Brief Review of Syndk8’s AutoPligg

While this is not our normal modus operandi, we just wanted to share a new tool we’ve been made aware of and have had the opportunity to test. We are not affiliated with their company. We will not provide any technical support for their product. With that out of the way, we’d like to talk about Syndk8’s AutoPligg application.

We have to admit that we were very, very skeptical at first. The long term SEO value of applications like this has never excited us. For a short blast, they can be effective, but generally they are the quickest route to your local sandbox. However, at least for the time being, AutoPligg appears to do what it says it can do and it does it pretty damn well. For those who are unaware, Pligg is an open-source web application that is very similar to the extremely popular Digg platform. This allows a user community to vote and comment on links that they either like or dislike. There are quite a few Pligg sites floating around the web.

Essentially what AutoPligg does is automate the creation of accounts, as well as the submission and commenting of links. It’s as simple as that. While most people will definitely abuse this application and spam their links, we believe that more intelligent marketers will realize the potential of targeting the sites to which they list their stories.

The brief test we did, definitely seemed to show that AutoPligg is effective at increasing the short term SERPs of targeted low volume, low competition, long tail keywords. We can’t speak of the application’s long term value as we haven’t had access to it for a long enough period of time to really tell. It is extremely simple to use and doesn’t seem to be too much of a resource hog in it’s current incarnation. CAPTCHA cracking makes the account creation process much easier and the inclusion of proxy support was a great idea. Last, but not least, it’s price tag, only $189, is definitely in the right ballpark for this kind of application. If the makers keep it updated, this could be one of the better purchases a smart marketer makes this year.

The biggest fault we could find was it’s speed. From what we understand, the makers are working on a multi-threaded version which would make this application, much, much faster and that much better. That said, even though the application isn’t fast, it is automated, which almost makes up for it’s speed. We’d love to see a faster version in the near future.

We’ll post an updated review once we see how our results pan out over a longer period of time.