Changing Comment Policy
December 13th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Random ThoughtsIf 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!
Back in June I tried removing nofollow from all comments on this blog (see No Follow The Leper of Blogging). Well almost 6 months later I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to reverse that decision.
I still believe 100% that the use of the nofollow command has done very little to stop blog spam. Comparing this blog which had nofollow removed to at least a dozen other blogs I run that have nofollow running on, it does very little to stop the flow of automated blog spam. If you were paying attention you’ll notice I said automated blog spam. About 99% of all the spam I get here is automated, and spam karma and akismet do a pretty good job at stopping it (they need a local whitelist though). However what is on the rise is hand spam. It’s annoying but I usually catch my fans “virtual hosting” or “pay day loans” pretty easily. However what’s on the rise are people like Rose linking to sites selling [rose water] and Elmo linking to sites selling [TMX Elmo]. To be honest if I have to spend time figuring out if that stuff is legit or not, that’s less time I spend producing posts or doing other work.
However I do still believe that people who take the time to write comments do add value so I’d like to give them something back in return, and a link is the easiest way to do it. So on my Recent Comments page I added a section to list the people who have made the most comments and give them a link back. I’m using the Top Commenters plugin for wordpress to do this so I don’t have to do it manually. Is it fair that a few bad apples spoil it for the whole bunch, nope, but it’s a reality we have to deal with.
If you are person who comments here and don’t want the link, let me know and I’ll add you as an exception. If you’ve written comments and feel that you’re getting shafted or screwed in someway by this change let me know. If you’re really really upset I’ll remove your comments entirely if that’s what you want.
I’ll be tweaking things over the next few days, expect this change to go into place within the next 7 days. I have a few other changes I’ll be making before the end of the year as well.
Sphere It
December 13th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Thanks man! I would love to get more visitors from your site. This is the only other SEO related blog that I love to read and participate in.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
As one of your top posters please link to my blog at h**p://buy—-viagra—online.info
j/k mad4
December 13th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Dude! I need these links back to SEOmoz, Michael. Don’t take away my links! What a terrible decision. You’re totally not empowering your users. Trust blah blah blah… complain… whine… bitch… moan…
OK - got that out.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
It’s too bad that you have some abusers, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
That will be a sad day, though. I suspect I get some decent link-juice from the comments I’ve left here over time…
December 13th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
I must commend your ability to recognize that your loyal readers and those that leave you comments deserve some link love from your site. It is unfortunate that here on the blogosphere we are forced to tirelessly monitor the comments left on our blogs.
Sometimes I feel like Lieutenant Columbo investigating who is leaving what on our site and their motivations for doing so. But like you said, “it’s a reality we have to deal with.”
December 13th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I personally put links on my comments for traffic and not link loe so makes no difference to me. Gotta do what you gotta do to stop the spammers.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Hmm…I’ve probably not left enough comments to get any Graywolf Link Love. Must go into the archives and submit lots of “I agree” messages….
December 13th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
yes, I agree too
- knew I shouldn’t have lurked so much…gotta contribute more.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
This seems to be a growing trend. SEOmoz is doing something similar with nofollow in the profiles. It seems like a good way to encourage people to post comments.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Damn Elmo messing everything up
December 13th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Nice idea.
Come on rand, we all know exactly why you did what you did!
Me doesn’t like being a “top” commenter anywhere, *goes silent for a week or two* ;-(
December 13th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Nice, so now everyone competes to be a top commenter to get that link juice
December 13th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Seomoz, Graywolf … who is next?
December 13th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
So I gotta ask MG… what seo test are you running on me by linking to my age old personal blog that’s been redirected to my sugarrae blog for almost a year?
December 13th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
I’ve been doing it on my blog for a while as well (removing the default wordpress nofollow), and I guess I should be happy to not have been bothered by the roses and elmoes of this world to much, but perhaps that’s because i’m not an A or B-list blogger
I can totally understand and support the decision, and the link for regular commenters just might get you a few very active new commenters 
December 13th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Awwww… there goes my PR!
(And here was me pouting that I couldn’t think up a personal name that was on-topic for a DNS-related site ;))
December 14th, 2006 at 5:30 am
Wow! Thanks for the extra link! I never realized that I comment so frequently over here. I tend to comment more on posts that are a bit off the wall.
If you want to know what the signal to noise ratio is over at Jim Boykin’s blog, Cartoon Barry or SEOmoz, just search for my comments. The noisy posts are some of my favorite.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:49 am
I think that’s fair Michael, but I think that you may have an issue on your hands with MUCH lower quality comments from people simply trying to get that link back.
Currently, the standard is relatively high. Numerous reasons I guess, but even the “Link Chancers” attempt a quality comment in the hope it will be left there with their link back.
December 14th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Thx dude. Every links counts right. or… err..
I guess I need to to back to Jim Boykin blog and read about linked neighborhoods again.
December 14th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Can I change my name to “Free Ringtones” ?
I agree that nofollow is stupid.
December 16th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Damn - there’s goes my campaign to rank for my own name.
April 11th, 2007 at 5:05 am
It seems meantime you removed the “top commenters” plugin.
September 1st, 2007 at 3:45 am
Nice line of reasoning. To bad you dropped the top comment plug.