Today we are launching what we think will be a very helpful new article element. Our first new article element since we launched InfoBarrel 2.0 is the Google Maps element. This element will allow you to embed Google Maps within your content providing even more value for your readers.

According to Google, 1 in 5 searches is now localized, so providing Google Maps will help make it easier to show readers where popular destinations are in cities and towns around the world. Hopefully this new element drives people to share information about places they’ve travelled, places in their own city or places they would like to travel to.

Here is a video showing you exactly how to use the new feature:

If you would like to see the element in action, take a look at the following article:

http://www.infobarrel.com/Coquitlam_Trails_-_Hiking_and_Leisure_Spots_in_Coquitlam

Hey Guys,

Some of you may have noticed a little red flag next to your My Content link in the header and on your My Content page next to an article title.  This is a little notice to let you know that there is a flag on your article that needs to be addressed.

As a side note, I’d like to encourage everyone to make use of the flagging feature (found at the bottom of every article) to help you fellow IBers make their content the best it can be.

All Spam/Inappropriate/Duplicate flags go to us only.
Flags for Grammar/Spelling/Formatting got to both the author and us.

Thanks,
Kevin

Hey everyone,

As you may or may have noticed we’ve been testing a variation on the ad layout that has the top leaderboard ad being removed and doubling up on the cube ads at the bottom of the article.  We’ve had better CTR with this ad layout than the other so we’ve decided to switch it up so everyone can benefit from it.

Please leave any feedback you have on this forum post.

Enjoy everyone!

Just wanted to drop a quick note that we’ve added Google’s +1 (plus one) to article pages.  You can see it in the by line and at the bottom of every article page.  It functions pretty much like Facebook’s Like button, except it also has some search benefits.

To learn more about +1 check out this article: http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1047397&p=sign_up_about_plusones

It looks like stuff has mostly calmed down after the Google Panda update and people earnings are starting to return to normal.  Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been discussing how we can best secure InfoBarrel from these updates and algorithm changes in the future and the thing we kept coming back to is credibility.  By increasing the credibility of the site and the authors, readers will continue to come back regardless of what happens with Google or any of the other search engines.

So, over the coming weeks and months we’re going to be introducing, different tools that should help everyone here build up their web-cred.  One of these tools will be a References or Work Cited element that you can use to cite sources you’ve referenced for your articles.  We’ll also be trying to encourage people to start using their real names or pen names in their byline, so that readers can identify a real person with the article they are reading.  Some of the other things we have planned we’ll be keeping under wraps until they are closer to launching so they can come out with a bang.

I’ve set up a forum post so that everyone can get their say in and offer any other ideas they may have.

Note: We won’t be doing any article sweeps, so no need to worry about that.

To make everybody’s lives easier, both you as writers, and us as editors, we’ve implemented a new spelling and grammar checker.  Previously we had a spell check system that was very basic.  We’ve updated the system and have now implemented a much more complex system.  The new system not only has a much better spell checker, it also has an advanced grammar checker and a natural language checker.

This will help improve the overall readability of your content and is right in line with our goal to constantly improve the quality of the content on the site.

To use the new tool, simply click the button illustrated in the image below within the text editor element.

It has been nearly two months since we last posted on the blog and a lot of things have happened.

We’ve launched IB 2.0, Google updated their algorithm impacting our traffic slightly and we’ve been feverishly trying to fix every last little bug that has popped up with IB 2.0.

The Launch of InfoBarrel 2.o

Looking back at the launch of IB 2.0, things could have definitely gone smoother.  We didn’t expect there to be as many glitches in the software as there was, but unfortunately it was something we had to deal with and it definitely put a strain on everybody.  We have now cleaned up the majority of the larger bugs and are now focused on tidying up little problems that are less prominent.

In the coming weeks and months, we will begin moving forward with some exciting new features that will help further distinguish InfoBarrel from other sites in the vertical.  Expect to see more elements available when creating content. These elements will give you the ability to create content that is media rich and interactive giving readers an overall better experience.

Google’s Panda Update (Farmer)

As most people are aware, Google rolled out an algorithm update on February 24th code named ‘Panda’.  This update is intended to reduce the volume of low quality thin content within Google’s search index.  As a result of having 60,000+ pieces of content online, we did feel the affects of this update and lost roughly 20% of our overall search traffic. While this was an unfortunate situation we were affected much less than some other major sites that saw their search traffic drop by 50% or more.  We can attribute this to the fact that we are one of the only crowd sourced web sites that has an in depth editorial process.  By continuing to manually approve articles and tweak our quality guidelines we can dramatically reduce the chance of spammy or thin content being published on our platform.  With that said, we have watched our traffic climb back up over the past month, and would estimate we should pass where we were prior to the update by mid April.

Search engine updates are always going to play a large part in online business.  We have been involved in online marketing and business for over ten years now and have seen dozens of other major algorithm roll outs.  Rest assured we will do everything in our power to always stay within the guidelines of the search engines, and will always evolve to make sure we meet or beat the criteria set forth to be considered a quality site.

While people are nervous about the algorithm change, if you are creating high quality content you should have nothing to worry about.

We are still extremely excited about the future of this site and look forward to watching it evolve over the years.

I’d like to personally thank each and every person that contributes for making this place what is is today.

It has been a long time coming, but InfoBarrel 2.0 will be launching tonight at around midnight.

InfoBarrel will be unavailable for a few hours starting tonight around 10:30pm PST (1:30am EST) and will be down until we have the complete conversion setup.

There will probably be a number of hiccups over the next couple of days, so make sure you create any content locally in a word processor to ensure no content is lost.

In the mean time, if you would like a sneak peak at the upcoming version of InfoBarrel, take a look at our preview over at Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income.

As some people are aware, Google is beginning to crack down on content they believe to be low quality.  As a result we are going to start being more strict on what we consider quality content.

Moving forward all content published on InfoBarrel must be high quality and must provide actual value to the user.  Articles created to be doorway pages for search engine optimization will not be published.  A contextual link within an article that provides value to the reader is not a problem, however an article that talks about “Tips for purchasing pink rugs” that rambles on common sense about pink rugs and fails to deliver on it’s title will no longer be accepted.

Our goal is to create a very high quality database of content that is helpful to people of all walks of life.

If you come across an article that appears to be a doorway page for SEO, please flag it so we can keep this place the best place to publish content.

We are not planning on doing any mass deletes, or anything along those lines, however if one of your articles becomes flagged we will send you an email with the article in question and ask you to resolve the issue within a reasonable time frame.

For more information on what Google considers a doorway page, please see the following page: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355&hl=en

Happy Birthday InfoBarrel!

For those of you who didn’t know, two years ago today InfoBarrel.com opened up our doors to the public to begin writing. Over the last two years the site has experienced tremendous growth, attracting just shy of 20,000 writers and publishing over 35,000 articles.

InfoBarrel’s growth has been phenomenal and it has been an amazing ride watching it grow from a tiny little site with a few writers, to the thriving writers community it is today. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited we are to continue watching InfoBarrel mature into one of the largest web sites on the Internet.

So, in the spirit of InfoBarrel’s second birthday, I think I will share some fun statistics with everybody

1 Year:

Alexa ranking: Roughly 60K (global)
Published Articles: 4341
Articles per day average: 56.61
Writers: 2497

2 Years:

Alexa ranking: 7342 (global)
Published Articles: 35,200+
Articles per day average: 130+
Writers: 19775+

As you can see, we’ve made some pretty big strides in the last year. We would like to thank everybody who has participated in the site for all their hard work and we look forward to growing with all of you in the future.

Happy Birthday InfoBarrel!