This Had To Happen - Back To NoFollow?
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While I was checking some stats, I noticed traffic coming from “some websites“, at first I didn’t mind, I mean who wouldn’t want some free traffic? But after doing a little more research, I found some sites that I are kinda going against what I believe in when it comes to commenting on blogs. I believe it’s about conversations and adding value to discussions.
Ok, most of you know that this blog is “DoFollow“, meaning when you write a comment you get a link back to your site. And some PR checker tools are returning a PR5 for this blog. (don’t worry, this post is not really about PageRank)
I think you’re starting to see where I’m going….
So there is over 4,500 comments on this blog, that means I give quite a bit of link love. That I don’t mind, I think dofollow is an awesome way of rewarding people that take the time to leave comments.
Many times I’ve found sites listing blogs (and their PageRank), and telling people stuff like:
Those blogs have dofollow enabled, visit them, comment, and get a link back
Here’s one: http://inspiretechnology.co.uk/tools/pagerank/ (nope, won’t link to them)
Just leave the field blank and hit the search button. I’m sure you’ll see my blog on the list, and the PR of specific post pages next to the titles.
Another one: http://crmhelpdesksoftware.com/secret-list-of-free-high-quality-pr4-pr6-links-without-nofollow-or-with-i-follow/ (won’t link to them either)
Another one: http://www.xeoweb.com/foro/tema-12049.html ….
So, by having the DoFollow banner on my blog, what am I telling people?
Come here and get a free link?
That is not why I installed the DoFollow plugin, and I don’t want that. What happens is people just browse these lists, and leave ‘relevant’ (not so relevant from what I’ve seen) comments and voila, a link back!
A while ago with BuyBlogComments, I think many of us agreed it would be quite difficult to differentiate the fake comments from the real ones. Now you can check your live stats, and if you get a visitor from say this site: http://inspiretechnology.co.uk/tools/pagerank/ and then a comment (usually on an older post) right after, just delete it if you think it’s a “comment for a free link” type of comment.
Will I Go Back To NoFollow? - Your Turn To Talk
I’m not sure honestly, but I’ve thought about it, and I know people who comment on this blog don’t comment only to get a link back, you always add value to the discussions (which is what blogging is about). The whole dofollow thing is really cool, but like anything else, once people start abusing it, you have to do something.
I’d like you know your thoughts on this? There are more and more sites listing blogs/PR and telling people to go visit and comment to get free links back. I seriously think that is ruining the whole dofollow thing (which was, and still is a good idea).
What do you think? ;)
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I agree about people leaving irrelevant comments. Time after time I talk about the importance of comments in a blog as a discussion area.
Comments can be really a great tool if used properly for the blogger and reader to interact. I don’t think there is anything wrong with you making it a No Follow.
I regularly hack through my new comments and just delete any irrelevant comments. I mean I see so many that you can just tell that they are doing it for the link love.
But I wouldn’t change, I get a bit of traffic because they show up, and who knows one day they might actually get interested in what I have to say.
It is a frustrating thing sometimes. I myself have been waffling lately on whether or not to drop the whole “Dofollow” thing. Most comments I get I’d consider relevant, but a fair amount are relevant laziness done simply to get the link back.
At this point I’m not sure, but I’m increasingly thinking it would be better to reward commenter’s via the top commenter style plugins with an end of month post that gains them more permanent links. Most of these plugins allow you to filter account and domains so you could easily weed out the habitual “worthless” posters.
Not sure but it’s definitely something to think about.
Hi Ritu, thanks for the comment, I’m not sure yet I’ll go back to nofollow, but spending an hour everyday weeding out irrelevant comments is a little too much I think :)
Thomas, you got a good point, I got like 150-200 visitors from the sites I mentionned in my post. But on ther other hand, getting 200 visitors per day is quite easy, I’m not sure the time spent moderating the comments is worth 200 visitors, even if 2-3 peopel do stick around.
Hi James, that’s a good idea! I already have the top commentators plugin installed, but doing a monthly post and thank the top commentators is a good idea, these people would get the PR5 juice (instead of the PR3 juice on older posts by leaving irrelevant comments) Good point :)
Frankly I’m sure lots of people are going to try abusing of this do follow. And the more notorious a blog is, the more relevant spamming comments it will have.
I’m not saying that’s the way it should be, but it kind of logical..
As I do follow blogger myself I can say that I enjoy the whole idea of do-follow movement. My new blog is only about one week old and I already got a few nice comments that do not look like spam. I would not really mind even if somebody was abusing my do follow system as long as some honest people will benefit from it. You can always delete posts that look suspicious unless this would take you too much time. Whatever you decide in this matter will be justified.
Mike, you’re absolutely right, it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. It seems some people have no idea how to get links, the time they spend leaving “not so relevant” comments ould be better used writing interesting content that will get them links anyway :)
Hello MarriedMelody, thanks a lot! Well I’m not sure yet, I spend about an hour everyday deleting comments, and visiting blogs to see if they look like ‘real’ blogs. We’ll see :)
Hi,
This is my first visit and I’d like to voice my opinion through this comment. A lot of webmaster forums these days publish lists of blogs with dofollow tags and blogs like yours become easy target for people who want to build some good quality backlinks for their sites.
But then, there are people like me who come here for genuine information. I actually found your blog through Home with Heather. I guess you can take comment moderation into consideration. You can allow comments which you feel add value to your blog and to the current post. The reason why I’m telling you this is because most of these morons trying to get some quick backlinks don’t give elaborate comments on the post. They keep it simple like “Hi, nice post. Good work, keep it up” etc. So, you can simply moderate those comments and not allow them to get printed at all. This won’t eliminate spammers completely, but it will surely reduce the number.
That was my two cents.
Thanks
PS: I’m a newbie, so pardon me if that was a bad idea. :)
I’ve noticed a lot of comments on older posts, but a lot of the time they look legit and it’s hard to say whether or not to delete it. Some of the older posts have 60+ comments on them and I’m sure some/most are people getting linkbacks, but it’s hard to alienate that one person who posts legitimately and then delete their comment.
It’s really sad that you have to even post this article in the first place Jon. If people would stop being lazy you know what’s and actually try to run a good quality site, the whole spamming because of dofollow would end completely. Plain and simple, people are lazy and always trying to cheat some system to get ahead and it’s sad that’s it’s like that, but I guess such is life.
People would rather take time to hunt down all blogs with good Page Rank that dofollow so they can spam them then start a quality blog/site and update it with quality helpful information/thoughts. Just make no sense.
I’d love to see you stay dofollow Jon, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I’m just not sure that spammers care to be honest though. If you are a nofollower or dofollower, spammers will spam regardless. Though it may stop to spam you’re seeing from the two sites you mentioned above and ones like it.
I just did a post about using the LinkLove pluggin(click my name) as an alternative to using the DoFollow Pluggin.
I have not intalled it yet, but I am considering it. Have you every considered using it?
Hi Kris, that is actually a really good idea! :)
There are 2 things though, the 1st one is the time needed to moderate all the comments, it can get really time-consuming. The 2nd thing is these sites that link to dofollow blogs aren’t really the kind of sites most of us want to be associated with (not talking about ‘bad neighbour sites’ and Google or anything). For example you found my blog through Home with Heather, that is awesome, I’m happy about this! On the other hand if you find my site through on of those I mentionned in my post, you’re definitely looking for links in the first place. I don’t know, I’ve to decode if I’ll keep the dofollow, but the discussion is interesting, lots of great informations :)
Hi Erik, you’re right it’s hard to differentiate the goood from the spaammy ones. I was getting like 25 commets per hours yesterday on older post, magically when I turned off the comments on these posts, it stopped (there’s a bit of a solution there) :)
Hey Deron, thanks! Yeah Im not sure yet whether I’ll stick to dofollow or not. But chance are I’ll keep it. I think you guyz are awesome, so I wanna give something back, it’s a little time-consuming to moderate all this, but I think my loyal readers and comments deserve some link love for writing a comment, so it’s worth the time spent moderating :)
Hey Adam, thanks for the link, yeah I thought of using it, but it wouldn’t really fix this problem, although it sounds like a better plugin, will check it out :)
I hope that after the Paid links-Page Rank debacle on the net, hopefully Google doesn’t target The Do Follow Plug In users!
Vikram, some people have said that they believe Google is already targeting DoFollow users.
I hate this approach ofcourse!
I was trying to track some Do-Follow bloggers, to check is indeed Google was penalizing them, but some have shown increase in their PR and some have dropped.
Also tried to check how many are using Paid links to advertise, but its a huge list and not one mans job, so I stopped. The truth would show itself in time anyway.
Adam Donkus, do you have any proof of this: “some people have said that they believe Google is already targeting DoFollow users.” ? Some links would be great… 10x
seems a reasonable solution would be to make it a “nofollow” and any of your people who want a link back can request one…
maybe you can do some kind of “member” thing and list your member’s web sites or blog sites on your side bar… make it by invitation or reward only for doing right.
or, just ask everybody who want’s to post their url to pay you some money…? I don’t know what I would pay but think if you got a couple bucks per month from a few thousand people would be like killing 3 birds at once.
Hi Vikram, I don’t kow about Google, and honestly what Google does is their business, for me it’s more about the time that is needed to moderate the comments :) You’re right it’s not a one man’s job hehe
Hey Adam, humm I didn’t know that, thanks for the info, do you have some referrences or something (thanks Mike for asking) :)
Hi Bob, you got some good points, but I wouldn’t want to charge for a dofollow link, I don’t need the money, and it would actually make people go elsewhere I think :)
This is an interesting conundrum, yes? My belief is that at this point in the “history” of blogging, most of the people (not all, and not trying to generalize) who actually leave comments on blogs are very likely to be bloggers themselves. I may be wrong, and if someone has numbers or the ability to find this out, I’d gladly acknowledge. But again, my belief is that most comments are bloggers.
If we can agree to that for the sake of this comment, then can we also agree there are only so many ways for a blogger to legitimately create actions to get folks to discover and interact on their blogs? Hence the need and creation of the doFollow “movement”. Andy Beard, being a leader in this arena is a master at these concepts, and it was from him that I got involved.
So, it comes down to the degree of what is acceptable and what is not when considering whether or not to keep doFollow enabled, disable it, or produce some sort of hybrid system (where it is on, but the site owner would manually add the rel=nofollow on suspect links, or just manually delete them (my choice, fyi!).
Take this comment for instance. I’ve made a sincere attempt to add to the conversation, as evidenced by a comment that is probably too long, but hopefully conceived as relevant and value laden. In the “website” field, I’ve added a deep link to one of my most recent posts vs. just my top level domain, boldlygoing.com.
Is that acceptable action? Given that Andy is an online friend of mine with whom I chat regularly to him over in Poland, would it be acceptable to have put a link to his site into this doFollow enabled comment? Will my comment get moderated out or deleted by Jon later? Is this something that any of you other commentors (bloggers) do? I for one am curious to learn and understand more.
The dofollow helps that people comment more, but with so many comments, some will be irrelevant because it does not say anything interesting.
I’m a first time commenter here, although I subscribe to your feed and I’m also a DoFollow blogger.
I believe that DoFollow is a great movement and I don’t particularly care what Google think. As far as comments go there has been no appreciable increase in spammy comments, although I force moderate everything in any case so if it looks suspect I’ll strip the link or delete the comment.
If you are really unhappy about the “Drive bys” you could do as already suggested and try Luicia’s Linky Love plugin which will ensure that readers have to make X number of comments before benefiting from a DoFollow link.
http://www.money.bigbucksblogger.com
It’s a shame to see so many DoFollowers feeling pressured to drop out by spammers and Google fear.
Hi James, thanks for your comment! I think it’s fine if you wanna deep link in the comment section, but to be honest I usually edit the URL and leave only the top domain (I left your intact since you left a really relevant comment though)
Deleting comments is of course a solution, now it’s more about trying to find a solution for the unnecessary timespent moderating all this.
As for commenters being mostly bloggers, it’s true, but it really depends on the niche, on “blogs about blogging” it’s true almost 100% of comments are from bloggers, but for example I got other blogs in different niches, and I’d say the ratio is something like 40% bloggers, 40% non-bloggers and 20% website owners/no blog. :)
Jon, humm, yeah..
Hi Maurice, thanks for leaving a comment! :)
That plugin looks cool, but still if it’s an irrelevat comment it’ll still get some link juice after a couple of days when the nofollow is removed. Closing comments on older posts seems my best solution so far, still need to think about some things though :)
Hey Jon,
Do-follow is just too easy to abuse which is why I never installed it.
I think in a perfect world, do-follow is a great idea … but in a perfect world, there wouldn’t be any need for it because there never would have been no-follow in the first place.
Hi Jon,
I’m using the plugin “Nofollow Case by Case”
You simply add /dontfollow to any comment link you do not like and it will automatically become a nofollow link. That`s it!
So you don’t have to delete the complete comment, but you can make the link easily to a no-follow.
Hope you keep your blog do-follow, Even though it’s frustrating sometimes because of all the spam comments you get.
Sorry to comment again, but I just see the long URL,
You should use the plugin Chunk URLs for Wordpress http://www.village-idiot.org/archives/2006/06/29/wp-chunk/
Which cut the link, so it’s not messing up your design. As it does in your current post already.
I think as long as the comment is relevant (if you don’t think it’s relevant, you shouldn’t be allowing it to go through.) then this type of commenting is ok.
That being said, everybody has a different moral compass and if you think it’s not ok, then in your post you’ve already outlined a fairly easy work around.
I am sure somebody could hack together a script to just auto block comments from D-List sites.
It really depends on whether you have the patience and time to look at your comments to determine which ones are hit and run comments.
I’m a little lenient when it comes to regulars leaving casual comments, but I always make sure first time commenters don’t just leave a “nice one” comment.
Even if you do decide to bring back nofollow, people will still comment here. You’ve got great content after all buddy.
Hey Shane! hehe you’re right! :)
Hi Alex, thanks a lot, I thought of using this plugin, but I know some people are looking at the code to see which links are nofollow and which links are not, this would definitely cause some discussion as to why I put nofollow on some links and give some link love to others. I’m more looking for a global solution, but thanks for the comment :)
Thanks for the Wp-Chunk link, will look into it, I edited your previous comment and linked the text instead :)
Funny exam answers, good idea, if someone is willing to keep an updated list of such sites it would be great, sorta like an Akismet for spammy ‘relevant’ comments, good idea. Who wants to do it? :)
Brown Baron, thanks so much! This is the idea actually, DoFollow is just a little ’something more’ for regular commenters. I guess I’ll stick with DoFollow and simply go and delete comments and not spend too much time on this. It’s just that some look so relevant it’s hard to tell. Closing comments on older posts seems to work ok so far though :)
We recently launched a new food & travel blog (www.vezeo.com) and are in the middle of finding other useful and relevant sites to link to. IMHO I think adding the No Follow tag is selfish and short sighted. If you build an incredible blog that people love, others will link to you just because they want to. If i noticed a blog or website that we had a reciprocal link exchange set up add the No Follow tag, I’m pretty sure I’d want to remove their link from our site.
Hi Timothy, the blogroll thing I do agree completly, on the other hand, I don’t think the nofollow on comments is selfish or anything. By the way, you do have nofollow on your own blog….
I am using Lucia’s Linky Love as mentioned above by Maurice. I highly recommend it. ;)
Cheers,
Snoskred
I know this is very distressing, that people are misusing the dofollow plugin in your blog.
In my opinion, this will always happen as your popularity (and PageRank) increase. People come here to read, to come together as a community. Your writing style is addictive.
Maybe an Aksienet plugin will save you loads of time, and automatically filter spam comments. What do you think?
I fully understand where you are coming from and wonder whether we don’t do ourselves a disfavor by using do follow.
Since I’m using it I have seen a huge increase in worthless comments and luckily I approve each one first. So far I have managed to pick out the perpetrators and just deleted them. But as time goes by this becomes increasingly more time consuming.
Maybe the idea of a monthly post is something we bloggers have to resort to to cut through the crappy comments.
I’m personally all for the movement but not sure what will happen in the next few month.
Monika
I’ve recently created a blog (wordpress). It’s a dificult choice. Do you want the “extra” visits to your site? Or prefer less visits but more quality?
I think that the best option are both. See the link of Alex, it seems to be a great utility.
Hi Snoskred, cool, will have to download it, since you’re all recommending it :)
But it wouldn’t really weed out spammy comments and make it less time consuming though.
Hi Gauhar, thanks so much for the comment, really appreciate it :)
I already use Akismet, and so far it caught something like 26,000 spam comments. But those are really obvious spam comments, now the ones I have a problem with are the ones who ‘look’ relevant.
Hello Monika, I think you’re right, there are solutions, but they’re time cconsuming. A weekly or monthly link love post is a good idea which I did maany many times in the past, and plan on doing again in the near future. But I really do wanna keep the dofollow thing going, you guyz leave awesome comments so I wanna give a little something back :)
Hi Felix, well I want both, quality and quantity. For as long as there’s a discussion going on I’m a happy camper. I just don’t feel like spending an hour everyday asking myself “humm, is this one relevant? should I delete it?” :)
Jon, the pluggin that allows commenting to comments within a thread would be nice on this post.
@Mike, I was referring to a comment made on my post by Sonnie Porch. As with Google, it’s pretty much all speculation. But who knows if Google will decide to penalize for using the Dofollow pluggin?
Hey Adam, you got a point, threaded comments would be nice, I’ll install this right after I’m done replying here :)
*edit: tried it, but there’s a little bug, I’ll have to edit the comment.php file before enabling the plugin, a little later today :)
As Deron rightly points out, spammers will try whether you have dofollow or not, but you’re right about the growing emergence of ‘dofollow blog’ lists.
One main issue I see is where those followed links go. Your site attracts a lot of comments, deservedly, so I don’t expect you have the time to check every website belonging to the commenters. If those links are pointing to dodgey sites, in bad neighbourhoods, you’re giving those sites your vote of confidence. How detrimental that may be is open to debate, but it’s certainly something worth thinking about.
I hope all’s well with you buddy.
Hey Jon,
I’ve asked myself the same question. The comment spam is annoying, to say the least.
I still think that nofollow shouldn’t be applied to comments, though.
Call be stubborn, but I’m not gonna let some numbnuts influence my principles.
If it’s too obvious, I delete the comments, otherwise let them have it.
As a fellow DoFollower myself, I can totally understand your dilemma. I’ve had to manually adjust a number of comments recently as a result of blatant attempts to gain Google juice but I’m not planning on removing it just yet.
Maurice already beat me to it. That Lucia’s link love plugin would be a nice way to combat that. If those people who visit your site only post 1 comment, that comment stays, but they get no link juice out of it. I just wish it could be used for blogspot bloggers like mine.
I like the do follow movement, but eventually I think Google will find a way to create an algorithm for it. I haven’t switched to it myself until I can find a easy to install spam filter for non wordpress bloggers.
Hi David, things are going great, hope all is weel on your side :)
You’re right, it can get quite time-consuming, that and also checking older comments to make sure they don’t redirect to some “questionable” websites. Closing commenst on old posts seems a good solution though :)
Tobsy, good point! I’m thinking hitting the ‘delete’ button won’t change anything, I’ll still sleep at night hehe :)
Hi Mike, cool, I think that’s what I’ll do also. I mean it’s not that difficult to spot irrelevant and spammy comments, most people commenting here are regulars, it’s more for the new folks :)
Hi Mitch, thanks! A good solution would be to move your blog to WordPress (it ain’t difficult) :)
I know it is hard and annoying to sift through comments trying to find the spammy ones (even though some are very blatant). One possible way to lessen the burden of deciding which comments are real/fake could be to enable a comment moderation. Of course, if you’re blog is as popular as yours then it may be more tedious; but at least all the links will go to one place first where you can check them out, as opposed to having to go through all of the old posts.
and you already have comment moderation, did’t realize that. ok my post is irrelevant, apologies.
I think all you need to have is patience. Patience to moderate every comment that will arrive on this blog. I know you have a lot of comment to moderate, but some of them are worth reading … and you might learn something from it.
I never started using the nofollow tag untill David Airey posted on his blog that he got penalized by google…. I then put nofollow tags on most my external links on my sidebar and footer, even though they weren’t paid.
My comments are still doFollow, but we’re about to release our new site and I can’t risk any spanking by Google so they will be noFollow.
Jon - What Linky Love does is allow you to set a certain number of comments that a commentor has to make *before* their link is made do follow.
This is good for several reasons - the people looking for links back can “spam” but unless they come back and do it the exact amount of times you have set, they get no benefit at all. I think having the “Comments protected by Lucia’s Linky Love” on the comments page will stop those who are after a quick link, if they know a bit about blogging. They’ll move on to the next do follow blog which doesn’t have that.
I used to get a lot of the paid comments people on my blogger blog, but now I have Lucia’s link love? Miraculously I get none of them. They know it is a waste of their time and they know they won’t get paid for that comment so they don’t even bother to leave it.
I like that it gives you plenty of time to decide whether this is comment spam or not before any do follow happens at all. If I am at all suspicious, I like to search for the commentor on technorati - you can spot a spammer a mile off right there, making short little comments across a lot of blogs in a small amount of time.
There’s a few other features as well but I’ll let those come to you as a surprise because the one I just mentioned is the most important one.
Comment spam is an issue for all bloggers but much more so for those of us on Wordpress. I can’t believe how much spam I get, mostly about pills. It is highly irritating and one of the downsides to Wordpress. Compared to that kind of spamming, the odd comment to get a link doesn’t really bug me.
Cheers,
Snoskred
SnoskredSo even with Lucia’s link love you still get pill spam coming through? Also what is difference from wordpress commenting compared to blogger commenting that makes it easier for spam to get through?
Jon - I do plan on upgrading my blog to a server sometime or other, but I didn’t think it through with domain names really. So my current domain name is my parked site, which I’ll be running a review on for a while. The other reason is since I’ll be on vacation shortly I didn’t want to get into a server transfer/move, new template etc at the time. Also it gives me time to figure out which plugins, hosting is best for me.
I happened upon your site from one of those sites. Apparently my site is on the list of Do Follow blogs with high PR too. I’ve found a plugin that lets me pick and choose which comments I want to add the ‘nofollow’ attribute to. You can get it here: http://www.fob-marketing.de/marketing-blog-184-wordpress-nofollow-seo-plugin-nofollow-case-by-case.html. I’m also contemplating closing the comments on those posts that have suddenly seen a huge spike of activity (something I see you’ve done too).
By the way, you’ve got a great site.
Jon said - So even with Lucia’s link love you still get pill spam coming through?
Even with Akismet and TanTan Noodles I get pill spam coming through - it all gets trapped because I always moderate first time comments. I add the spam to Akismet which is supposed to learn, but doesn’t seem to.
Lucia’s Link Love isn’t designed to combat that kind of spam. It is designed to help you as a do follow blogger because what you want to do is allow your regular commentors to have their links be do follow. You don’t want any joe blow who shows up once and throws out a hey your site is wicked cool man! to get a do follow link.
Jon Said - Also what is difference from wordpress commenting compared to blogger commenting that makes it easier for spam to get through?
I don’t know why Blogger is not being targeted in the same way WP is. It is extremely odd. I do know I rarely got a robot spam comment on my old blog at all - in one month, on the new blog? 2290+ robot spams. Thats over 75 a day.
But I think these are two different topics :) It’s my fault because I am just so shocked at the amount of robot spam I get now! I honestly can’t believe it.
Your post was talking about humans spamming your blog to get a link, and for that Lucia’s Link Love will solve your problem. Regular commentors who have commented more than the number of comments you set will be do follow, the rest will be no follow.
Cheers,
Snoskred
Maybe the new WordPress Plugin Defensio is worth a try http://defensio.com/what-is-it/
It’s the new counterpart to Akismet and you also can get the comments through RSS Feed of your comments and your spam, so you don’t have to check everytime your admin panel.
It has an adaptive, personalized filtering algorithm, maybe it’s better than Akismet.
Alex
Thank you Snoskred for answering my questions. You had quoted me, but put ‘Jon said’ infront of it so it threw me off a little.
75 Comments are an awful lot to sift through, I thankfully don’t get that many yet, but then again I don’t get that many visitors yet either. Hopefully someday my problem will be to filter out good comments, instead of trying to get the comments in the first place.
Spam Karma is an excellent product. It blocks all the pill spam and associated *ahem* lifestyle products too. I check it a few times a week to make sure no legitimate comments have fallen in to the spam bucket (maybe 3 have in 15 months) and then delete the lot.
Happy days :D
Hey Jon,
Located your blog from Self Made Chick, and I’ll be subscribing.
With that said, it’s sad that people are resorting to this tactic to boost themselves up at the expense of others.
Who do they hurt? The new blogger who has something relevant to add, but who wants some occasional (eventually regular) readers.
Comment spam sucks, and it’s a short term “solution” to a long term issue. That person may boost themselves in the short term, but their reputation will be less than dirt. It just isn’t worth it.
Interesting article. I know what you mean as well. I added DoFollow to my blog so I could reward the people who comment me. I like to give back to the community like you do. I didn’t do it so people who don’t even give a care about my site get free link juice!
My thoughts exactly. I have hesitated to enable “dofollow” and this is the reason. Even though I do not have it enabled (yet), I still get the emails, daily, if I may add, asking for link trades or say, I’ve added you please make sure you add me. Um, right.
I’ve read you for a while and I have not left a comment until now. I try make certain I have something close to intelligent to say before I comment. Most comments meant to gain PR is not intelligent conversation.
I would certainly screen all the comments if I added “dofollow”. You just have to.
I think its a great idea, everyone could do with a bit of link love…..
Hi Jon, I’d like to know what comment moderation plugins you use e.g. spam karma etc..
by the way, the case by the case plugin is cool. first time i’ve heard of that.
I’m installing the Linky love plugin on my new blog. That and the Akismet plugin should do the trick.
There will always be people who abuse the system, but I will not let them spoil the fun for everybody else.
Thanks for your insight. While I’m not new to the web, I’m a late adopter in the world of blogging. I think I’ll give the follow plan a chance. While moderation and spam killer are intact, it should be ok. Thanks again
I suppose that if I were you I would probably turn off ‘do follow’ also. The people that really want to participate in the conversation will do so whether or not you follow. Apparently it doesn’t matter - you’ve got 60 high quality comments on this post!
i totally agree and i will install linky love as soon as i get my blog running. :)
I personally have the dofollow plugin on my blog, but since i don’t have near as much traffic as this blog has I am not worried about spam.
I see that as of today you still have do-follow policy. It is our comments that must have convinced you to keep the course:-).
I recently started a blog, and one of the ways I introduced myself to my community was to leave comments on other bloggers’ sites with a link back to my own. The link love did help me build an audience.
However, I never left a comment simply for the link–I always chose relevant blogs and posts I had something to say to. I guess I could have looked around for “dofollow” sites and just left blank comments or nonsensical comments everywhere, but then who would want to click on the link to learn more about my website?
Yeah, you might get some traffic from doing it that way. But you’ll get more interested readers–and a warmer welcome in your blogging community–if you leave valuable comments that contribute to the discussion. I guess it’s the typical SEO dillemma of quality vs. quantity.
Crap comments are what keeps me from installing a do follow plugin. My blog does not have a do follow plug in yet but people and comment bots already flood my blog with useless comments. What more with a do follow plug in.
I hope you don’t mind me asking Jon, but does the traffic from having such plugin converts good revenue wise?
I agree with what some people have said on here.
I’ll confess I came here through a list of “dofollow” blogs trying to get some link love.
But, out of those blogs on that list, I’ve been genuinely interested in a couple of them. So by having dofollow enabled, you get traffic, and some people might be interested in what you have to say, isnt that beneficial for everyone?
in the case of this blog, i will definately come back. So dofollow has helped you indirectly win me over as a reader
I agree with you that irrelevant comments not only are very irritating and a menace for bloggers . The only way i feel to overcome this, is to make it difficult for spammers to comment by installing a spam filter like the captcha spam plug-in for wordpress which makes it difficult to just write a one liner comment and get away, becoz he has to make the effort to fill in the captcha also !
I used to get tons of spam comments, but after installing the plug-in i haven’t seen a single spam comment..
Here I am.
I have also decided to join the dofollow bandwagon.
This is pretty sad.. always people to kill the blog spirit… people are selling comment now that’s really sad.. I ‘m still a dofolow until people don’t abuse it too much.. god blogshere is becoming a real jungle
I don’t comment very often but on this one I had no choice !!!
I believe in do-follow, but for those thinking that it will help their PR - you’re gonna need a lot of those to even make any dent in your SEO efforts. Google discounts them heavily.
Nonetheless, the whole purpose of comments is to reach out and talk. We shouldn’t forget that.
DarrinW
It’s too bad how much time us bloggers waste and how much hassle it is to deal with all the spam in the blogosphere. In only my first 3 months blogging, my favorite blog forum has shut down due to spam and my new blog was constantly bombarded with it.
This topic wouldn’t even be necessary to ponder if all bloggers would follow some simple, ground-rules for building their own traffic without spamming.
at my new site i always get comments with links in them.i edit them and posts.its a nuisance
I think you should find a way to moderate between people just posting comments for free links and those contributing to discussions. I’m sure an even median can be found.
I found this blog because it was on a ‘dofollow’ list.
Anyone who’s spamming isn’t going to mind if you delete their post. Or rather, who cares, anyway? Clean house, I say!
Here’s a formula for you:
‘Me too’ comment link to crappy site = Link dropper.
Delete away!
If it bothers you, maybe you can put a notice here saying ‘I delete mediocre comments’. No one could argue with that. Show ‘em tough love! [grin]
I don’t believe in do-follow. If commentators are really interested about the blog article, he will comment even if the link to his website has a “nofollow tag”. I don’t think I’m going to install a do-follow plugin in the next 10 years lol…
I disagree with ‘wacko’.
We’re not obliged to help Google maintain the purity of its database.
Nofollow won’t stop spam, because Yahoo and MSN ignore it, and spammers don’t care. They add your site into a database, and you’ll see them requesting the ‘post’ URL for years, even if it’s 404.
If you want comments on your blog, ‘dofollow’ is a handy promotional tool. Just be brutal with the crap comments, and you’re fine.
Thanks for the good article. I had been wondering why I had been getting so many sort of on-topic comments on some of my site.
I checked out the link directories you mentioned and I noticed at least one of them had a footnote on some of the entries saying they require 5 links before do-following. The Linky Love plugin may help some, but this shows that some are willing to try to work around it.
Most of those sites are running Google ads. The best course at this point may be to hit them in the pocketbook by reporting them to Google. Just click the “ads by Google” link on their ad and you’ll have an opportunity to report abuse. Gaming the page ranking and encouraging others to do so is a violation of Google’s terms.
dofollow is a really good motivation for visitors to comment on your posts so going back to nofollow is probably not the best idea. i guess you just have to be rigorous in moderating comments.
i have read some of your posts and some of the comments as well and it looks to me like there are no spam comments at all. i think people who come to your site see it as a respectable and reliable site so they think twice about dropping some mindless comment just to get a link juice. (or maybe you’re just really good in weeding out spams). ,-)
hey, i know this is totally out of the topic but i tried to subscribe to your (and some other’s) RSS feed but it’s not working. Does it have anything to do with the fact that I am in China?
You need to keep the DoFollow policy. It’s the backbone of the internet afterall. What you really need to do is manage the comments to make sure you’re getting good quality comments that are contributing to the conversation! Those that are clearly spam - delete em!
Maybe the real question is to moderate or not to moderate. I do not get a whole lot of comments in my blog yet, but I expect to as I build my site. Currently I do have the time to moderate every comment. I think that moderating is the key to head off spam, and those just commenting to get a link. I like the idea of dofollow and will be adding that widget to my blog.
Thanks for the information.
Coach Kip
I just discovered your blog. Nice work!
I personally run a niche blog, and the fake comments are really easy to spot. They are either from mass-spammers (viagra type stuff that goes right in the akismet folder) or carefully placed comments by people trying to sell things to my readers.
Hmmm…. it’s already almost the end of the month and you still don’t have any updates. I am curious, what would your decision be. .. nofollow or dofollow?
suspense..suspense…
I think the do follow blog is a great movement…if someone comments something without reading the entire post then I would delete it, but if they read it thoroughly and add to the conversation I wouldn’t mind giving them a link back. The internet is a reciprocal relationship, and do follow encourages the internet to be a community as a whole.
Very well said Matt! I completely agree with you.
I won’t bother to comment on a site that is nofollow but it’s more of a protest aimed at google than anything else. Google created the mess then they pass the problem back to the webmasters to clean it up. I think in exchange for the content you should be prepared to give a little back. The problem is moderating the content which can be painfull. I must admit I found your blog through a nofollow list but I only comment if I see a subject that I find interesting.
It’s kind of ridiculous to see certain people abusing the privilege given. I came across your website while I was looking for a way to improve my blog and some of the existing websites that I have.
The purpose of having removed the nofollow is encourage people to participate in blogs and involve in interactive two way communication through comments. I hope we can still maintain the dofollow and promote to have it use properly and not just abusing and spam.
As someone new to the complexities of blogging, I’ve just recently understood what ‘no follow’ means. Nothing is straight forward and simple anymore. Do you create a job and hire a comment consultant to filter your comments? When you disable the ‘do follow’ does that decrease readership or just comments?
hmm… i think enabling you do follow tag would invite a lot of bloggers to comments on you site relatively with no abuse… and that would be cool, but some visitors would take the advantage and make some abuse, well.. i guess its much better if the site would be moderated.
There is an upside to following. Despite the fact that you get the spam comments you still increase the amount of genuine comments in my view.
And a comment is content. One good comment on a post and you’ve updated your content. You haven’t had to do any work to produce the content yourself, someone else has done it for you, all you’ve had to do is to moderate it.
when will you update your blog??
Woah! Thanks so much everyone for all the comments! As you may have noticed SWR is still a dofollow blog :)
I know I haven’t updated this blog since like a month, but I’m working on so many things at the same time, it’s just crazy. I have something coming up soon though (some may find it cool, others may be disappointed)
I’m still alive and well, just extremely busy :)
Allowing visitors to comment without restricting their URL is an intelligent way to increase participation in discussion forum or blog like this one and encourage them to be more active. It is a win win situation when fairly used, but it could be a double edge sword too. Many will abuse the given opportunity when commenting just to get a clear link to their sites.
I completly understand where you are coming from, you want comments on your blog but at the same time you want genuine comments.
But when you have dofollow enabled on a blog are the comments you recieving genuine or just intented to get a free link? This is the comprimise you have to make when you have dofollow, you get a lot of comments but are they genuine and would you get so many without dofollow enabled?
I don;t think other sites referring you is a bad thing, as long as people leave a relevant comment and don’t spam. If its just a one word comment like “cool” then sure delete it, but otherwise be happy that you get so many comments.
It’s an interesting issue, and one I’ve been thinking of quite a bit lately. It’s unfortunate that these dofollow lists exist, as it seems to just encourage spam in a way. At the same time though, it’s a shame to have use nofollow just to combat this.
Although it can be difficult when you receive a lot of comments to review it on a comment by comment basis, for smaller blogs this is probably the best solution. I moderate comments on my blog, and don’t accept anything where the commenter has obviously not read the blog entry, or where their comment is very blatently just there for a link.
If you want to read tons of comments and have time to moderate them, keep dofollow. Otherwise set it for nofollow. It’s easy -all about time.
I’ve found my blog on such lists too, but I don’t really get as much rubbish comments. Mostly just a short “thanks for a good post” type comments, so it’s not that big a deal. Then again you get more comments in general than I do.
good to know you are still there. ok, we’ll wait for this thing you are saying. goodluck!
I’ve been toying with the idea of using dofollow for a while now as well… you have an interesting conundrum here, and I wonder what it would look like on my blog.
Being that your blog is so popular, I can understand why it’s becoming a problem. My blog is very small, so I’d hope you wouldn’t go that route. Everyone shouldn’t have to suffer.
With that, I say if the MAJORITY of your comments are taking this route, go ahead. Don’t follow. However, if that’s not the case, don’t let one(or a few) bad apple(s) spoil the bunch.
I have 3 blogs and they are all no follow. My reasoning for leaving them that way was because I had TL ads on my blogs and I didn’t think it was fair to suddenly turn off the follow when some people have paid to get high PR links from my website.
However, my PR has dropped in the last Google update and some of the advertisers have left, so I’m thinking of going do follow now. I do get alot of spam comments daily so I don’t think that no follow or do follow really affect bot spam. As for live people spam, I don’t know. I do delete comments that just say “Great Post” even if they may be legit readers just cause the comment doesn’t add any value.
[…] last post about dofollow was about a month ago, and as you can see SWR is still a dofollow blog. I’m really sorry it […]
I must admit that link love is a good thing for struggling websites such as mine, BUT, I am learning so much by reading people’s blogs. I mean I am addicted to blogs now! Hope dofollow does NOT become a thing of the past
its a tough choice… you’ll prolly get a lot loss traffic if u switch back to no follow, but then u’ll see who yer true readers are and how many of them there are :|
Most people just do not realize the importance and appreciate do follow movement. I’ve just started my own blog and looking to convert it to do follow as well to get it on the launch pad. After reading so many pros and cons about doing this, I think eventually there are still many good things to having a do follow blog. I just hope I made the right decision.
Couldn’t you just find a way to block traffic that comes from those websites somehow?
Well you could remove the dofollow plug and see how much your comment traffic changes, and in what way.
Or…go rent-a-coder and have a good plugin to whack out crap comments. Crap comments do have a pattern, so you could kill quite a bit of the linker types.
Brent
i know what you mean. but i just hope that these people who put the do follow button in their blogs didn’t put it there simply for the sake of getting comments. What should every blogger look to is having a quality comment to their posts. And it is every visitor’s responsibility to give honest comments and not to spam.
There are some comments in my blog and i take them of. I love seeing lots of quality comments not spams.
On one of our blogs we had the DoFollow and we had lots of irrelevant posts. But after we had the warning that a moderator will review before your post is live it helped things quit a bit.
Interesting! I didn’t realize there were such tools too. I guess having a high PR will attract more of such traffic.
Wow … so many comments! This is obviously an issue people feel very passionately about.
I’ve been thinking about killing off the nofollow in my WordPress code, and it’s entries like this one that give me pause. It looks like other people have given you enough food for thought to be stuffed with … instead, let me thank you for the warning.
I’m just about to launch a blog myself and are considering both the positives and negatives of getting rid of no-follow.. The positive being traffic… negative being ‘lazy’ comments.. Still undecided. Thanks
I don’t believe going back to nofollow will help solve the problem. Having dofollow actually has its benefit to promote active participation and encourage contribution. Of course this will very much depends on the person whether to abuse the privileges given or take a positive approach to appreciate it.
It’s definitely disappointing when I go to my comments and find that they have nothing to do with my post. I didn’t expect to be this deep into blogging, I just wanted to write about the Spurs and the Cavaliers last June and now it’s turned into this opinion blog about sports, politics, and everything else. Blogging has become my greatest past time and I put a lot into my posts, so relevant comments are definitely appreciated. Anyway, great post and I will be back soon! Take Care and Happy New Year!
On my blog I set follow or no follow on a per-comment basis like some of the others who commented above, I think Dofollow is a great idea
I also run several blogs and on one of them used the dofollow plugin. Is it any coincindence that this particular blog attracted 20x the comments of the others?
While I agree that dofollow will ultimately lead to website owners/spammers looking for quick links i do feel it brings people to my site that may otherwise not have visited. If one of these visitors leaves a comment that is actually a valuable contribution to my post then i am happy to share the link love! If it’s simply a ‘great post’ type of comment then it gets deleted.
I am totally for the do follow blogs but i wonder how long it will be before these websites advertising our PR blogs are just sending too much spam traffic for us to deal with. That would be a shame.
There are people who are just making nonsense comments. Blogging is the great way to open a conversation; how readers react on a certain post. There are some who are quiet ridiculous in making comments.
Its good to give a little lovin back. Plus it helps create activity to your blog. I would never of know of this site unless it was on a follow blog list.
To be honest, this post has the most relevant comments I’ve ever seen on a blog lol =)
I’m not sure how I missed this site, but it looks as if it’s sold now?
That’s a shame… seems like this would be a great place to visit during the boring work week!
Hope they keep it DoFollow!
I think a few things could happen to reinvent the way nofollows are treated.
1. maybe a module could be developed for wordpress and other popular platforms to basically only give nofollows to people that dont link back. maybe it wont help rankings really, but it will encourage people to join the dofollow club.
2. do nofollow on a post by post basis. by default it is all nofollow, then you can easily change to dofollow for bright responses (or vice versa).
3. why cant google give slight penalties for sites that are nofollow heavy. put wikipedia in trouble for killing their core reason for their existance in the first place. ?
If anyone knows how I can do #1 or #2, let me know.
~e~
Ecommerce Marketing Blog
I don’t really know the level of Comment Span you are getting, so I can’t say for certain, but I do believe that we should live in this world as we want it to be, not as it is.
Hold to your guns dude, and leave the follow up.
I think it is a little difficult to determine whether one is spamming your blog or not, especially if he has posted a relevant comment. Generally, implementing dofollow is like goodwill to your readers, especially those who comment relevantly.
I did the DoFollow thing for awhile, but ended up taking it off because I didn’t see a rise in relevant conversations. Instead, I saw a rise in shallow comments going to sites that oddly resembled the posters’ name in context.
You can nofollow this if you want, by the way.
I still believe that valued contributors should be given a followable link, but am looking for a plugin that allows you to choose who (as in from which IP) can post a followable link so you can reward regular posters with something interesting to say.
Know of one?
Being a SEO, I can understand why people go the lengths they do to spam comment blogs. As long as there’s money to be made, people will spam. As some of the readers have commented, it’s likely that more spammers will come by and drop a link if they could get a dofollow link. That said, I agree with Kris and a few others that it will bring real readers as well. The web is made of links and they were meant to be followed when the internet was first created. That’s how other people find you. It is, however, an unfortunate thing for bloggers such as myself who have to sort through spam comments. I found a great plugin in wordpress, Akismet, helps me eliminate most of the rubbish. For now, the best things to decrease the amount of spam are to include non-bot verification steps like Q&As, captchas, etc. It’s not perfect but there’s always a tradeoff.
there’s got to be a better way to deal with this problem. stopping comment spam while still rewarding relevant commentators with some link love.
my blogs gets a spam comment every once in a while. no problem with that. what’s annoying is when you get hit by comment bots, that will post 100s of comments at a time. i mean my inbox gets flooded with comment notifications. its really not cool!
I’ve used nofollow on all of my blogs for awhile now, but lately I’ve been considering giving dofollow a try just to give a little back to my readers.
My “problem” with dofollow is a philosophical one.
I’m of the school that believes a link to a site is a vote of confidence in that site. In allowing readers to link back to their own sites, it’s kind of like stuffing the ballot box.
But at the same time, blogs are truly created just as much by the commenters as they are by the site owner. And a site owner wouldn’t hesitate to link to their new project, right?
This is an old discussion, but I thought I’d add my thoughts.
I went back to nofollow on my own blog shortly after it was identified as these lists as a pr5 blog with nofollow tag removed. I happened to be in the middle of redesigning my site at the time, and the nofollow tag happened to be in the new template still when the lists were published.
I got a string of verbal assaults from people who felt I somehow cheated them for being a nofollow blog while advertising myself as a dofollow blog, as if I had anything to do with the lists going around in the first place.
So I left if off and shan’t go back. None of my readers ever cared, and I would just as soon not reward people who are going to behave like that on my blog.
Others may interest only on the dofollow blogs but not actually to get interested on the topic. So that’s a big problem. Aside from that its not really helpful to have a dofollow blog but if only and only spam will be prevented.
But you can reduced the spam in your blogs by having moderation first on your comment things. I know its lazy but this will assure you that there are no spam on your blog posts.
Hi everyone, just dropping you guyz a line to say the I,ve deactivated dofollow. Yes that means all the links in the comments now have the nofollow attribute back.
The reason for this?
Well, as you know me and Liz are crazy busy, we’ll launch the new design soon, but in the meantime moderating all the comments this blog gets (and I’m totally amazed by this!!) is quite time-consuming, and I’m sure many of you want to see new posts, so I gotta cut in the comment moderation and free up some time. Oh and I’m also wondering how many spam comments this post got? I mean 128 comments so far? there has to be some spam comments in there. Maybe going back to nofollow will make spammers think twice now before spamming.
This doesn’t mean SWR will not go back to dofollow, this is a temporary situation. Stay tuned :)
Cheers
Jon
It all boils down to quality or quantity. A new blog might relish the idea of free traffic and many comments, but for a established blog it can take away some of the proffesionalism if half the page is full of one liners and uneducated answers.