We have several new features ready to go live this week. Mostly we’re improving what we have in place now, with one add-on to an existing product.

Add Products, Tags & Categories:

One of our goals this year is to improve the chances of Partner websites to be found by Advertisers. With 23k plus sites in our inventory to choose from, and growing daily, it’s important for Advertisers to be able to find websites/blogs that are the right audience and content to build effective campaigns. The best way to do this is by searching the inventory by keywords. While the feature is already in place, Partners need the ability to tag their website/blog listings with keywords and to classify their site within specific categories.

We have included a secondary category option called “Category Tags” which allows you to select an additional three (3) categories that can apply to your listing. Directly under category tags is a text box labeled “Tags”. This section is like most tag fields where you list keywords or key phrases that describe your listing. Tags will be checked to ensure they match the content on your website, so please be sure you’re not stuffing your tags full of off topic keywords. These two settings are currently available in your account. To add these to your listings, go to PARTNER > MY SITES >> MANAGE SITES and to the right of your listing(s) look for an actions column. Click on the toolset “EDIT” icon and you will find the two new options.

After adding these new items, you will see that we have included our entire suite of products in the Edit view. This allows you to add products to your website. Previously we required each product to be setup separately, however, our new setup allows one submission for all products chosen. After adding your new items, submit to save your changes.

Nofollow Option:

Many partners have stressed the desire to apply the controversial rel=nofollow tag. Our terms have always stated that text ads must be search engine friendly to ensure advertisers received the full benefit of the advertisement, however, we want to provide an option for those who want to apply the nofollow tag to text ads. For this reason we are adding a new option in your site settings that will allow the nofollow tag to be applied. Once activated, your listing will be illustrated with a nofollow highlight alerting all advertisers of your policy prior to purchase. If you have existing advertisements and wish to switch to a nofollow status, an email will be sent to each advertiser alerting them of your change and they will have the option to cancel their ads with a prorated refund. The nofollow tag is not something we plan to force on anyone since it is not our place to tell you how to code your site. The tag is a preference of each partner and it is up to the advertiser if they wish to pay for these types of text ads. The important step is to ensure both parties are on the same page.

LinkPost Job-Opps:

A new add-on to our LinkPost product is called Job-Opps. This not only gives a new way to build campaigns for advertisers, but it also gives partners a great new way to jump into the paying jobs. Our blog reviews have always run on a marketplace basis which is great for advertisers who want to handpick the blogs, but it’s not so great for bloggers who have a lot to offer and aren’t always selected. With LinkPost Job-Opps, advertisers create an outline for the type of review they’re looking for, minimum qualifications, the price per review and the number of job-opps available. Once listed, partners who have a blog that meets the qualifications and wish to apply, can do so until the job-opps available have been depleted. The approval process is being tweaked a bit while we try to decide if advertisers will be approving or declining submissions or if our staff will do this on their behalf. (Feel free to give your suggestions below) We are definitely excited to launch this new feature and it will be live within the next 10 days.

Spiderbot 2.0 – Out with the bad and in with the awesome:

We have briefly mentioned this in previous posts but the light is at the end of the tunnel. Spiderbot 2.0 is coming close to testing and then launching. With the new version we are greatly cutting down on bandwidth and time spent extracting information. The technology includes super fast processing and more informative communication. Our new bot will be in and out in a flash getting the information needed and not wasting bandwidth or time. This should definitely cut down on the “Link Not Found” emails along with sending informative emails explaining what caused our bot to fail on your site. This should be up and running within the next 30 days.

There are many other features on the deck. We’re always looking for customer feedback to help us create a better environment for our users. If you have a suggestion, please list it below and we’ll be happy to look into it.