The Negatives Of DoFollow
As most of you may or may not know, I have been a strong supporter in the use of a DoFollow plugin which rewards the commenter’s of this blog with some Google juice. However, I may have to rethink the use of DoFollow after reading this article entitled, Nofollow and the Spam War Arms Race. The articles goes into detail as to why DoFollow may be more of a problem, then a solution. According to Smiths R Us, there are software programs being developed which go out on the net, looking for blogs and or websites that have the “NoFollow” attributed turned off or disabled. From this piece of software, one can fill in the common comment fields such as Name, URL, Email, and comment and publish it to the blog. These software programs even contain ways of organizing the sites based on their page rank value.
Smiths R Us and myself included have noticed an abundant increase in the amount of spam comments that ALMOST look legitimate, with the exception of the URL that the user is trying to promote.
According to Smiths R Us:
- Turning off nofollow can be a spammer magnet.
- Some sites are promoting dofollow to increase the number of sites available to abuse.
- Some sites are promoting displaying a dofollow graphic on your site only to make it easier for them to find you.
- Not using nofollow may effect Google search results ranking. It may be coincidence, but I had a site that by every statistic should have ranked #1 for certain keywords, yet it remained at the #3 position for many months. The site leapt past the competition to #1 within a month of turning nofollow back on. I can’t prove a correlation, but further study is certainly warranted.
Thankfully, he gives up some suggestions on what to do about this situation at the end of his article. I suggested that perhaps we should turn NoFollow back on and then install something like the CommentLuv plugin. But then again, that wouldn’t enable the commenter’s on your blog any Google love. What are some of your suggestions for this situation and are you willing to turn NoFollow back on?
Subscribe To Posts
Subscribe Via Email
Stay Updated Via Twitter
Loading ...
Foomandoonian on 
grande on 
Jeffro on 
Dulcenegosyante on 
grande on 
Bleuken on 
Josh Budde
John Kolbert
Susan
Damn Hairy Human
prof kienstra
Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
Luis Galarza
Comment by Ronald Huereca on 26 February 2008
I’ve noticed an increase in “spammy” comments on my personal blog, which has a pagerank of 5 and a “top commenters” feature. I’m thinking about removing the commenters feature, but will likely still keep do-follow installed.
Comment by Jeffro on 26 February 2008
Comment by Ronald on 26 February 2008
No, I allow first-time commenters to automatically appear. I have the same setup at RA Project.
Comment by Andrew on 26 February 2008
I think we all need to get out of the mindset that Google (or any other branded search) juice is something that should be given away with comments.
Does being a prolific commenter actually mean that a blog or website owned, run by, and written by you is more important or relevant than a site from someone who is not much of a commenter?
Does even the fact that my comments are valuable and insightful in context of your post mean that my site is likely to be more valuable to the world in general than otherwise would be the case?
In the context of search results aren’t all comments, by virtue of the fact that they are entered by the person being linked to, spam? in a way?
Comment by Webomatica on 26 February 2008
The spam thing is annoying and I have reinstated nofollow on my blog in total because of it.
Similar to Ronald, I had a top commentator plug in installed from which I removed nofollow. I recently noticed some spammy comments spoofing the top commenter’s names. I have since reinstated nofollow, and as a consolation I’ll link to the top commentators at the end of the month in a post proper.
Comment by Jeffro on 26 February 2008
I’ll have to give your questions some more thought as you have stumped me.
@Webomatica and Ronald But if you set your comments up so that only those who have a previously approved comment can file a comment automatically on your blog, doesn’t that pretty much eliminate the abuse of your top commenter display as well as the spam?
Comment by Ronald on 26 February 2008
Jeff,
It’s a trade-off thing. I’d rather have a reader’s comment go straight to the blog rather than sit in a queue waiting for me to approve it. In my opinion it hinders the conversation and forces the reader into the spam loop.
If a commenter is spammy, I’ll delete it, so I’m not too worried about it. I have a captcha on my personal blog, and I do have my blog set to auto-moderate after 2 links.
The people leaving “spammy” comments are legitimate comments, and they do weigh in on the conversation. However, I suspect the only reason they’re leaving them is based on my pagerank and “top commenters” plugin.
Comment by Jeffro on 26 February 2008
Comment by Andrew on 27 February 2008
I do have a moderation requirement on my blog; I always have, but the spam comments I do get have often been very long and I think could cause quite a problem.
Another thing I have noticed over the past few days is sites that look entirely fine, but are not owned by who they say they are that have all the sidebar links pointing outwards instead of inwards.
It really shakes my faith in humanity to be honest.
Comment by Treadmill Master on 4 March 2008
I’m one of those people who search for nofollow blogs. I try not to leave “spammy” comments. I genuinely read the posts, leave a relevant comment, and in return I think its fair to leave my link for a little google juice.
I did just spot a plugin that would strongly deter people from abusing your generosity though, and would be a very good compromise. It removes the no follow attribute after 10 comments, limits name to 15 characters.
Oh, and of course, good moderation is always an excellent solution.
Comment by Jewelry Woman on 7 April 2008
With google promoting the use of nofollow FAR behond it’s intended use they have destroyed the ability of people to share and reward with links. I think this plugin is super. You should expect far more traffic then other blogs.
Comment by Alex D on 12 May 2008
Definitely, the CommentLuv plugin is better than turning off the nofollow.