I’ve been running BlogRush on my site for the past two weeks. BlogRush has positives and negatives. The biggest positive is getting your content syndicated across a large number of sites with related content. The biggest negative is that the system is open to being gamed.
If you haven’t tried BlogRush, it’s a pretty simple concept. Sign up for BlogRush and paste the Javascript they provide in your side bar or other visible area of your blog. Once approved, your BlogRush widget will begin appearing and you will see within the widget links to five posts. You can see my widget on the right hand side of this page. Essentially, you build syndication credits each time the widget is displayed. Those credits determine the level of syndication your own posts will receive. Smaller blogs also receive bonus credits to help them get exposure they would not otherwise garner with their own traffic. Sounds good so far? Great!
I have seen some traffic from BlogRush, but since this blog is relatively new it’s been a trickle rather than a flood. Also, I’ve noted sites that sport the widget tend to bury it. As for gaming, since traffic is measured strictly based on page views, it would be trivial to set up a script to call a page on your blog repeatedly to inflate your credits. However, BlogRush has committed to its users they are working diligently to not only improve the quality of the network, but to also plug holes in the system.
There has also been a lot of discussion as to whether BlogRush violates Google’s AdSense TOS. I’m pretty confident this has been resolved for the most part, but if you use AdSense on your site, use your own discretion as to whether you want to participate in BlogRush or not. Even though I’m not using AdSense on this blog at the moment, I would still feel comfortable using it with the BlogRush widget as well.
Ultimately, I see no harm in continuing to participate and will look forward to seeing improvements and, more important, more traffic. Do you use BlogRush? Tell me how it’s working out in the comments below.
