WidgetBucks Gets In Action

It is strange to realize how important is to have the audience that reads your blog can make lots of improvements to your site and traffic. Today when I woke up I saw John Chow had posted about WidgetBucks got banned by Google (even tho the truth is that WidgetBucks got penalized by Google not banned), John mentioned that the first to report that WidgetBucks was penalized was Jeremy Shoemaker (aka Shoemoney). Ok so far so good, he was indeed the first to publicly tell that widgetbucks was penalized and he was quoted for that on John Chows post.

To us (the SEO Optimization readers) thats nothing new since I first discussed the widgetbucks hidden links and who followed the comments of the PageRank horning knows even better. To be honest, i did not felt like reporting that WidgetBucks was penalized for one or another reason, but this doesn’t mean that we didn’t knew about that before it even happened.

WidgetBucks Got in Action, But Too Late…

This same morning I checked my personal email address and I found a new email from WidgetBucks with the subject Important Update from WidgetBucks huh I first thought could this be a damn coincidence ? I blogged about the same subject, i contacted them via email but no response..once the big guys like John Chow and Shoemoney mention them I already get a Important Update email from WidgetBucks?

Well, i was right, it was treating that same subject I suspected, the hidden links, but look how they have masked the reason of this new update

Dear WidgetBucks Publisher,

One of the concerns we’ve heard from many of you has been the slow loading times of our widgets. We really appreciate your feedback and comments in helping us improve in this area. So, today we addressed this issue by rolling out new code that ultimately delivers faster loading widgets.

It is very important to note that this update will require action on your part. You will need to update code of your existing widgets for the speedier load times to take affect on your site, blog or network. Know that changing the code will not impact earnings for any of your widgets.

Here are the two steps you’ll need to follow:

1. Sign-in to http://widgetbucks.com and go to My Widgets
2. For each active widget, simply edit and re-copy the code block into your site or blog (the same steps you went through when you created the widgets originally)

Another option for updating code is to utilize the new categories and ad sizes we’ve incorporated over the last few weeks. Modifying a widget’s size or category — or creating an entirely new widget for that matter — will generate the new code that can then be re-copied to your site or blog.

Also, if you have questions specific to your WidgetBucks account, email us at help [at] widgetbucks [dot] com. We will do our best to back to you within 24 hours. If you have a general comment or need something clarified that can help you and perhaps other publishers, feel free to post a comment on this blog.

Thanks again for using WidgetBucks.

The WidgetBucks Team

Ok do you notice the bolder part of their email? Well thats a total BS (you know what I mean, i just don’t want to spoil this blog). I logged in my account with WidgetBucks and clicked the edit button, well guess what in the new code the hidden link is nowhere but the div with the text they used as anchor text is already there. I don’t know about you, but I feel offended by this email and am not feeling AT ALL to help them lift the penalization because this is the reason of the email, not because the widget loads slower, not because they care about their publishers (i already contacted them but they gave no response) the only reason is that they want to remove all those hidden links and request at Google to lift their penalization because they collaborate. Well thats NOT what I am going to do. If you want to improve your rankings than hire a real SEO expert as Aaron Wall that will not be advising you to use hidden links.

Anyway for those that are willing to use WidgetBucks to make money online can finally feel safe to place their code and not worry to get penalized by Google. Even tho I am not sure if the users would be penalized.

What you can learn from all this is that if you are building links make sure not to ask people use hidden links for your site, if you are about to publish something from a company, check the code better and make sure they are not ABUSING of you by placing hidden links and most important DO NOT USE HIDDEN LINKS IN YOUR SITE, other ways get prepared for a penalization.

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