Why aren’t you Blog Rushing?

Posted on September 16, 2007 
Filed Under Blogging, Traffic

There is certainly no shortage of people writing about BlogRush.com this weekend. And, for good reason.

If you haven’t already heard, BlogRush is a new services that takes the RSS feed from your blog and displays a headline on other blogs who are also in the BlogRush network. The sites you will be displayed on is based on the category you select for your site. This keeps the article headlines related to your site’s content.

The base idea behind this isn’t new. This is the Web 2.0 version of a Banner Exchange network. The different being, rather than being stuck with 1 banner to display in a network across thousands of sites, instead your headlines and your site name get displayed on like minded sites. It looks to be quite powerful. Like so many others, I’m testing it out to see how much extra traffic it will bring to the site.

To give you a quick idea on how it works, you sign up your blog and then place a small chunk of code that will display a box like the one shown here. Then, each time your page is loaded, your account gets credited with 1 view. Now, when somebody loads up a different website in your same category, a listing for your site will be shown 1 time. It’s a 1 for 1 exchange. You can earn extra credits by referring others to sign up for an account. For each page view on their site, not only do they get 1 page view credit, so do you. The referral credits are given 10 levels deep. If you happen to get a popular site to sign up under you, you can really rack up some valuable credits.

If you are using Google Adsense on your site, you should probably steer clear of BlogRush for the time being. This post from the Google Adsense blog suggests that traffic exchange programs are against the rules for sites using Adsense.

While this is most likely not the be-all-end-all of traffic generators, it is certainly worth testing out. I’m sure in a week or two you will see another set of posts from the Blogosphere telling you how good or bad the Blog Rush is treating them. I’m sure I’ll be one of ‘em.

Let the rush begin!

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Comments

7 Responses to “Why aren’t you Blog Rushing?”

  1. Jason on September 16th, 2007 3:28 pm


    If you are using Google Adsense on your site, you should probably steer clear of BlogRush for the time being. This post from the Google Adsense blog suggests that traffic exchange programs are against the rules for sites using Adsense.

    Nah. IANAL, but I don’t think this violates any TOS. Contact your AdSense rep if you’re unsure though.

    This isn’t really a traffic exchange program. You’re not forcing anyone to involuntarily visit your site for credit. You’re not falsely generating any traffic. In fact, StumbleUpon would be closer to a traffic generation program than BlogRush is. You’re displaying headlines in exchange to get headlines displayed. Users can click if they are interested, but there isn’t any direct traffic benefit for doing so. This is strictly impression based.

  2. All the cool kids are smoking BlogRush these days. by Jason Murphy on September 17th, 2007 12:58 am

    [...] others, I’m testing it out to see how much extra traffic it will bring to the site. - Geeeek on Why aren’t you Blog Rushing? Traffic Equals [...]

  3. CFernandes on September 17th, 2007 4:44 pm

    I have also signed-up to try and gather some referrals, should this thing be around in a few months…

    but I will also be doing a post in a couple of days explaining exactly why this will not be a success.

    PS. You are however off base on the Adsense issue, we shouldn´t even be calling this a “traffic exchange”

  4. John on September 17th, 2007 6:19 pm

    @Jason & CFernandez - I was only suggesting to steer clear for Adsense sites until something definite could be figured out. If you are going to bend the Adsense rules, I would rather do that for something that has been around longer than a few days.

    I’ll be happy to add the BlogRush code to my other sites if:
    1) There is no Adsense fallout
    2) I see some amount of incoming traffic from the BlogRush network.

    We shall see.

  5. Jason on September 17th, 2007 11:26 pm

    I hear ya on #2. I haven’t seen a single referrer from BlogRush yet. Although, would the referral string be from BlogRush.com or from the actual site that your headline appeared on? I didn’t see any redirects happening when I clicked through a few sites.

  6. Jason on September 17th, 2007 11:35 pm

    Correction, I just saw my first BR referrer string. Looks like this:

    http://widget.blogrush.com/box.php?f=89111667&url=http%3A//www.shoemoney.com/2007/09/17/uh-oh-uh-oh-here-comes-the-hammer-techcrunch40-coverage/&ref=http%3A//widget.blogrush.com/box.php%3Ff%3D20535461%26url%3Dhttp%253A//squeezednews.blogspot.com/2007/09/generate-web-site-traffic-with-video.html%26ref%3Dhttp%253A//widget.blogrush.com/box.php%253Ff%253D89111667%2526url%253Dhttp%25253A//www.shoemoney.com/2007/09/16/how-to-get-45k-impressions-a-day-from-blogrush%2526ref%253Dhttp%25253A//www.theultimatepublishing.com/blog/blog-rush-review-collection%2526r%253D0.9667470198901124%26r%3D0.38680653711166535&r=0.6010764462878352

    I feel like I’m flying blind because BR still isn’t showing any stats and reports are still “in development”. One clickthru on X amount of impressions = I have no idea.

    I have seen my site on the BR widget across other sites though.

  7. Anja on June 26th, 2008 9:28 pm

    I got it on my site as well. You have to make sure to post frequently and you must have good content, if not they tell you to take the code off your site and you are not getting any exposure. Happen to me on one blog, didn’t made enough posts.
    On the current blog it is working fine. no trouble at all and my posts get more exposure, showing my site on the BR widget of other blog sites.

    Anja

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