The 'No-Follow' movement seems to be on a rise and i must say that I have given in to the demands and jumped on the bandwagon. What does this mean to you? I now support 'no no-follow' and now i follow... with terms.
What is No-Follow?
rel="nofollow" attribute was created as a means to fight comment spam within the blog community. Within the blogging community some blog owners and site owners leave worthless comments and messages on popular posts in hopes to increase their page rank and blog and or site authority. Comments and messages such as, "that's cool," "I can dig it," "Pharmaceuticals...," Viagra...," and others are common spam comments that i am sure most blog owners are familiar with.
This is bad for your blog, the community, and the authority of your site in so many aspects. The Beef Jerky Blog does not support online pharmacies, spam, or xxx sites or materials. If we were to allow comment spammers to leave their mark then, in a sense we are supporting spam and what the content of their sites. In another sense, spammers are like paparazzis, if you allow one to come leave their mark then others will surely follow.
How Does rel="nofollow" work?
As the Google bot searches your site's comments area it recognizes the hyperinks that commentators leave behind and gives the site and owner rank credit for search results and can possibly raise the sites PR from a PR1 to PR2 or higher. According to Google...
This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists...
Doesn't No No-Follow Support Spam?
Well, no... All bloggers should have an automatic way to fight comment spam. There are three sure fire ways to fight comment spam why support 'I Follow.'
1. Make all commentors register and sign in before leaving a comment. This can be done in your WordPress blog's admin area -> Options -> General Options and found under membership. Most spammers are not going to waste their time to register just to leave a few links and characters.
2. Make all comments subject to administrator approval. This too can be done by logging into your WordPress blog's admin area -> Options -> Discussion and can be found under 'Before a Comment Appears.' This is a great way to monitor and regulate all of your comments coming in from visitors and spammers.
3. Use the WordPress Akismet plugin (some more great WordPress plugins) to fight spam. This plugin is a godsend to ease the pain of spam. When used with all of the above ways to fight comment spam supporting the 'no no-follow' movement is nothing more than showing your support by giving credit to those that support and contribute to your blog community.
'I Follow' Terms
I came across this great plugin after reading more about the 'no-follow' attribute, both the pros and cons and wanted something more than the basic 'I follow' WordPress plugin (can be found here at Semiologic, thanks to JaKelDaily for the reference) I wanted something more. After doing a little searching I found that TheAnand had already discovered a plugin that offered more at LinkLove.
TheBeefJerkyBlog.com's 'I Follow' Terms
I have yet to force registration on commentors, but I will follow hyperlinks after a certain amount of comment love from visitors. Of course the number of comments needed will not be shared but rest assured that I like to keep things simple and sweet. Like Robert Kiyosaki the author of 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad
5 Comments at "No-Follow Addition"
I am sure this will do a lot of benefit for your readers, but this will do little to combat that spam we bloggers receive each day! I think most spammers directly attack the comment file directly and not go through the usual procedures we humans follow
I think there is a way to change the name of wp-comments.php to reduce the number of spam you receive. I have not dome it yet, but I am definitely weighing the option.
Changing the name would be a bit more proactive when preventing spammers from attacking your blog. I think you’re right about bots and programs that spammers use to go after the file itself.
Hey, if you decide to try this let me know… how it works out…
You might want to check your plugin! I just came to test so that I could add you to the list, and your comments still have nofollows. Let me know when you have the problem corrected!
Hey Court,
I’m using i-Follow with terms… A commentor has to post a certain amount of comments using the same email before the no follow is removed.
Now too sure this may qualify this site for your list… let me know…
“i-Follow with terms” – that’s a new one to me. sounds an interesting concept though. i wonder how many comments have to be posted?
just subscribed to your posts rss by the way…you have some interesting stuff going on over here.
thanks,
–steve
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