised for unknowingly linking to “bad neighbourhood” sites  unless of course BlogRush becomes such a site.
Of course there’s Technorati, and I get a lot of my niche news from direct search feeds into Google Reader, but I’m not writing off BR completely just yet.
BR is certainly not a reliable, consistent, or quick way of finding new feeds, but it’s not completely useless either.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:17 am
True. It’s not completely useless, but “bad neighborhood” has to do with how Google sees your blog. The point I was trying to raise is simply linking to bad blogs.
Normally, you wouldn’t suggest bad blogs or harmful sites for your visitors to go to, why would you allow that to take place on a widget that you have no control over you know what I mean?
September 19th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Oh I see. Sorry I was in SEO mode
Yes I see what you mean. Oh well, no-one seems to be interested in the widget on most sites anyway as it’s so low down on the sidebar