Interesting Observations

blogging, social media and self-improvement!

How would you use the empty space with blogrush gone?

interestingobservation.jpg Can you guess whats missing in the blank space between Alexa and dealdotcom widgets in my right side bar?

Well, there used to be a widget called Blogrush! Today I got an email from them telling me that my BlogRush Account has been made INACTIVE because this blog did not pass their Quality Review criteria. Huh?? It sure surprised me but also gave me a good chuckle ^_^

The email continues: “We determined that your blog did not meet our strict quality guidelines. Please do not take this personally but realize that we must abide by a very strict set of quality guidelines. (They are listed below.) If you feel you have made the necessary changes to your blog(s) to meet our guidelines, you can resubmit your blog(s) for review after this date: Wednesday, November 21, 2007.

Below is a complete list of our quality guidelines…

BlogRush Quality Guidelines:

– 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.

Best Regards,
The BlogRush Team”

Wow!! this blog I thought was in English, gets updated way more than 10 times a month, its not scraped content (as a matter of fact I am completely at a loss myself how to stop those blogs from scrapping content), and there is nothing about terrorism or hate etc in here! So I wonder how they decided to make my account inactive!

Could it be because I never blogged about them to promote them? I signed up and added their widget and didn’t have the time to first write that I had come across this system, then that I had included the widget, and then a week later how the widget was doing or how bad the colors were, how most of the links appearing on it didn’t even have the widget installed etc! Everyone else was doing that and I didn’t feel the need. Same was the case with DealDotCom widget which was talked about by everyone but I just didn’t have the time!

Anyways, goodbye blogrush! I am also glad to let you go since now I can add some shopping ads in that place ;)

Did any of you get dropped by blogrush? And more importantly, what are you going to use that empty space for?

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29 comments
Sephyroth

I’m glad I never bothered with BlogRush; it seems that a whole bunch of good blogs have been taken out of their system, but they left more, shall we say, controversial, blogs in there. Lucia posted about it – http://money.bigbucksblogger.com/the-tampon-blog-meets-blogrush-quality-standards/

Sephyroth

pearl

what a shame though… asking everyone to get in and sign up despite numerous problems, sending mile long emails full of promises on how great this service is going to be, and then dropping people haphazardly right and left accusing their quality is not up to par with their guidelines – is a bit absurd I think! These people went into it the opposite direction – you don’t start writing the plan or guidelines AFTER launch!

Welcome to my blog Sandra, Scott and LGR… and thanks for stopping to comment here…. hope to see you guys here more often …

pearl

thanks Aruni :) Im not the only one, they’ve been annoying people from the very start!

pearl

hey Sephy .. I understand, most of it is just peer pressure, like kids :) but yeah, I’ve read about this observation at many blogs, so we don’t really know whats going on behind those guidelines :)

Scott

I think you’re better off without them. I got an email the other day saying that my site was personally inspected and had passed, yet I had removed the widget weeks ago.

They turned me off with their bravado posting – best this and best that – blah blah – I’d rather have the blank space or maybe I’ll add another Zappa quote.

SB

LGR

BlogRush was a bust from the moment it launched. I checked it out and when I could not block adult themed content easily from appearing on a family friendly site it was gone. The widget just slows websites down anyways. Better off without them.

Sandra

BlogRush is doing a very good job at bringing themselves down! I’ve never bothered with signing up with them and I am glad I didn’t. They are a joke!

ReviewSaurus

Could it be that they are looking for only tech related stuff????
Anyway, I’m not sure…I’ve not even seen their website. I hate widgets….although 1 or 2 or exceptions…but overall, I just dont like them.

I can say instead of filling up the blog with all these colorful widgets….try to clean the sidebar :P

At least that’s what skellie suggests.

teeni

Ditto Aruni’s comment (#4) – it is definitely their loss. If they want quality blogs using them then it makes no sense to make your blog inactive. All I can think is that it must have been a mistake on their part. But too late, damage is done. Too bad for them. Dummies. ;)