BlogRush Widget: What It Was and Why It Shut Down

The BlogRush widget was a free sidebar widget launched in 2007 that promised bloggers more traffic by swapping post headlines across a network of related blogs, with referral credits passed down 10 levels. This article explains how BlogRush worked, our experience trying it on QuickOnlineTips, why it shut down, and what actually grows blog traffic today.

Quick answer: BlogRush no longer exists. It shut down in November 2008, and its CEO John Reese said the service did not work out as hoped. Headline-exchange widgets sent little real traffic. Today, search optimization, email newsletters and social sharing are far more reliable ways to grow a blog.

How the BlogRush widget worked

When the widget loaded on your site, you earned “syndication credits”. Those credits caused your latest post titles to appear in the same widget on other blogs in a related category. Many widgets did this kind of traffic exchange, but BlogRush added a twist that made it look like a winner.

10 levels of referral credits

The big promise was ten levels of free referrals. Say you had a brand new site with 10 pageviews a day, and a big blogger with 20,000 pageviews a day signed up through your referral link. Those 20,000 daily credits would be added to your account, instead of a mere 10. If hundreds of other bloggers then signed up from the big blog, their credits counted for you too, down to the tenth level. In theory, even a new site could showcase its content on millions of pages, as long as you got in early.

Our experience with BlogRush

In September 2007 I added the shiny new widget to our sidebar to see how the statistics would turn out. My main wish at the time was a way to change the widget colors so it would blend better with site designs, because a widget that clashes with a theme gets ignored. We published a follow-up a week later: Is BlogRush actually sending free traffic?

Why the BlogRush widget shut down

BlogRush closed in November 2008. In his shutdown email, John Reese said the service did not work out as they had hoped, and that BlogRush never made any revenue because it never tried to monetize with ads. Many bloggers reported that the widget sent very little traffic back.

The lessons still apply:

• Headline exchanges send low-quality clicks. Visitors who click a random title in a sidebar rarely stay.
• Referral pyramids reward early adopters, not good content.
• Third-party widgets slow your pages and can disappear overnight, leaving broken code behind.

What to use instead of BlogRush today

• Search optimization: write helpful posts that answer real questions, and track them in Google Search Console. See our list of free Google SEO tools.
• Email newsletters: build your own subscriber list so you own the audience. We explain how we moved our subscribers to Amazon SES.
• Social sharing: share each post where your readers already spend time.
• Internal related posts: a related-posts list on your own site keeps visitors reading without sending them away.
• Genuine collaboration: guest posts and links from bloggers in your niche bring targeted readers.

FAQ

Does the BlogRush widget still work?

No. BlogRush shut down in November 2008. If old BlogRush code is still in your sidebar, remove it.

Who ran BlogRush?

John Reese was the CEO of BlogRush, and he announced the shutdown by email.

Are traffic exchange widgets worth using today?

Rarely. They send low-engagement clicks and add third-party code to your pages. Search, email and social sharing bring readers who actually stay.

How can a new blog get traffic fast?

Focus on specific questions people search for, publish consistently, link related posts together and start an email list from day one.