BlogRush, You’re Kidding Me
Posted by Tamar Weinberg on October 22nd, 2007
Last month, I wrote a piece saying that BlogRush was a waste of time and that nobody should invest in the service. I signed up (to see what it was all about) and never bothered installing the widget given that I’ve had experience with “traffic generating widgets” before, and they’ve been anything but positive.
Today, much to my surprise, I received an email from the BlogRush team stating that “We regret to inform you that your BlogRush Account has been made INACTIVE because your blog did not pass our Quality Review criteria.” Their “strict quality guidelines” are outlined below:
- The blog contains unique, quality content that provides opinions, insights, and/or recommended resources that provide value to readers of the blog. Articles, videos, public domain works, press releases, and content written by others are okay to be used on the blog, but the ratio of unique content should far outweigh content from other sources.
- The blog should be updated on a regular basis (at least several times a month) and should not just go a few months between posts.
- The blog should already contain at least 10-12 quality posts. New blogs with very little content will not be accepted.
- The blog’s primary contain must be in English. BlogRush is currently not available for non-English blogs.
- The blog should not contain an excessive amount of advertising and links and very little actual content. The focus of the blog should be quality content.
- The primary content of the blog should not be “scraped” content from other sources and/or script-generated pages for the sole purpose of search engine rank manipulation. The focus of the blog should be quality content.
- The blog’s content (or advertising) should not contain any of the following types of content: hate, anti-racial, terrorism, drug-related, hacking, phishing, fraud, pornographic, nudity, warez, gambling, copyright infringement, obscene or disgusting material of any kind, or anything considered illegal.
Can someone tell me where I’ve gone wrong here? I assume that BlogRush does not want to be affiliated with sites that speak negatively of the program, which of course, I did. (What else is new? 
) I’d be interested to see if others have suffered the same fate. Honestly, it’s not a loss to me, but I suppose you all should steer clear of offending the BlogRush review squad because you, too, may get deactivated from their program.
I’ve gone one step further to apply a wildcard filter for widget.blogrush.com* using AdBlock on Firefox (even though I don’t really see BlogRush widgets anyway).
On that note, for those of you who are using BlogRush, are you getting traffic? Andy didn’t like it and it looks like Darren removed the widget from his site after his CTR report as well. So, bloggers, was it worth the hype?
Update: I don’t know why I didn’t think of it (maybe because I wrote this post at 1:15AM), but I just linked to Facebook Flyer advertising the BlogRush program that I found on Facebook yesterday.
52 Responses to “BlogRush, You’re Kidding Me”
Trackbacks/Pings:
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It Ain’t No Cure For BlogRash Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:12 am[...] Techipedia: Tamar Weinberg, the author of the blog suspects that her account was suspended because she wrote a negative post about BlogRush some time ago. [...]
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Quick House Keeping | Blogging Experiment Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:23 am[...] appears BlogRush is throwing the baby out with the bathwater in implementing their new quality standards. I said in the beginning that they needed to have some [...]
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John Reese and BlogRush Launch Huge Publicity Campaign - Internet Marketing Sucks! Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:01 am[...] would create posts about getting banned… and what would that lead to? Yep, a ton of links, press, and other publicity for [...]
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Web and Graphic Design HQ Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:37 amFarewell BlogRush
I received an email today advising that my BlogRush account was no longer active, with the reason:
because your blog did not pass our Quality Review criteria
Hmmm, is that so?
Let’s go through what I was emailed today… here’s the impo… -
“The Tampon Blog” MEETS Blogrush Quality Standards?! : Big Bucks Blogger Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:59 pm[...] type of blogs got banned? Blogs like Tamar Weinberg’s blog (for not displaying the widget), SEO Pedia and SEO Cog who had previously tried, but failed, to [...]
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BlogRush amboebas ban high quality blogs in favor of crap Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:42 pm[...] considered “high quality” by clueless amoebas hired by BlogRush, many great blogs like Tamar’s were banned by the Reeve [...]
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» BlogRush Keeps on Creating a Buzz » SEOpittfall » Archive - Search Engine Optimization by pittfall! Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:19 pm[...] just over a month ago, there has been buzz all over the blogosphere touting, questioning and now cursing it’s [...]
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Blogs Banned By BlogRush | Our Cheating Ways Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:01 pm[...] BlogRush, You’re Kidding Me [...]
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» Top 3: When You Use BlogRush, the Communists Win, MicroCommunities & Why Alex Doesn’t Work SEOisEZ.com: Blogging the Best of SEO Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:58 pm[...] Sphinns - Tamar Gets BANNED from BlogRush - Blogrush - really good idea - run by a bunch of freedom-hating, [...]
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How Your Readers Can Make You A Shiny Day » Reader Appreciation Project Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:33 pm[...] in offline life, blogging days can be very dark sometimes: nobody votes on your stories, you get rejected by somebody who tells you that your blog sucks, your audience drops, the only comments on your blog are the [...]
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Did BlogRush Dump the Wrong 10,000 Bloggers? Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 1:38 am[...] this week, it seems. Those that are amongst the 10,000 bloggers John Reese claims to have been axed from the BlogRush network, and those who have been deemed righteous and worthy to remain within the network. In case you [...]
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The Echo Chamber Effect. | Snoskred - Life in the Country Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 9:57 am[...] BlogRush, You’re Kidding Me [...]
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Tech, Web, How to, Computer, Internet, Reviews, Tips, Dog, Pet, and Make Money Online with AhTim Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 12:00 amMy BlogRush is DEAD!
Few days back, when I retrieve email, noticed that there is an email from BlogRush. The email said that:
We regret to inform you that your BlogRush Account Is Currently INACTIVE.It's a message that stimulate my mind when I read the email. Lots of…
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0 Google PR = Dumped by Blog Rush (?) | EZ Marketing Tool Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 10:42 am[...] Tamar Weinberg suspects her blog was suspended because of a less than glowing review of the service she posted. I searched this blog to see if I had made a similar post, but I had not. (I have made derogatory posts about blog rush on other blogs which I did NOT enroll in the service.) Again, Tamar's blog does NOT have a Google PR ranking. [...]
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planck's constant Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 9:47 pmBlogrush is run by Idiots
The other day I got an email from Blogrush dropping my site from their listings
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Please buck up, BlogRush! at BlogMunch Says:
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:06 am[...] We are to blamed you have to work so hard to “manually” review and remove over 10,000 “low quality” blogs? Isn’t these things done in the first place before you had your GRAND opening? Now [...]
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The End of Blogrush | WordPress Designpraxis Says:
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:36 am[...] BlogRush, You’re Kidding Me BlogRush amoebas ban high quality blogs in favor of crap It Ain’t No Cure For BlogRash Farewell BlogRush Blogrush is a scam BlogRush was a waste of time Avoid BlogRush like the plague [...]
Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast with a passion for all things tech and productivity. She provides consulting in internet marketing and blogs for numerous online publications, most notably Lifehacker, Search Engine Roundtable, and Mashable.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:49 am
I think a ban from Blogrush may be a badge of quality as I note some the quality of some of the blogs that run it. In fact, when I see a blog with the blogrush widget my opinion of the blogger takes a tumble.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:53 am
Thanks for posting this Tamar. I just got an “Inactive” email from Blogrush and was both suprised and extremely annoyed. They claimed my content was “not unique enough”. I was about to post something about it but found you had beaten me to the punch.
I don’t think this has anything to do with going negative on them. I never bashed them - all I did was promote their service to my readers by placing it on every page of my blog. And this is the thanks I get?
I am not sure what’s going on at Blogrush HQ but I don’t think the “piss off bloggers” strategy is the way to become an integral part of the blogosphere.
- Andrew
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:15 am
I also didn’t write anything about them, neither good not bad. I had their widget installed for about one week, then I removed it and I forgot about it at all. Those guys failed and they want people to remember them. If your blog is not good and original, then I’m a dead monkey!
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:38 am
Your blog is full of “disgusting material” (SEO)!
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:40 am
Yup, my account was made inactive as well. The reason same as above, “not unique enough�. Not once had I blogged about Blogrush, I just installed the widget. It is really no lost. I did not see an increase in traffic as well.
I agree, Blogrush might be burning its own bridges with its poor excuses. Guess they got what they really wanted – backlinks and free advertisements.
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:15 am
I got this email yesterday. I ran a post “avoid BlogRush like the plague” and placed the widget only on a links page with a disclaimer. As for traffic, there was next to zilch from literally tons of owed impressions I’ve earned whilst I had the widget on all pages for a few days. IOW: the blogrush experiment turned into miserable failure.
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:42 am
I received the same email this morning. My blog was fairly new, but if they think I’m going to come crawling back to ask for reinstatement, they’re off their rocker.
Brenda
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:04 am
Tamar,
John Reese from BlogRush here.
You definitely have a quality blog that meets our criteria. I believe the reviewer that reviewed your blog did not approve your blog because you never added the widget to it; that’s the only thing I can think of as I see no other reason.
We certainly don’t have anything against anyone that posts any criticism about our service — because that’s the only way we’ll make it better. So that’s definitely not the reason your account was made inactive.
Best Regards,
John Reese
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:38 am
Tamar - I didn’t even bother signing up with it in the first place. It sounded way to good to be true at the time, and I haven’t heard many positive reports about BlogRush generating oodles of traffic either. Not even from the so-called top teir bloggers who were supposed to benefit most.
Did they really think people were going to place their widget prominently instead of their AdSense blocks?
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:48 am
Ok, let me play the devil’s advocate here. Perhaps the fact that you never installed the widget triggered some kind of auto-ban. Seems reasonable to me, anyway. Just a thought…
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:51 am
Wow, T. If yours didn’t pass quality standards they clearly have the wrong standards in place. My assumption was they weeded out the link-a-palooza blogs and gratuitous attempts at getting money with no substantive content. Guess I was wrong.
If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had the Blogrush widget on my site for a month or so now and have yet to see any measurable traffic incoming from their servers. Nice idea … no execution so far.
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:22 am
Donna: that’s fair and understandable, but is that listed within their “Quality Guidelines?” I’d totally understand that concern if that was one of the bulleted items, but it was not.
FWIW, it doesn’t seem that I’m the only one who got deactivated, and some of these users never removed the widget.
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:27 am
John: I just de-spammed your comment from Akismet. That makes sense, but why isn’t that one of the criteria under the quality guidelines? The recipient of the email is left to wonder what quality standards they don’t meet without mention of the widget itself.
The email, as you know, said “We regret to inform you that your BlogRush Account has been made INACTIVE because your blog did not pass our Quality Review criteria. You will find instructions below for making your account active again.
You will notice that the widget no longer loads on your pages — please remove the BlogRush code from your blog for now.”
The text implies that every recipient of the email is still using the widget.
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:36 am
Seems to be an epidemic. I got tons of posts like yours in my feed reader. Anyhow, your initial feeling is usually the right one. Also think about it for a second. Do you remember banner exchange networks? Do you know what they are doing now? Remember how they worked? Remember why they worked for a brief period of time and then just sucked and then only tried to get clueless newbies to spend money on them for credz etc.? Mhhh..I will say no more.
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:49 am
I agree with Andrew. It’s a badge of quality to be banned from BR and has more PR value. You don’t need it for traffic anyway!
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:36 am
Heh, I got an email telling me how the quality had improved because they kicked out 10k ‘bad’ blogs, and that my blog had passed their quality checks. I’d actually meant to take the widget off my site a long time ago, but forgot all about it, so now that they’ve reminded me the widget is gone. I didn’t see any traffic from it.
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:19 am
Its funny I should run across this blog, because this morning I also received the email 10/22/2007. Now I don’t mention Blogroll anywhere on my site. But Wordpress won’t allow java inserts anyway.
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:59 am
I was emailed that my blog had passed their quality guidelines.
I never quite got to the point of installing the widget on my blog either.
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:02 am
Bill, interesting. I guess they have a lot of people on their quality review squad who apparently don’t collaborate or agree on what defines quality.
Oh well, no loss.
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
So exactly WHO are the blogs that ARE still accepted? I do see the widget every once in a while, but not on any blogs I frequent all that much? I was going to try it out but I am glad I didn’t waste my time with it at this point. I would like to know who is left.
Would LOVE to know what kind of business plan they have for everything going forward since they are systematically killing their own business. At this rate you would think they would turn their service into a paid subscription or something, not sure how else they are going to make money with it.
Love the adblock plug
Scott
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:32 pm
LOL Scott, that was a last minute edit.
My blogs look cleaner now!
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Tamar - Like Bill, I was approved but I never installed the widget. I have no plan to install it
Thanks for the AdBlock tip.
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
This was my response to being DEACTIVATED:
“Making my BlogRush account INACTIVE for unspecified reasons of your own sounds SO “GOOGLE LIKE”…yet another internet god is born! Not a great way to make friends and influence people…”
Oh well…no big loss!
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:11 am
Tamar,
Don’t feel bad. You’re in good company. They also banned One Man’s Blog because you know, I’m so damned controversial.
I also think it’s nice how when you log in to BlogRush now you are not even presented with any means of contact to discuss the situation. Not that I’ll be re-installing it anyway mind you.
John P.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:32 am
My account was also de-activated (not enough posts I guess), I haven’t read about anyone that actually received much traffic from BlogRush. It should be called BlogTrickle.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I wrote about the BlogRush quality problem a while ago, which was addressed not too shortly after I hit “Publish” with the implementation of manual blog reviews.
Seeing that your blog was declined for not adding the widget with only a passing reference to their quality guidelines*, and then seeing Scott’s blog being accepted despite not adding the widget does not instill much hope.
I’ve been watching my stats because I do want the service to succeed, but the net traffic gain from the service doesn’t justify the widget right now; I’ve actually been meaning to pull it. Even with the new designer widgets, credit balancing system and title optimization tips, the improvement is minimal and uninspiring.
Essentially, a better system (especially for communication) needs to be put in place for BlogRush to regain some of the confidence it lost with all of its growing pains. Frankly, I’m well aware of the “just launch it” philosophy, but these are all things that should have been considered before the service launched. Slapping a “Beta” sticker on a website only works (well) if you’re Google.
Just my 2 cents.
~ Teli
*
The proofreader’s primary language should be English.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:56 pm
i have had the widget up for a bit to see if it would drive traffic to my blog since it is fairly new and i need traffic :), but i haven’t seen any incoming clicks from it regardless of how many credits i have. the credits keep flucuating and i can’t really tell how many i have but i haven’t seen any boost in traffic.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
I removed the widget a couple of weeks ago in the midst of all the “shocking” changes stuff that was being announced. I just got fed up of waiting and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t like the widget in any “flavor”. It just looked untidy and was bringing very little quality traffic in any case. Most visitors stayed less than 30 seconds.
Strangely enough I haven’t been kicked out of the program, but I don’t think it will be making a return. I was very surprised to see some of the blogs deemed unfit to participate, and it made me wonder who the reviewers are and just how much they know about blogging or how to evaluate them.
October 28th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Quote from John Reese:
“We certainly don’t have anything against anyone that posts any criticism about our service — because that’s the only way we’ll make it better.”
That’s funny because John Reese tried to sue me for giving a poor review of his Traffic Secrets home study course. Maybe things are different now.
October 29th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
BlogRush is overblown. I got suspicious of it when all of these Sphinn posts appeared giving it a positive spin — I couldn’t see how it could possibly receive such good press, being so new.
You have confirmed my suspicions!
December 1st, 2007 at 10:17 am
I got banned pretty quick, probably because my blogs are new and did not have 10 posts yet. No problem with that.
The problem is there is no way on the blogrush site to request re-evaluation and they don’t answer emails.
December 15th, 2007 at 6:32 am
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
December 20th, 2007 at 11:57 am
I finally removed my BR widget yesterday. The idea and algo are good in theory, but due to our specialty nature our site had little contextual matching with the category topic contents. Once he gains a true enterprise critical mass, I’d look at it again.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
It appears google search engine has penalised blog rush for the term “blog rush”…
April 6th, 2008 at 3:06 am
Tried BlogRush. Horrible traffic generation. Haven’t been able to log in to my account there for over a week. Their support has not gotten back to me since I reported it a week ago. I took the widget out and wont be using them again.
– Dave