subject: The software program awards rip-off [print this page] The software program awards rip-off The software program awards rip-off
I put out a new product a few weeks ago. This new product has so far gained sixteen totally different awards and suggestions from software obtain sites. Some of them even emailed me messages of encouragement resembling "Nice job, we're actually impressed!". I needs to be delighted at this recognition of the standard of my software, besides that the 'software' does not even run. This is hardly shocking when you think about that it's just a text file with the words "this program does nothing in any respect" repeated a number of times and then renamed as an .exe. The PAD file that described the software program contains the outline "This program does nothing at all".
Even the name of the software program, "awardmestars", was a bit of a giveaway. And yet it nonetheless won sixteen 'awards'.
A few of them look fairly impressive, however none of them are well worth the electrons it takes to show them.
The plain explanation is that some obtain sites give an award to each piece of software program submitted to them. In return they hope that the author will show the award with a hyperlink back to them. The inbound link then doubtlessly increases visitors to their web site directly (by clicks on the award hyperlink) and indirectly (by way of improved page rank from the incoming links). The creator gets some awards to impress their potential purchasers and the obtain site will get additional traffic.
This practise is blatantly deceptive and dishonest. It makes no distinction between high quality software and any previous rubbish that somebody was prepared to submit to an obtain site. The obtain sites that practise this deceit must be ashamed of themselves. Similarly, any writer or firm, that shows considered one of these 'awards' is either being naive (at best) or knowingly colluding in the rip-off (at worst).
My suspicions had been first aroused by the variety of five star awards I received for my PerfectTablePlan software. Once I went to these sites all the opposite applications on them seemed to have 5 star awards as well. I additionally seen that some of my weaker competitors have been proudly displaying pages full of five star awards. I noticed only a few three or 4 star awards. One thing smelled fishy. Being a scientist by original training, I made a decision to run slightly experiment to see if a completely nugatory piece of software would win any awards.
Having seen various recommendations for the rundenko.com submit-everywhere.com submission service on the ASP boards I emailed the proprietor, Mykola Rudenko, to ask if he might assist with my little experiment. To my shock, he generously agreed to help by submitting "awardmestars" to all 1033 websites on their database, free of charge.
In response to the report I received 2 weeks after submissions started "awardmestars" is now listed on 218 sites, pending on 394 sites and has been rejected by 421 sites. Approximately 7% of the websites that listed the software emailed me that it had received an award (I don't know what number of have displayed it with an award, with out informing me). With 394 pending websites it would win quite a couple of extra awards yet. Most of the rejections had been on the grounds of "The site does not settle for merchandise of this genre" (it was listed as an utility) fairly than high quality grounds.
The truth is that many obtain sites are just electronic dung heaps, using pretend awards, dubious search engine optimization and content misappropriated from PAD recordsdata in a pathetic try and make a few dollars from Google Adwords. Hopefully these bottom-feeders might be put out of business by the frequently improving engines like google, leaving solely the better sites. I think there may be still a role for good high quality obtain sites. But there needs to be more emphasis on quality, classification, and extra content material (e.g. reviews). Whether or not it is attainable for such a business to be profitable, I do not know. Nevertheless, it seems to work in the MacOSX world the place the obtain sites are a lot fewer in quantity, but with a lot higher high quality and extra person interaction.
Some obtain site house owners did email me to say both "very funny" or "cease losing my time". Kudos to them for taking the time to check every submission. I recommend you place their websites excessive in your checklist next time you're in search of software:
filecart.com
freshmeat.internet
download-tipp.de (German)
That is the response I acquired from Lothar Jung of obtain-tipp.de once I showed him a draft of this text:
"The other facet for me as a web site writer is that if you don't give every software program 5 stars, you do not get so many back links and a few authors are usually not very happy with this and your website. When I began download-tipp.de, I needed to create a web site where customers can find good software. So I made a decision the visitor is vital, and never the variety of backlinks. Solely 10% of all applications submitted get the 5 Suns Award."
Another vital problem for download sites is trust. I need to know that the software program I'm downloading doesn't contain adware, trojans or different malware. A number of the download sites have cunningly exploited this by awarding "a hundred% clean" logos. I at present use the Softpedia one on the PerfectTablePlan download page. It shouldn't be too tough in principal to scan software for known malware. However now I am starting to marvel if these a hundred% clean logos have any extra substance than the "5 star"awards. The one technique to find out for certain can be to submit an obtain with malware, which might be unethical. If anyone has any details about whether or not these sites actually test for malware, I would be interested to know.
My due to submit-everywhere.com for making this experiment possible. I was favourably impressed by the thoroughness of their service. At solely $70 I feel it is wonderful value compared to the time and trouble of trying to do it yourself. I count on to be a paying buyer in future.
** Addendum **
This little experiment has been featured on reddit.com, digg.com, slashdot.com, stumbleupon.com and a variety of different popular websites and blogs. Consequently there have been lots of of comments on this weblog and on other sites. I'm very flattered by the interest. But I also really feel like Dr Frankenstein, trying on as my experiment gains a lifetime of its own. If I had known the article was going to be learn by so many individuals I'd have taken a bit more time to clarify the following points
