Ezinearticles Invalid Link Notification!

If you are an avid article marketer, there is no doubt that you use Ezine Articles on a regular basis, and unless your spam filters are way too hard to penetrate, there is a 99% chance that you have received this email from Ezinearticles.com:

——————————–
We have identified a link (URL) in one or more of your articles that may be invalid. We've developed
a Diagnostic Center within the Author Tools menu that lists the invalid link(s) by article title and
allows you to edit, remove or re-validate the invalid link(s).

To utilize the Diagnostic Center:

1. Select 'Diagnostic Center' from the 'Author Tools' menu.
Note: You will see your invalid links and article titles displayed.

2. Click on the 'Invalid URL' to determine if it links to a valid website.
Note: If the URL is valid, click on 'Report As Valid' on the right side of the Diagnostic Center.

To edit your Invalid Link within the Diagnostic Center:

1. Click on 'Edit' to the left of your article title.

2. Identify the invalid link within your article and edit or remove the link.

3. Re-submit your article for review.

Article link integrity is important to you because having working links helps you attract traffic
from EzineArticles.

It's important to us that your links are valid because we aim to provide our users with a positive
experience.

We encourage you to edit, re-validate or remove your invalid website links within the next 48 hours
to avoid automatic link removal from your articles.

Any questions? Please contact us.
—————————————-

Now, I received several of those emails because I have multiple accounts with them under different names. Yes, I know it is against their TOS but experience has taught me that I should never rely on just one account because anything can happen to it!

Going back to the heart of the matter, I have no problems if a software detects invalid links in article resource boxes. I am all for enhanced user experience! But it really gets annoying if 100% valid links are flagged off as invalid as well. I am sure that they will develop the software even further and it will be changed/modified as frequently as Google's algorithm (which incidentally, is not perfect either), but from what it looks now, the software woprks based on signals that it receives from the server(s) of the author (s)

So, if your server happens to be down for a couple of hours on any given day, chances are that your resource box links will be flagged off as invalid.

At least, that is what happened to me. Sure, some of the links were invalid and I am glad that they will be removed. But I had to report several valid links (about 94) as valid. It is okay if such a thing happens once in a blue moon, otherwise it is just another waste of time. :(

FYI, whenever you receive such an email, don't take any chances, especially if your livelihood depends on them. Go and fix your links immediately or report them as valid, otherwise your links will be auto-removed from the system!

And just tell me, is there a single server in the world which is not down even for a minute? I use Myriad Networks hosting and am literally proud to recommend them to anyone, but even then my sites have occasional downtimes. Flagging an URL as invalid based on a temporary server error doesn't seem to be a valid analysis IMO!

Which also lets me to ask you: are you relying only on Ezine Articles for your bread and butter or are you also building something of your own? Seriously, if you haven't already, build something of your own: build your OWN forum, build your OWN article directory, build your OWN content sites – just build something that you can call your OWN! Ezinearticles.com is not your property, Squidoo.com is not your property, but what you build on YOUR SERVER is 100% your property over which you have FULL control.

If you have read my free bum marketing report, you already know that while I advise people to use article directories such as ezinearticles, I also strongly encourage them to build their own sites. In fact, you can do bum marketing in a way by which you can use Ezine Articles while building your own little minisites.

I don't use Ezine Articles as much as I used to do in the past! In fact, I haven't logged in my Ezine Articles accounts for over 4 months, and wouldn't have done so yet had I not received their 'diagnostic' email.

What do you think? You may post your comments below :)

Nuff said! It is Saturday so I am off to meet some of my friends. What about you? :)