The "I Follow" Movement

April 11, 2007 by Chris · 18 Comments 

Back in February, I wrote about removing the “nofollow” tags from folks who comment.  Why punish folks who took the time to leave a (valid) comment?

Today, the Randa Clay Design blog released some logos to share with folks who have turned off “nofollow” and wrote an announcement article.  You’ll see the logo flying over there in the right sidebar right underneath the recent comments listing.

Thanks Randa!

Possibly Related posts:

  1. More on the Potential For DoFollow Abuse
  2. Small Adjustment to My "No nofollow" Policy
  3. The Meme Shuffle
  4. That nofollow Thing
  5. Comment Tracking

Comments

18 Responses to “The "I Follow" Movement”

  1. Randa Clay says:

    I tagged you for a recently begun meme around the I Follow thing- if you’re interested in continuing it, check out the latest post on my site. Thanks!

  2. We posted about this today & included a link to your site! Come visit the garden and see!

  3. CJ Money says:

    I think this whole movement is so cool. Now after a few months, what are the changes in your blog visitors that you’ve noticed. I’m sure you have had more interaction, but have you noticed more or less search engine traffic? Increased stickyness?

  4. Chris says:

    Hey CJ Money – I think it’s a pretty cool movement too. :-)

    In my case, while it feels like the “right” thing to do, I have to say I haven’t noticed a huge difference here. There appears to be a few more people making repeat comments, which is nice, but no huge amount of growth.

    In fact, my uniques are trending downwards lately… but that is balanced by my subscribers slowly trending up.

    Although, that might be a way to define increased stickyness?

  5. [...] a downside to the “I follow” movement. I’ve been seeing these “seo magic” articles that list out all [...]

  6. I think that this is a great chance for so many bloggers to build networks and create a great deal of growth with their blogs. What benefits have you seen from it so far?

  7. Chris says:

    What benefits have you seen from it so far?

    I’ve learned to beef up my anti-spam measures. :-)
    I’ve spent a lot more time chuckling at people making PR grabs.
    Other than that? I’m honestly not sure I’ve seen any real/measurable benefits. Definitely more of a feel good thing so far.

  8. Ariah Fine says:

    how has spam been for you? I’m hoping making this switch doesn’t mean tons more spammers for me. I like the concept and I’m ready to try it out.

  9. Chris says:

    Hi Ariah — Regular old spam itself is always nuts.

    The blatant “seo/PR spam” that being “dofollow” gains does get tedious over time… but you take the good with the bad, I reckon.

    I’ll assume that when I next check your blog it’ll be “dofollow” :)

  10. [...] the movement celebrating the removal of nofollow tags from my comments (more on that here and here). In my most recent post on the topic, I bemoaned the potential for a low-grade yet annoying type [...]

  11. ForumeR says:

    Howdy?? Is this really works for you?? And do you will comment at my site too if i give comment here. I still not understand clearly with this concept, please xplain :D

    Best regards
    :)

  12. [...] rolled around and I excitedly “joined” the I Follow movement with a spiffy [...]

  13. [...] now, we have much much better anti-spam tools than back when that decision was made, and I, as Handy, think that it’s time to lift the ban. So…following his example, the Bookshelf joins [...]

  14. bharadwaj says:

    Hi,

    Everybody loves links. Even the google bot, but it dies not like non- genuine links.

    For instance, some time ago, google had a controversy over following paid links.

    Now for a spider or a crawler to identify the paid links from non-paid is almost impossible.

    But in most CMS , including wordpress and blogspot, it is very easy to identify comments from content. The algorithm to detect this, is quite easy to write.

    do – follow may go void, if google thinks so. So is it worth doing all this.

    But still, it does good in the short term..

  15. TheCuso says:

    ive just deleted the nofollow tag for my magic blog. lets se..

  16. IDoFollow says:

    My blog now follows links. At first I thought nofollow was a good idea but I have changed my mind on that. After a long time procrastinating I have seen the importance of “dofollow” and making sure everything stays connected and links don’t get broken. I will follow comments on my blog, http://www.reallyreally.net I hope more people adopt these principals. Regards Bree.

  17. EDL says:

    I also follow links. I’m just moderating comments, to get rid of the “Hi, nice post” trash, any meaningfull comment gets linklove now..

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