Our blog is kind of streamlined to the extreme in that we have – brace yourself – no sidebars. Yup, just one column. That way, for better or worse, the content is front & center.

Seriously though, I was saddened to read this when I first came across this post last week. I’ve been looking into various reports of rankings that’ve dropped, in most cases it comes down to one or more of a few simple explanations. There’s the case of folks who have a handful of posts that received an unusual amount of attention and as those links age out of the 6 month window , their rank drops even as they continue to produce great posts and acquire new readership. I’ve found folks who were the beneficiaries of cut-and-pasted link sets from last spring’s rash of viral link memes saw their ranks drop as time progressed. There are also cases where folks are unwittingly benefiting from a spammer’s feed-scraped splogs or a bug in our system that was artificially inflating their links; when a correction is made those gains are reversed.

Suffice to say, you’ve got a great blog and I’m hoping we can continue to be of service to you and your readers. The Percolator we built is designed to highlight the things that bloggers are paying attention to and highlight the bloggers themselves, I’ve found some of your posts in there and I’m hoping to see more.
best,
-Ian
Technorati

You are looking for a large quantity of high quality click happy loose-linked readers (again, who doesn’t).

The Fuel my blog community hopes that may ultimately be the result but what it really does in streamlining the process in finding OTHER blogs for you to read.

Try that one on for size!

Ryan

I hope you’re not close. You’re correct on one thing – I personally didn’t get the exposure that was advertised and that’s why I removed them.

A greater concern, though, is that novice bloggers such as yourself are being educated that the way to grow your blog is through these third party services. It’s just not the case!

Blogs were designed to grow organically. It’s their best feature and I’m not sure that anyone is going to improve on the basic trackback or ping.

Stop the madness! If you want to grow your blog, find other blogs, comment well, comment often and – most of all – write fantastic content consistently.

Look forward to seeing you back soon!
Doug

I read your post and thought you made some interesting points. I, like many others that have commented on this post, came to you from FMB and a post by ROTUS. As I went through the comments I went from agreeing with you, to thinking you were a jerk, to thinking you were a BIG jerk and then I just realized that you are just looking for something different.

Correct me if I’m wrong (because with all these posts I admittedly skimmed some) but you care about traffic and high quality traffic at that. I certainly can’t fault you for that, it;s what everybody wants. Whereas FMB works to foster a sense of community. That sense of community may not get you a flood of traffic but is more likely to give you a loyal readership.

But again your focus is on you, not you as a part of a community.

Am I close?

I’m a novice blogger but maybe thats really why something like FMB whose focus is on community is so appealing. It’s like training wheels before you go out under the big shiny lights of the pro-blogosphere.

I liken your abandoning of these communities to kids moving out of their parents basement when they turn 25: sometimes its better for both

Congrats on the success of your blog! I’m sure I’ll be back.

(I fired them from my sidebar, I’m not boycotting them yet!)