When I first added the BlogRush widget to this site, I was going to try it out for a couple of weeks and see how it went and decide from there if I was going to keep it. However, due to some possibly ingenious planning from the creators, I still have it.

See, about the time I was deciding whether or not to remove the widget, the stats were suddenly not available while they worked on improving their tracking and the amount of information that users can retrieve to see how well it is working for them. The basic stats are now available, but the biggest changes are supposedly coming in the next week, but they have been saying that for the last two weeks.

In the meantime, I have left the widget in place and am (im)patiently waiting for the results to be available so that I can see if I have actually received any traffic from it. However, after reading their latest announcement, I may be forced to remove it anyway after this happens.

One way that they are trying to improve the performance of the network is by removing any site whose widget is not getting clicked on from the network. If you have the widget but nobody clicks on it or it’s not getting clicked on enough (as determined by the people in charge) then you stand a chance of being booted off the network.

As another way to try and improve the performance of their network and get the widget more exposure, they are going to be penalizing sites that have poor placement of the widget and mine is at the bottom of one of my sidebars. This means that when the changes all go in to effect, I may be left with the decision to either put it at the top of a sidebar or remove it completely. Because I’m pretty sure it has not gained me enough traffic to merit moving it to the top of my sidebar, I will have to remove it completely.

While this alone can be controversial, I probably would be removing it anyway depending on how much traffic I have received from it. Another interesting point is that their latest announcement came via an email that simply contained a link that redirected to a post on the creator’s blog. The previous announcements all came via an email that contained the information and while most projects have their own blog and put announcements on the project’s site, this one comes off as being a way for the creator to instantly drive traffic to his blog.

I still haven’t decided if this should be classified as good marketing or unethical, what do you think? I’m also not so sure what to think about the issue that if the widget is not getting what they consider to be enough clicks from your blog you can be booted off the network or if you don’t have what they consider good placement you can be booted off.