Small Adjustment to My "No nofollow" Policy
Posted on July 5, 2007
13 Comments
As mentioned several times, I’m a “do follow” blog. Long story short, I don’t feel that commenters’ links should be marked as “rel=nofollow.”
Until today I have been using the slick DoFollow plugin by Kimmo Suominen. That plugin allows a bit of a time delay before removing the nofollow attribute which is helpful in the event a “spammy” comment sneaks in.
However, it turns out the time delay isn’t really my issue. My issue has been the drive-by SEO folks who drop a comment (sometimes banal, sometimes appropriate) just to get a free link to their site.
I know… I know… it’s not something to get tense about, but over the past few months that’s become my number one pet peeve. I groused about this recently and Randa suggested I use a different plugin. That’s a great idea and this morning I switched.
I’m now using Link Love. The nofollow attribute is removed immediately after the poster’s nth comment — and I’ll be experimenting with values for n. It defaults to 10 but I feel that’s a bit too high.
Since a large number of the comments that bugged me were from folks who have yet to return, I think this should help with my little anxiety.
Tags: blog, co.mments, dofollow, nofollow, SEO
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13 Responses to “Small Adjustment to My "No nofollow" Policy”
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I’m thinking seriously of following suit. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m considering it more with every borderline comment I get from someone with a blog about trailer hitches or valet parking.
Randa: Love the fact that I can edit comments on your site!
I’m off to find that plug-in now! (commented here too because after the content of the post I did on your blog I didn’t dare put a link back to my site or you’d have killed me lol.)
I’ll have to find that plugin as well… when I eventually get around to even installing a blog on my currently “ghetto” website.
I still question whether google even uses “nofollow” in the way it claims. It’s like them admitting that the person most qualified to decide whether a link is relevant or not is a random webmaster, instead of them, and I don’t believe for a second the googleheads think like that.
@Randa - yep, those sorts of comments were just freaking me out…
@Rich - you after the editing comments plugin? Post the link here — I’m interested too.
@sbJohn - It’s hard (for me at least) to really quantify how the Google folk do anything, let alone handle “nofollow”. Be interesting to find a nice quantifiable study on it (granted, quantifying this sort of stuff ain’t easy…)
Chris,
Would it kill you to go to my site and comment once in a while?
I’ll even let you have a link back to your site.
Then you can edit your comment on my site and see how cool it is.
http://www.raproject.com/wordpress/wp-ajax-edit-comments/
Thanks to Randa for having it first!
ok, I tried it out. I dig it. I probably should consider adding it here too, eh?
Yes you should add it here or you’ll be chased by Matadors in hover cars and you don’t’ want that do you?
OH COOL! Yours has a timer!
Hi, I’m reading you via the No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Community at Bumpzee, on the RSS feed.
No, this isn’t just a drive by comment.
On the RSS feed the first 250 characters come through, and that means if a post interests me I click and usually if I click, I comment. So you can be sure I’ll be back sometime, hopefully sooner..
Though I will say this particular community is a bit of a challenge to keep up with, there’s so many posts and so many of them are excellent. What I seem having trouble with is keeping track of whose blogs I have already commented on - I usually only want to let you know where I’ve found you the first time I drop by, but when there’s over 200 blogs and many of them have similar designs..
I agree with you that it can be annoying however I appreciate all comments, even if it is just a drive by.
I tend not to get too many, which is odd for someone who comments on so many blogs all the time!
Looking forward to reading more from you.
Snoskred
That’s a good idea. Thanks for the Love List plugin link. I’ll admit, I found your site from CourtneyTuttle.com’s D-List. That’s probably where most of your SEO-hungry commenters come from. You may ask to be taken off of that list if their comments are bothering you. Thanks again for the link!
@Snoskred - thanks for dropping by and sharing some thoughts. I agree that comments are precious — they fuel me as a blogger… well, when they’re not complete crap.
@tallfreak - glad to be of service and hope the plugin works for ya. Thanks for the note.
I would agree that I would ask Courtney to Take you off of the list. That would save you a lot of comments that you don’t like. I think that there are plenty of people that feel the same way. I want to know what your plans are if someone decides to comment 5 or 6 times or ten and they are just as spammy. Is that worse? I am not complaining about it, I am just curious to know how it is better, when maybe the best thing would be to turn off the do follow all together.
Hi Cade.
Thanks for the thoughts. I don’t think being on the list is necessarily a bad thing.
Here’s how I see it: I’m not doing Do Follow to make the SEO wonks happy. That totally misses the point that I perhaps haven’t made clearly enough.
Anyone who feels that they’re entitled to a free backlink to every Do Follow blog on some list is just being a putz in my mind. In other words, provide content, further a discussion or go pound sand.
Will they get 5 or 6 (or whatever my magic number is) comments here? Perhaps. But as I mention in my Disclaimer page, I reserve the right to either delete them or remove their URL(s)… So now they have to waste time playing cat & mouse to try and sneak the magic number past me. I’d think at that point it’s not worth the effort for the SEO wonk. I’m only PR5 for pete’s sake!