I’ve often wondered how effective the ‘nofollow’ tag is in blog comments — does it actually stop spammers from targeting a site (if you don’t know what ‘nofollow’ does, check out the short Wikipedia definition)?
Since I’ve launched this site, it has received 804 spam comments, versus 99 legitimate comments (including my own replies to comments).
In my own subjective calculation, I’d say Akismet has caught around 99% of my spam (of 804 spam comments, I think there have been 3 that have not been caught in the filter).
So I ask myself: why do I need the ‘nofollow’ attribute in my comments?
I came across this great list of ‘dofollow’ plugins (found through Weblog Tools Collection), and decided it was time to implement one.
I decided to just drop ‘nofollow’ altogether by installing DoFollow.
So what does this mean for you? Simple: leave a comment here and you get a real link back to your site, plain and simple. Enjoy.
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February 20th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Wikipedia tried to go nofollow last month I think. but i guess wikipedia is a bit than a blog. perhaps wikipedia has a bigger spam problem than blogs?
February 20th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Wikipedia is different as some of those pages get tons of pagerank,and wikipedia is really a wiki based encyclopedia
I am thinking of dropping no follow myself as i have bad behavior then spam karma and the akismet for spam karma plugin
February 22nd, 2007 at 1:36 am
Some Wikipedia’s had the nofollow for more than a year, so it’s nothing brand-new in my eyes. About wether it helps, if a big website like wikipedia is using it then Google and others should do everything to get it working properly and let everyone see that the nofollow really has some meaning. But I hope that sooner or later there will be a white-list in wikipedia for follow-links.
April 25th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
I came here through googling keywords “nofollow experiment” since i was looking for what search engine really think about no-follow tags as of now. Some claimed it still pass juice and some other dont. But in my own opinion many of us now realize that no-follow was really a failure because most of nofollow comes from quality sites and most of outbound links are legitimate.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I personally think search engines like Google have far more sophisticated ways to tell spammy sites than just using ‘nofollow’. I would agree — I think the ‘nofollow’ expirement has failed, and people (like bloggers) just get penalized for it. I want search engines to follow my links — I work hard at maintaining a quality site that points to content I think is important. Thanks for your comment.
February 5th, 2008 at 7:40 am
I’ve been experimenting with nofollow for some time now, and I know for sure Google does look at a site behind the nofollow link.
Just check for yourself: create a new webite containing at least 5 good quality pages and link to it with a few natural looking nofollow links on other sites you own or admin (fastest way is to use sites from different ip’s/servers). Within a few weeks it’s still going to show up in Google (it may take longer if your other sites have low trust).
March 15th, 2008 at 5:54 am
i think, google preferes dofollow.
March 15th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Believe it or not Harrold, Google actually says otherwise — although I agree with you in the sense that I have my doubts about Google not actually following those links.
That is to say that Google’s position is that ‘nofollow’ was created to prevent comment spam and other abuses by spammers of public spaces. But it would seem that the specifics are a little more complicated than that. The whole ‘nofollow’ thing is very confusing I think — and as you suggest, there is a great deal of evidence that Google’s ‘official’ position is not as official as it seems.
The real problem I have with ‘nofollow’ on all my comments is that I don’t think real readers should be punished because spammers are jerks. If you’re nice enough to leave an insightful, friendly or thoughtful comment on my blog, I think you deserve the link.
April 18th, 2008 at 8:58 am
This issue has been difficult for me to comprehend. I have read different arguments and I was as confused as ever. However, I have decided that those visitors who took their time to comment on my post deserve a little compensation in terms of “dofollow” link. So I am going “DoFollow”, until I am convinced otherwise.
Thanks for sharing your view on this issue. Cheers.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:38 am
[...] today after reading Jeff and Hardley Jane’s arguments, I have decided to join the “DoFollow” group. In order to still take [...]
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:23 am
I’ve been hearing about this follow and nofollow argument for a while now. Some blogs demand a nofollow site to be able to comment.
I still don’t quite understand why they do this. All it means is that I will not comment
PS
I just noticed you have a ‘notify me of followup comments by email’.
I’ve been looking for this plugin, but perhaps it’s in the theme?
Can you tell me the name of the plugin, if it is one please.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:24 am
Naija — it’s definitely a confusing issue, with both sides of the argument promoting different pros and cons. I figured that the only way I would see what ‘dofollow’ was like was to try it out for myself, and I’ve been happy with the results. I try to delete any comments that are obviously going to spammy/shady sites, but I feel that my legitimate readers who take the time to comment deserve something in return, as you said.
Jenny — the ‘nofollow’ comment thing is a little ridiculous in my opinion. I think it just alienates readers. As for the plugin, it’s called ‘Subscribe to Comments’, and it can be found here.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:32 am
Thanks for telling me where the plugin is. I actually asked at another blog and now have it installed.
I think it is very useful.
May 7th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Honestly, from the experiments that I have read, google apparently does still crawl nofollow links, and it does still pass some authority, but it appears to be less than if you were to receive a link from a dofollow link.
Also, other search engines do not honor the nofollow command. For instance, if you go and collect say 4 or 5 no follow links on prominent blogs, then go check your incoming links via the yahoo site explorer, you will notice that they are counted. Really though, who cares what yahoo says? Even if you are top of the SERPs in yahoo you won’t see 1/10th the traffic you would through google.
By the way, my blogs still get inundated with spam regardless of whether no follow is on or off!
May 13th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Glad to be of help Jenny, and glad you were able to get a hold of the plugin.
I have to agree with you HobbyStop. The ‘nofollow’ thing may have been a nice idea, but unfortunately, it has little bearing in real life. Search engines still count links no matter what.
My biggest reason for wanting to remove ‘nofollow’ was that my commenters were not getting a link back to their site, which I think is a bit inane. Take the time to leave an insightful comment that links back to a real non-spammy site, and you deserve the link. Speaking of which, thanks for your comment.
July 4th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I really don’t see the need for the nofollow on my blog from the onset, so the first thing I did was to get a way to do away with it. I’ll rather take the time to moderate all comments. If my readers took the time to leave me their comments, then it follows that I should take the time to moderate it too, and not by implementing a nofollow. Besides, since the bulk of commenter are other blogger who are more knowledgeable, I believe they love to leave comments on a dofollow blog rather than a nofollow blog.
July 5th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Nofollow is for those new site competing for search term or keyword. I believe if site that has build its own loyal reader, dofollow is great to reward its reader and newcomer. Usually some people checking whether site is nofollow or dofollow before give a comment.
July 7th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Dayo and Halim — both of you raise a good point. I think bloggers certainly do look for blogs that have DoFollow, and they leave comments on those blogs in order to get links back to their own sites.
And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Assuming the person who leaves a comment on my site is polite, has something useful to say, and links to a non-spammy site, I will never remove their comment (even if they disagree with me completely).
Thanks both for your comments.
February 17th, 2009 at 2:03 am
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future. Feel free to check out my blog on the 36 Best Wordpress plugins for 2009.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:34 am
Hi,
I added a rel attribute to my “add to shoppingcart”-links, but Google keeps indexing them. I started googling for more info and found your site. Now I know why, but still have to find a solution.
I can’t use the meta tag because the link goes to the page itself, so what can I do to prevent search engines from putting them in their index?