Software Submission and Promotion Services
PAD Submission
Do you have to submit an application’s PAD file to the download sites? Shouldn’t the download sites pick it up automatically once you publish it in the PAD Repository?
They are allowed to. But, it doesn’t mean that they have to. Most of the sites that automatically poll your PAD file fall into two main categories. The first are “PAD Scrappers”. Publishers also often refer to this category as “Garbage Collectors“. These category of sites do not care about the quality of content. Unfortunately, they scrape as much content as they can for the purpose of stuffing such information into Google search index filled with pages containing paid ads. A second category of sites that poll your PAD file automatically are sites that are interested in “wrapping” your product with their ad-supported download managers and/or installers.
Reputable download sites normally do not publish your product without your consent. In majority of cases, these premier sites require you to formally submit your product to them and will require formal registration or authentication before allowing you to submit your product for listing. Because each individual site may have its unique acceptance policies and submission rules, this process cannot be cannot be fully automated. Another factor requiring unique submission is the fact that each site has it’s own unique category tree. The sites often require you to manually select categories that optimally match your product. The better managed sites also provide a convenient way to manage your publications, requiring a publisher to create their own login and password account. A publisher account offers the site to provide a secure, direct and reliable communication channel with you, providing you with referencing e-mails for activation and confirmation links.
The PAD standard has been and continues to be a perfect container that contains all information about your product in a standardized form. With PAD file for your application, you do not have to fill out content forms on download sites over and over, as the PAD content does this for you. However, a PAD file alone is not the solution for submission process that many sites require. As stated above, hundreds of software download sites still require you to create a publisher account before allowing you to formally submit your PAD file for review and site publication. Publishers can invest their own time to create site-specific accounts and fill out forms. On average, you’ll have to invest a minimum of 15 to 45 minutes per site. AppVisor offers you a better solution through our submission services – our AppVisor team will provide this service to you, including maintaining your author accounts on download sites, manually selecting categories for your application, updating your existing product listings if needed, process/respond to all mail from sites and generate comprehensive publication tracking reports. It’s easy to add any of the AppVisor subscription packages above using the “Promote” link on your product dashboard in the AppVisor Publisher Control Panel.
What about the download sites that do not support PAD?
More and more download sites move to PAD standard for application submissions. Yet, for various reasons, not all sites can accept PAD submissions directly. Our developers have created powerful scripts that extract information from your PAD file and convert it on-the-fly according to each non-PAD site requirements. You do not have to care whether a specific site supports PAD or not. All the AppVisor subscription packages include the both PAD-enabled and non-PAD sites.
Do publications on the download sites affect your site’s SEO?
Yes. Google and other Search Engines monitor popular download sites for publications, which may significantly affect your site positions and rankings. You should know that Google is intelligent enough to distinguish your app publications on download sites from link spam. Your home web site never gets penalized by Google for publications on download sites regardless of their quantity and speed of their appearance. Google treats news sites the very same. The more news your web site generates, the greater the benefit to your site rankings and on search results. As such, the more you update your application’s information on download sites, the better your site will benefit on search results and rankings!
In general, PAD submissions is a powerful SEO instrument if used properly and doing it in a very acceptable way. AppVisor’s SEO-oriented “Ultimate” package allows you to optimally target your application’s promotion campaign and track its results using the exclusive Appvisor SEO-tracking service.
PAD®, PADGen, and PADKit are trademarks of the Association of Shareware Professionals in the United States and/or other countries. Please refer to “PAD Rights, Requirements, and Usage Guidelines” on the ASP PAD website. All contents are Copyright ©2013 by AppVisor.com. Parts Association of Software Professionals All Rights Reserved.