Sorry, dude, but you ain't advertising like that on my blog. I was /already/ advertising your search engine just by having the button there. lata.

Brian, then take out the button. This service is for free and Philipp need money to maintain the server.

Yannick Mückenhirn ® http://noticiasinteresantes.blogspot.com

I would have given the option to turn off the amazon advertisement. I would also have provided the functionality to place any amazon referral ID which was preferred.

Just a lose-lose when you take an action which makes people remove it completely

No Fuji, I'm not losing anything if people take out my button. In fact, if 70% would take out the button due to the Amazon link, than the 30% which will keep using it are more than if I turn it off completely (which is an alternative I'm still pondering). I'm paying for my server, and I make the rules for the FindForward button. I hope people like it but if they don't, then, like Yannick said, they should simply not use it. If the whole thing creates bad moods among so many people I might actually turn off the button completely and shut down the service. To figure that out, I made the poll.

No need to be defensive, Philipp, you are certainly entitled to make the rules for the button, and hopefully, recoup some of the ongoing expenses of the service.

My point was that people want to feel in control of their websites (and especially any advertising on their sites), so merely providing the ability to change the parameters I mentioned above might result in more people keeping the default settings (even those who had felt the need to remove it completely)

Thank you, was a good service as long as it lasted....
bye bye from Italy

Thanks Andrea. If I can think up a way to make this run smoother, I just might start something similar again.

I'm kinda gutted about you taking the service offline. I don't suppose you could just release the code so that people can run it on their own space without having to use your server load etc? I'm guessing all it does is store each referer for the domain in a database, then check if the referer already exists. If not it emails the link.

If you fancy releasing a single site version of the code to the public let me know please! (andygreendezire.com).

Hey philip, we really miss your Finforward service... Its was great using it... Good job and do find a way to run it again...

Sadly news Philipp =(

Anyway, I will keep the button in my blog. Keep me informed about any future project of this nature. Thank you so much for the time that the Backlinks Alerts was online, its a great service yesterday, now and tomorrow.

Yannick Mückenhirn ® http://noticiasinteresantes.blogspot.com

As for releasing the code: the whole point of the FindForward button was to make it easy to get backlinks alerts without any installation, programming, database, or PHP. In other words, by just including a small JS-line, which might be possible even via small blog-template adjustments. If you already have access to PHP and you want to do some programming it's easy to do this yourself: just check the referrer on every page using PHP, store old referrers in My-SQL, and send out new alerts only. If I would release this it might be too complicated to set-up (MySQL, htaccess files possibly, various scripts, and a JavaScript embedding an image) but I'll be happy to help and share code.

And thanks Yannick and all the others for the great support of the Backlinks alert – I'll crack my head to re-launch this, if I can find a way to make it run smoother :)

Yeah... I figured it wouldn't be too hard. I might see if I can have a shot today. Could be fun!