Blogtricks Link Feedback

Blogtricks offers a number of interesting little add-on services for bloggers.  The most useful one (and the only one I've actually tried) is their Link Feedback service, which allows you to create an automated list of websites referring visitors to your site.

It's easy to set up--in Typepad, just take the script from their "linkbuilder" and use it to create a new item in a "link" Typelist that has been configured to read notes as text.  And your Blogtricks account is free--if you want to pay $10/year, you can opt not to have their little ad displayed at the bottom of your list of referrers.

A nice feature is the ability to exclude certain referring domains--for example, you can exclude search engines, so that your list only displays traffic from actual links on other sites, rather than traffic from search results.  (Helpful when you get a lot of random traffic from people searching on, say, your uncommon last name.)

I used it for a few days and really liked the convenience of seeing referrers right on my home page, but I didn't pony up for a paid account, and loading the ad from their server was really slowing down my site.  It's worth $10/year for the ad-free service, but they currently only accept PayPal, and I don't have a PayPal account.

Here's the script that was generated for my account, including a number of blocked domains.  Note the hard break in that line between "google.fr" and "search.msn.com" to get it to display properly here:

<script language="javascript">
  document.write('\074scr' + 'ipt src="http://svc.blogtricks.com/referrer' +
    '?token=0d04699ac43ec0e657ff51afd58957a3' +
     '\046exclude=google.com%2Cyahoo.com%2Cgoogle.de%2Cgoogle.fr
%2Csearch.msn.com%2Cgoogle.co.nz%2Cgoogle.it%2Cgoogle.be%2Cgoogle.pl' +  '\046maxlen=40' +  '\046maxwordlen=40' +    
    '\046action=combo\046referrer=' + escape(document.referrer) +
    '">\074/sc' + 'ript>');
</script>

Comments

[matt]

Um, what is this? what is a hard break? is that like a well deserved five? is "Max Wordlen" a character from buckaroo bonzai? It's late, maybe i should go to bed and forget all about this.

[Ed]

Heh. I was actually thinking yesterday that there's certainly a better way to document the info in these "Notes to Self" posts. I don't really expect anyone to read them (although my post on favicons a while back appears to be surprisingly popular). They're literally just notes to myself to help me remember techie stuff that can be hard to learn and easy to forget. That's why I don't put them on my "day blog," but they don't really belong here either. Perhaps it's time to start a personal knowledge management wiki :-P

[Sean]

Hey Ed! Appreciate you taking a peek at the blogtricks stuff. Wanted to point out that the speed issue should be resolved (I hope) ... there were pretty signficant issues for actually the last month plus, which bites. As of now I think they're all worked out, and would appreciate a note if you happen to be looking at it and it still seems slow. Probably won't apply since you've taken the trick off your site, but can't hurt to ask. Thanks!
---S

[Ed]

Hey Sean,
Happy to give it a try again--will put it up on my "real" site (www.edbatista.com) later this week.

But what I'd REALLY like is the ability to pay for an ad-free list without using PayPal. (My objection to PP is that I don't want to give up my bank account number to conduct transactions--that's why I have a credit card.)

Thanks for a great service--will look forward to checking it out again.

[Ed]

UPDATE: I put Blogtricks Link Feedback back up on www.edbatista.com, and I set it up here as well. It worked fine for a few days, and then it started slowing my site down again. The fault's not all Blogtricks'--my stats from SiteMeter are taking some time to load as well. And Link Feedback is a great service--it's really nice to be able to have the list of referrals right there on your page. But it's not worth slowing down the whole page.

Perhaps the problem is because I'm using the free service, which has to load a small ad file. I'd be happy to pay Blogtricks to get a faster, ad-free service, but I don't use PayPal, and that's the only means of payment they current accept. So no more Blogtricks for now--too bad.