Blog Submitter Pro v.Search Review

UPDATE: This review is now outdated, and I am leaving it here for informational purposes only. As you’ll see, I never recommended the product anyway. This method was “spammy” to begin with, which never resonated well with me. I tried it ONE time, and was impressed with the results. But as other marketers got ahold of it, it became ridiculous. Programs like this are a big part of how blog comment spam became such a huge problem. Of course some good things came out of the comment-spam issue, like new technology to protect our blogs from spam. Also, please note that I no longer own the site that I used in the example. For the most up-to-date information and recommendations, please join my free newsletter.

Edition #8 – 11/30/2005

This is part 2 of my review of Blog Submitter Pro (now called vSearch). I did part 1 just a little over a month ago, and was hoping to wait longer before doing a final analysis, but I’m implementing some new strategies which will skew the test results if we wait any longer. So without further ado, here are my findings…

I ran the program to promote one of my blogs (Ugly Blog) exactly one time. The product is meant to be used continuously, but for various reasons which I will mention a little later, I decided to make a short run of it. The results of the test are not 100% truth-telling because there are a few other factors that may have affected my site in the mean time, but I think they give a good idea of how it worked. There were four criteria by which I am judging the results.

#1) Google placement for the keyword ugly blog (no quotes). Before running the system, I was ranked #8 in the search results. Today I am ranked #7. Not a big improvement, but an improvement nevertheless.

#2) Number of back links listed on Google. Before running the system I had a total of 2 back links listed. Today I have 87 back links listed.

#3) Technorati rank. My pre-test rank was 775,745 (1 link from 1 site). Today my rank is 252,580 (10 links from 10 sites).

#4) Technorati “blog worth” button. My pre-test “blog worth” was $1,129.08. Today my blog is worth $5645.40.

Obviously if the “blog worth” equated to real dollars, then the program would be well worth the investment. However, I have some concerns about the long-term effectiveness of Blog Submitter Pro. First of all, the overall concept is rather “spammy”. I was able to convince myself otherwise due to the ability to fully customize your comments based on the blog owner name, post topic, etc. However, after seeing the prevelance of this practice throughout the blogosphere, I learned that most blog owners do see these types of comments as spam, and even though they may be hard to identify at first glance you CAN tell most of the time.

So that leads me to ask the question – what kind of site would you promote with this technique? If you promote a legitimate site such as your own blog, you run less risk of looking like a spammer. However you also run more risk of looking like a fool. After running the system for one night, I went and looked at some of the places I posted “my comments”. Many of the places were sites I would not recommend visiting, and some of them were even porn-related. And yet, there on those sites were my cheery comments leading back to my own blog–left as proof that I had “visited” the page. There were other places where my comment just didn’t fit in. People may have been having a philosophical discussion amidst the comment section, then here I barge in and leave my little comment again pointing back to my site. Needless to say, it isn’t worth risking your reputation by using this technique on a personal site.

That leaves us with commercial sites. If you’re using this system to promote a commercial site, there’s no mistake about it: you’re a blog spammer. Believe it or not, I’m not sure where I stand on this issue. On the one hand, it certainly is annoying, and yes it may lead to a revolution in the way we blog. On the other hand, I think we can blame Google for this phenomenon as much as the spammers themselves. Google is the one who created the page rank system, and they’re the ones who continue to make it so easy to set up an infinate number of free blogs at blogger.com. Google makes it difficult to get a website ranked in their search listings, and they make it easy to spam for traffic. If bloggers really don’t want their comments to be spammed, they should take the time to moderate their comments, and if blog developers such as Google wish to curb the spamming activity, they should create new technology to combat it.

On a similar note, I think Google has taken one step by devaluing back links from blogspot blogs. I’m pretty sure this is the case, because as you can see from my test, I went from 2 back links to 87 back links, and only moved up one position in the search results. I think Yahoo may have recently taken a similar reaction, because previous reports showed that Blog Submitter Pro usage increased Yahoo search results ranking, but my site was not helped at all.

In conclusion I would say this. If you want to increase your web traffic by receiving visitors directly from the blogs you spam, then Blog Submitter Pro is a great tool to use. You can run the system literally 24/7/365 on all your sites, so traffic will surely build up. However, if you’re looking to build your website’s traffic by increasing search engine ranking, there are better avenues than blog comment spamming.