If you need any further help with any aspect of IMAutomator please contact support

When using an automated backlink-building tool such as IMAutomator it would be nice to see a report showing exactly what backlinks were created and the URL of those backlinks. We know that those of you using IMAutomator for clients would especially love to have a feature such as this. Unfortunately we are unable to produce such a report due to the way in which the submission is made. When IMAutomator makes its submission, we get back some data which we examine to determine whether or not the submission succeeded or failed but only in a handful of sites is the actual link of the backlink given. Because we can't report on this in an automated way, we are unable to incorporate it into our submission report.

We often get asked by new members whether or not the tool is working - especially if Google or Yahoo doesn't immediately pick up the links. In the case of Bookmark submissions, when IMAutomator reports a successful submission that means that the bookmark is now LIVE and you can see it. If you wish to verify this yourself for your own sanity then what we recommend is to use IMAutomator to bookmark something that has a unique word or phrase within the bookmark title. Once some successful submissions have been made visit the actual sites that were submitted to and use their search functionality to search for your bookmark. The list of sites we submit to is on our supported sites page.

There are a handful of sites for which the search function does not work but it does for most of them. In this way you'll be able to verify that IMAutomator is working!

The situation with the other tools such as Articles, RSS & Directories is a little different. When IMAutomator makes the submission it gets entered into the site for review, then a human being needs to manually review the site before publishing it. The time this takes varies wildly - some sites take just a few hours to publish the links but others take a few days or even several weeks. This is no different to making a manual submission and is something completely beyond our control. What this means is that when IMAutomator says it has made a successful submission, it means that the article / link was successfully submitted for review. At this time there is no way for our system to determine when those articles & links are reviewed and published.

The size of the Pro member base will not be increased again until Release 3. We don't have an ETA for release at this time. However, occasionally a place opens up if an existing member fails to renew their membership so keep an eye on the site as when that happens - it's first-come, first served!

The Free version of IMAutomator was replaced with the Light version in January 2012 due to increasing abuse of free memberships. You may now purchase IMAutomator Light for just $2.99 per month which offers the same service as the free version before it.

No, it does not. We used to offer a cut down version of the software for free but we had to discontinue this service due to abuse. We now offer a Light version that provides the same level of service for $2.99 a month

No, you may only submit each individual URL once. The reason for this is the way in which social bookmarking sites work - each URL is unique and any further submissions of an existing URL simply count as a vote for the first one. They do NOT give additional backlinks.

For this reason, we do not allow duplicate submissions and if you try and submit something you have submitted before you'll get an error message. For Light members, the submissions are limited to 15 sites per bookmark. If you wish to benefit from more backlinks for your bookmarks you will need to upgrade to the Pro version which will submit your bookmarks to all the sites in the system. Please check the Pro version page to see if any places are currently available.

Any bookmarks that you submitted previously will still be in the system but will only have gone to 15 sites. You now need to pick up the extra backlinks for all the sites in the system that you are now entitled to as a Pro member. You cannot resubmit the same URL twice from the main submission screen as that causes duplicate submissions. However Pro members have access to a very special tool called 'Secondary Submissions' which allows you to reschedule your existing links (for ALL tools) to any new sites that were not included in the original submission. This will pick up any new sites that have been added to the system and in the case of free members upgrading the Pro, it will also pick up all the extra sites that were not included due to the 15 site limitation. See the article and video on the training page to see just how to use this tool.

We have to be very careful about what kind of content gets submitted to IMAutomator. If we allow content such as adult material it causes our accounts to get blocked at the sites that we submit to and this compromises the entire system for all members. As such we have a Spam filter in place and if we come across jobs that do not meet our content guidelines then we will flag those jobs as spam and place a warning on the member account. That member will need to clear that warning by acknowledging understanding of our guidelines before being able to submit more jobs.

There are some subjects that are somewhat borderline and of course mistakes do happen so we have a 3-tier warning system in place. The fist time a warning occurs you'll be notified and informed about the offending jobs. If a second warning occurs you'll be informed that this is the last warning. If a 3rd violation occurs then the entire account will be blocked and the member will not be able to retrieve previously submitted jobs.

As part of our spam filtering system, in addition to flagging individual URL's as spam, if we feel that the domain that the URL comes from contains unsuitable content as a whole then we add that domain to a blacklist so that no URL's from that domain can be submitted in the future.

If you get this message when submitting a job it means that our spam filter has detected that your job could potentially be spam. The job has been placed into a moderation queue which will be be manually reviewed in due course. If accepted the job will appear in your jobs list usually within 24 hours, but it could take up to a week.

When IMAutomator makes a submission to a bookmarking site (other types are a little different), that bookmark is created immediately on that site. However, that doesn't mean that Google has found it. Generally, Google will index busier, higher PR sites more quickly than low PR ones but even then, it does not always show all the backlinks found.

In fact, there is still no accurate way of finding every single backlink to a site, which is very annoying when you are using a backlink service!

If you are worried that IMAutomator isn't working, make a submission with something unique in the title and then once the submissions are complete, visit the sites and do a search for your title - this should bring up your bookmarks and give you reassurance that IMAutomator really is doing it's job :-)

Failures can occur for a number of reasons. First of all, see the article on submission error messages to get more information.

The most common error is a server error or timeout. Since Release 2 we have had to switch to using proxy servers to spread the submissions across multiple IP's to prevent our server from being blocked. Unfortunately proxies are not as reliable as a direct server connection so these cause more errors. We have varios mechanisms in place to minimise these and are continuing to work on improving success rates.

We are always adding new sites into the system. They are initially put into 'trial mode' for a while before they are fully integrated. In order to maintain the integrity of IMAutomator, sites with a consistently high failure rate will be removed.

When new sites are first incorporated into IMAutomator, they are tested on a sample of bookmarks to make sure that they perform well before being fully integrated into the system. This is done by initially putting them into 'trial mode'. Whilst a site is on trial, a submission to that site will only be included for a selection of bookmarks so you may or may not see that site included in your submission schedule.

Once a site has been well tested and is deemed to be performing well, it will be taken out of trial mode and fully incporated which means that it will be included in the submission schedule for all bookmarks.

IMAutomator allocates each member a certain number of submissions daily depending on the membership type and submission type but the concept of a 'day' is a 24 hour period of the server which is on the GMT timezone. If your timezone differs from the server, the 'day' may not match yours but rest assured that you will have the correct number of links allocated every 24 hours.

First of all, don't panic as it is probably just temporary, especially if the site is new. Google often lists a new site then removes it for a few days and then puts it back with a new rank.

Whether it is just temporary or you feel it is a Google penalty, first of all stop building links! That applies to any link building tools and strategies you may be using - not just IMAutomator.

When the site comes back, start building links again but build up slowly. In IMAutomator take advantage of the slow drip-feed options to spread your links out over time - this is far less aggressive and tends to produce better results over the long term.

When you make a submission to IMAutomator it creates a submission schedule for each of the individual sites that will be submitted to. Only when ALL of these submissions have been made will that job move into the completed jobs list. Until then, you can click the 'Details' link of the job to see how the job is progressing. By default, jobs are submitted to just one site per day.

If you click on the Supported Sites list you will see a number in square brackets beside each site - this is the Page Rank and is recalculated on a weekly basis.

We are unable to display the follow status because for most sites it is dynamic and will change over time according to their criteria. For example, some sites simply publish all links directly to the front page with a follow link which is ideal. Others will publish initially with a nofollow tag and will remove it only when that story has been voted on. Each site is different.

In a word, No. For Pro members, the only reason we put any quota at all is simply to have a number of submissions that we know our submission engine can cope with. It's an internal thing based on the level of service we're able to provide and is not some kind of yardstick for you to follow. Expect the number of possible links to increase over time.

None of the Pro members are using up all the available links every day. The idea is simply that you have enough quota there to bookmark everything that you'd want to. For backlinks to be useful they should come from high quality links. If you try to create additional content simply for the sake of using up the quota on IMAutomator you run the risk of creating poor quality content which may hurt more than it helps.

To cancel your actual Payment plan, you need to do this via Paypal. Every time a payment is made, Paypal should send you an email and in that you be a link to the subscription - click on that and cancel it. The cancellation will be automatically detected by IMAutomator and your account will revert back to the Free version but all of your submissions will continue to be submitted.

Social bookmarking does not automatically guarantee traffic. There is very little DIRECT traffic that comes from IMAutomator submissions - that would only usually happen if you bookmark something that becomes very popular and it gets voted up to the front page of the larger sites, but that is a rare thing.

IMAutomator is live web-based software so when certain updates need to be made, we need to stop the software being used for a period of time whilst the update is performed. This is usually only for a few minutes at a time but is unfortunately necessary for the continued development of the software.

In a future update we will be building a proper spinning feature for Pro members. However, in the meantime you can achieve a similar effect if you are prepared to do a little more work...

The individual submissions are spread out over time and until all the submissions have been completed you are able to change the title, description & tags and these will affect the remaining submissions. So to achieve the 'spinning' effect - simply make some changes between each handful of submissions.

No You don't. IMAutomator internally handles all of the accounts required for the supported sites and rotates them around so all you need to do is submit your link, sit back and let the links roll in :-)

This is a requirement of the submission system for some of the sites that we submit to. Most of them only use the email internally to notify you when the feed has been approved - this can take several weeks for some sites.

If you are worried about your own name & email being displayed I would highly recommend the use of a pen name and associated email. A very handy site for generating identities is Random Identity Generator