No Follow The Leper of Blogging
June 3rd, 2006 by Michael Gray in BlogsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Jim was ahead of his time killing nofollow, Nick gives nofollow a smackdown, and Greg steps up to the plate and knocks one out with his yesfollow post.
Having them in place does nothing to discourage spammers, and they only seem to punish the people who actually do participate in the conversation. If I have a user that reads my blog on a daily basis, and the user takes the time to participate in the conversation, why shouldn’t s/he be awarded with a link?
I have a few other back-end cleanup details here to take care of this weekend and I’ll be removing nofollow tags, and coming up with a comment policy. So how ’bout you where do you stand on nofollow, do you think it’s a good idea or bad idea, would you remove it, and how does it fit in with your ‘blogging strategy’.
UPDATE: For a slightly different opinion see 5 Reasons I Like the NoFollow Tag - Stuntdubl
Nofollow is NOT really bad for the internet. It just changes things a bit, and perhaps has some substantial benefits that weren’t necessarily originally intentional.. It aids the engines in identifying block level content that is not trustworthy. It mainly hurts promisciuous linking, and assists with more precise indexing of content at the dynamically developed link level of content versus the higher page level meta tags previously available.
Sphere It
June 3rd, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I delete comment spam as it comes in so the nofollow attribute does little to help my efforts. And I agree that its existance doesn’t discourage comment spammers. If anything, I’ve seen an increase in comment spam rather than a decrease in recent weeks.
I am looking in to captcha-type methods for eliminating automated comment spam, but haven’t settled on a solution yet. I’ve also tried out a WordPress plug-in that poses a simple math question before the comment is accepted.
June 3rd, 2006 at 1:52 pm
I don’t have much of a blogging strategy, alas.
For sites like this it makes sense to remove it because seo types might be more inclined to comment if the links count, although those who do feel this way may not be of the best quality as commenters go.
On mine I turned no-follow off from the start. The people who comment there generally have no clue about these things and probably the majority don’t even have sites. So. One thing I like is that sometimes the commenters will debate amongst themselves, or with me, or we argue, and then we start dropping links to back up our arguments. Usually those are the kinds of links that google likes or thinks are ‘quality’, so they may help the page.
June 3rd, 2006 at 2:20 pm
I killed nofollow on my german seo & sem blog two days ago.
Comment spam has a short live on my blog so there is no need for nofollow.
June 3rd, 2006 at 3:03 pm
I’d like to turn off nofollow just for the comments’ content, but I don’t feel comfortable turning off nofollow for the links that appear under comment authors names - there are too many people from different industries and even if their comments legit they can keep inserting different URLs under each post and they might be completely irrelevant. At the end, Google will punish us for linking out to irrelevant sources, plus we are not going to do full evaluation of their sites in search for hidden text and shady techniques. On the other hand links withing comment content completely different thing - they should be relevant to the post anyways. Links under author names not supposed to be relevant - I think they server more as reference to who the author is and if someone interested to know more about the persont they will click on the link, but it is not necessary relevant to the post or comment.
So far I wasn’t able to find plugin that wouldn’t strip nofollow from the author name links.
If someone finds such plugin, would be cool if you mention url here. (now, that link will be completely relevant to the post and comments, but if I had legit paralegal or bass fishing site under my name… you could see what I do, but it would had nothing to do with the current subject. You get my point?)
Thanks.
June 3rd, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I’m trying dofollow
http://www.semiologic.com/software/dofollow/
June 3rd, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I tried that. Strips off all nofollow.
June 3rd, 2006 at 7:29 pm
I grabbed the plugin from the http://www.yesfollow.org/ project as soon as it started. I never realised the nofollow was auto until then.
Akismet takes care of the spam
June 3rd, 2006 at 9:18 pm
I agree with you that the nofollow attribute should not be used for personal blogs.
Spammy comments will not last very long anyway, because no Blogger likes this worthless junk and deletes it in a matter of minutes or hours.
Google should rather spend the time to find ways to determine the quality of a Blog and assign something like a quality rank. Badly managed and low quality Blogs loose quality rank up to the point that they get ignored all together.
Well managed Blogs with quality content and discussions on the other hand should be rewarded with a higher rank. This rank says a lot about the blogger, the readers and readers that take an active part and comment on posts.
The nofollow tag has its purpose though. I am actively supporting the re-activation of the nofollow attribute for all “external” or outgoing links at Wikipedia. Not just the Articles, but the Talk Pages and User Pages as well.
You can find out more about that at my user pages at wikipedia (my user name is my last name), if you are interested.
June 3rd, 2006 at 9:29 pm
BTW. The same is true for Forums by the way, basically all sites that are interactive and people engage in active discussions. Email Spam Filter are today pretty good and even Blog Plug-ins that help the blog operator to detect spam comments quickly are working well.
If a section of a site or in some cases the whole site is recognized as interactive, such filters should be applied by the SE to determine the “quality rank”.
This sounds quite doable and practical to me.
June 3rd, 2006 at 11:33 pm
I used nofollow today in a link to Phillip Lenssen’s book on Lulu.com but did not put a nofollow to his blog. In mentioning his book should I also be passing link love to the place that is vending his book?
On my product review blog I always give Amazon.com a nofollow because they are owning a space that many weenie bloggers want and should have access too, need more good uses of the nofollow?
Own a directory? How about a nofollow on the
“submit a url” page that evil search engines might see as negative link exchange or competition?
Michael - What about your nofollow to creative commons in your footer? Damn right that should be a nofollow, do they deserve sitewide linkage? I would just move that link to a single page and remove the nofollow.
I do like the idea of removing nofollow in comments, those few who visit my new blog deserve a little link love unless they are shoemoney name contest clones, I just delete them in admin. cuz I do not like people taking a piss in my blog.
Wurd!
June 4th, 2006 at 12:37 am
Yep should have been it’s own page, but hey I’m only one guy and sometimes I got to ‘pay the bills’ before doing the fun stuff. Damn new comment policy and licensing information like I’ve become a ’suit’ again or something.
June 4th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Aaron, I think Michael and the other Bloggers talk about the nofollow attribute for comments at “classic” Blogs. I don’t know a better word for it. People use Blogs for everything nowadays.
Your product review blog for example. What kind of comments would you like to get? None? Turn of comments and the problem is not a problem anymore.
Regarding directories. It depends. If you are a trusted site by Google (like the Yahoo! Dir, Dmoz or BOTW), no need for nofollow. If you are not, you might. I have a directory site and most of the site went supplemental a few months ago during BigDaddy. I am not sure yet why.
We did a lot of stuff when Jagger and BigDaddy happened, then the Google Problems and some Policy additions. Too much for me to nail it down, but one reason could be, that some outbound links where going to a bad neighborhood.
We review all sites first, but more the content than if they are doing some fishy SE Spam. Too much links to check every single one of them. We will see, if the nofollow will change anything or not.
Last but not least, if you allow comments on your site, blog etc. , then you better moderate them and delete the junk. If you don’t like certain kinds of comments, add a comment policy and make it clear. This avoids issues, the discussion will be good and everybody is a happy camper.
The nofollow can be removed, because the linking is natural and relevant. Google will be all happy and everything is peachy. If Michael does not delete my comment, he is doing a “vote”, that I contributed something meaningful and adds to a page full of quality content, that started with 5 lines of text and a citation ;).
Allow only Website URLs that point to the commentators Blog or Homepage and not to a commercial Website, because a comment is personal and so should the website URL used by the commentator.
Does this make sense?
June 4th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
I wonder, how many of those who are removing no-follow, are going to make it retroactive to previous comments.
June 4th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Anymore my only real concern with it is that no follow lets me interlink my websites - to get visitors - without Google thinking I’m building an evil network.
June 4th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Hi Gray, (or anyone with an opinion)
I usually try my best to keep my comments short and to the point but I just posted a long ranting comment on your post about the Al Gore film and the subject of cars. I couldn’t help my self. I also could have gone on forever but I kept it as short as I could.
What is the proper comment posting etiquette in these situations? Or, what is your personal preference? (Regardless of No Follow)
If I have something on-topic but very long winded to say; would you prefer that I…
A) Just post the long winded thought or rant in your comments.
B) Post the rant on my own blog then post a link to my blog in your comments so you can see what I have to say.
For example: Greywolf says (links to your post)
Then I post a short comment on your blog that links to my blog with long winded, detailed, rant or expanded thought on the subject.
Would this be viewed as the preferred method of expanding on a detailed thought or interpreted as being purely self serving?
Thanks.
June 4th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
I just realized a good example of this is on your friend Stuntdubl’s website where he posts a dissenting POV to this post.
“5 Reasons I Like the NoFollow Tag”
http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/06/03/please-follow/
(IMO) it would have been nice for Todd to post something over here as well and link to his blog just in case you want to read the entire thought. (Or is that rude?)
June 4th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
If you’re going to ramble on bear in mind my eyes may glaze over at certain point, but by all means get what you need to get off your chest. Todd probably should have sent a trackback, but may have that turned off because people reject them, or heck I may have my blog misconfigured and not accepting them so who knows, however I linked into him.
I suppose it really depends on your goals and your audience. If your just retorting then I’d say keep it in the comments, if you’re ‘going long’ or your audience isn’t my audience then your blog would be better. Either way I’m not offended.
June 4th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
Hey guys…yeah…just thought I’d try a dissenting opinion for once rather than agreeing with everone’s summation of nofollow.
I think it kind of *is what it is*…
I’m sure there are plenty of backlinks between myself and GW, and the reason for the lack of trackback or comment is generally due to sheer laziness.
Nearly daily I seem to see interesting implementations of nofollow beyond just blogs, and in my mind it’s just another way to convolute the important criteria (namely linkage profiles) in the search algos.
June 4th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
By the way, qualified trackback backlinks are nicer for titles, and I will have to make a note to turn them back on, or remember to use them more often.
A comment policy is probably a good idea, and I do agree that nofollow links are a crappy idea that I had overlooked for commentors of one’s blog.
June 4th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
5 Reasons I Like the NoFollow Tag
…
June 5th, 2006 at 10:38 am
>>I wonder, how many of those who are removing no-follow, are going to make it retroactive to previous comments.
The solution I chose, the Dofollow plugin, changes all comments retroactively. I approved all of those comments, so aren’t I, in essence, “voting” for them? Seems to me, they should be given proper citation.
June 5th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Additionally, I should note that I am not opposed to the use of nofollow tags, and I don’t think webmasters should boycott their use. In fact, I would agree with Todd that the nofollow tag is probably good for the evolution of the net. I would even use it, both as an author, and as an advertiser.
If I wanted to get some advertising space on a site because I was interested in their traffic, but the host site linked to sites that I didn’t want in my link neighborhood, I would request they include a nofollow tag on my link.
If I wanted to reference a site or blog, but for any number of reasons did not want to pass any juice, I would include the nofollow tag.
I still think that the nofollow tag has its place - just not as the default setting for my blog comments.
June 6th, 2006 at 1:08 am
I turned mine off and blogged about it the other day.
June 15th, 2006 at 10:01 am
From the perspective of a new webmaster, I think that the nofollow tag is especially harmful to us. How do you get people to find you site in Google? Get links. But now that everybody is linking to each other they change the rules and make it harder to get links. How many of the blogs that are big today gain their popularity in part by exchanging comments with their fellow bloggers? Now that they’ve gotten real big, you read statements like “if your only posting for a link, we don’t really want your comments anyway.” As if anyone who wants the small bonus of a link has nothing worth to say at best, and at worst is an out right spammer.
July 9th, 2006 at 5:51 am
I think that the nofollow tag is being used by a lot of people in ways it was not intended to increase their own SEO efforts. Ensuring that page rank stays within their own website rather than sharing it around to the sites they link to in their content.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
I’ve never made my mind up on NoFollow, (why I’m here) but I have always resisted just adding it to follow the sheep. Still don’t know quite which way to go yet….
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:33 am
yeah… those stupid wiki’s!
wonder what happen if we all use nofollow to them?
Have a good one.