I‘m trying something new in my sidebar. It’s called AutoRoll and it’s a “widget” that you put on your blog and it displays links to other participating blogs that have similar topics to this one.

What is AutoRoll?
AutoRoll is a blog widget that displays links to blogs that your readers should like. Based on each unique reader’s affinity for each specific blog, the Criteo Recommendation Engine will compute on a real-time basis the relative affinity of all blogs, and it automatically displays the Top 10 unique links on each blog.

How does AutoRoll work?
We trace the number of visits of each unique reader on every blog that has installed AutoRoll. This is achieved through a cookie and requires no action from the reader.
This information is then fed to the Criteo Recommendation Engine, which computes blog affinities in real-time. The more often a reader visits a specific blog, the greater his affinity is with that blog. The exact affinity formula is kept secret to prevent any form of abuse. Using the Criteo Predictive Engine, we determine and display for any given blog its instant relative affinity with all other blogs that have installed AutoRoll.

It will take a few days for those links to start looking more relevant to you, but it will help if you spread the word and even sign up your own blog for the AutoRoll. It’s free and helps point your readers to other blogs that they would enjoy. It also provide you with some additional stats that you may not pick up in other ways. It’s very easy to install, too!