A Quick Note on BlogRush

When I first created this blog (ugh... I hate that word) I played around with different things in a feeble attempt to get some traffic. One of those things was BlogRush. I won't provide a link or more information other than they claim to drive traffic based on... oh who cares. It didn't work, anyway.

What's pretty damn awesome is that, in addition to not working, their site was non-functional for some time. Oops. But - and this is the icing on the cake - today, I received this email from them (edited for brevity).

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.

Wait. It gets better.

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.)

Note that the content syndicated via BlogRush was so unbelievably off topic, it wasn't funny. Here's the great part, though; their standards.

- 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.

Ok, so I have opinions and I'm not a link farm. Check. Admittedly, I can't quantify my thoughts or opinions as quality content, but...

- 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.

Check.

- The blog should already contain at least 10-12 quality posts. New blogs with very little content will not be accepted.

New? Yes, but I meet their 10 - 12 posts. Check.

- The blog's primary contain must be in English. BlogRush is currently not available for non-English blogs.

Again, admittedly, my writing leaves a lot to be desired, but it's (mostly considered) English. Check.

- 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.

This is not without a certain degree of irony, but OK. Check.

- 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.

My writing is so terrible I would never presume to pin it on someone else. It's mine. The focus is certainly quality content (minus this post, oddly enough) - whether or not I achieve said goal is an exercise best left to the reader. Well, OK... Check.

- 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.

Uh... I guess it depends on how one defines hacking, but otherwise, I think we're safe on this one as well. As an aside, someone will have to explain what anti-racial means; I do not endorse any kind of racism, but do I no longer even have a race? That's... weird. Just the phrase anti-racial hurts my head. Dear BlogRush lawyers; racial != racism and you probably do want to be anti-racism. You confuse me.

So there you have it. BlogRush has deemed this content to be of low quality or anti-racial and I have removed the BlogRush widget. I'm actually kind of feeling better already; it had From the Blogosphere on it and that just makes me... cringe.

I urge others drop BlogRush, as well.