Nofollow is an attribute that can be added to links to discourage Comment Spam. It is used with the rel=”nofollow” attribute in a link. This attribute instructs Google that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. The concept for the specification of the attribute value nofollow was designed by Google’s head of webspam team Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen from Blogger.com in 2005.

What official Google Blog says about nofollow?

“From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.”

Example of Nofollow link:

General Link:
<a href=”http://www.earnblogger.com/”> Earn Blogger</a>
Link with Nofollow:
<a href=”http://www.earnblogger.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Earn Blogger</a>

Blogging and Nofollow:

By default, WordPress 1.5 and above automatically assigns the nofollow attribute to all user-submitted links (comment data, commenter URI, etc). But, I am sure that most of the WordPress bloggers don’t know this fact! Other blogging platforms also uses it. And after the must debated Google Page Rank slap for buying and selling paid links, Google suggests that paid links must include a nofollow.

Why nofollow doesn’t work in Blogging?

• As usual spammers will continue posting spam comments with links. Because they don’t care much about the search engines. They need clicks from their links! So, I think that nofollow fails in its main task!

• Comment moderation is the most effective way to stop spam comments. When Akismet and other spam fighters caught spam comments, why we need nofollow?

• Without links or link love, there is no charm in blogging. And a link with a nofollow is not a link love!

What’s next on EarnBlogger?

I am thinking about removing nofollow from comments on this blog. Akismet will check the spam comments and I will show my love to commentators! What you think about it? Feel free to give your good comments about nofollow.

Again Sunday is here! This is the last Sunday of 2007 and welcome to my Sunday Links post #4. With this Sunday Links section, I am trying to give some links to important and interesting articles. I hope that my readers will find them useful. Feel free to contact me regarding any links or suggestions. Enjoy your Sunday!

Visit these links to discover some interesting and useful articles:

• Ready for 2008? What is your Blogging plan for new year? What about marketing your blog in 2008? Read “Top 10 Ways to Market Your Blog in 2008“.
• How do you feel when your comment is caught by a spam protector plugin ? Actually one of my fellow blogger is facing this problem. Can you give some suggestions?
• Planning a new project? First answer these 5 questions “Before Starting a New Project“!
• Trying to write some guest posts in A-listed Blogs? Learn from JohnChow! Read his post: “How to get A-listed Blogs to accept your post?“.
• Do you believe that your blog is friendly for your visitors? Check your blog after reading this post on “Characteristics of User-Friendly Websites“.

A new version of WordPress has been released! The WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. This version also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations.

WordPress 2.3.2 also allows you to define a custom database error page. Place your custom template at wp-content/db-error.php. If WP has a problem connecting to your database, this page will displayed rather than the default error message.

WordPress 2.3.2 is a stable release. Read more about the changes here. Get it today to protect your WordPress blog from bugs and errors. Download WordPress 2.3.2 .

Getting bored with the same WordPress admin area? Want to change the look of your default admin area? Use WP Tiger Administration plugin. This plugin changes your WordPress Dashboard into a good looking, clean admin panel. It is very easy to use, as it is just a plugin. Just install and activate. No core files are modified during the installation of this plugin. So, you don’t have to worry about your default settings.

Before writing this blog post, I have tested the WP Tiger Administration plugin on a test blog. It is great and I’m loving it. To get an idea about it’s appearance, take a look at the screenshot, provided by the plugin author. If you like it, go forward and install it today on your WordPress blog.

How to use the WP Tiger Administration plugin?

• First, download the latest version of this plugin.
• Unzip the file, and upload the entire wp-admin-tiger folder into the /wp-content/plugins directory.
• Activate the plugin from your Admin area.
• The admin area will change immediately.
• To revert back to the original design, just deactivate the plugin.

AOL on Friday, announced that it will end support for Netscape Navigator browser and encouraged the users to make the move to Firefox. Is it the end of Netscape? Well, according to the official blog post, AOL will continue to release security patches for the most recent version of Netscape until February 1. After that, there will be no “active product support” for any version of the Netscape Navigator browser. So Netscape’s reign is coming to an end!

The blog post says that, Netscape will still be available for download from the Netscape Archive, but no support will be offered. AOL recommended that users instead download Firefox and add the Netscape theme and Netscape extensions.

“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,” wrote Tom Drapeau, director of AOL/Netscape development. “Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.”

AOL is now focusing on ad-supported web business. They needs lots of resources to fight big rivals like Microsoft and Google. So, resources for Netscape are limited. After the death of Netscape Browser, Netscape.com will continue to serve as a general use Internet portal.

If you have set your WordPress blog to display post excerpts on the front or home page, I am sure that you are using the ‘more’ quicktag. This simple tag insert a <!––more––> tag in your posts and provides a read more link after each excerpt. So it helps in navigation. But do you know that this simple tag creates a problem for your RSS feeds? WordPress truncates your feed’s content where you insert the ‘more’ tag. It occurs even if you have already set your feeds preferences to full text.

The ‘more’ tag is not only useful, but also essential for many blog themes. For example: this EarnBlogger.Com theme! I am showing only the excepts of my posts on the front page. It is important for my theme style. So, WordPress simply cuts off my RSS feeds, even after I have set the options to show full text feeds. This is a great problem and I want to show full feeds to my readers.

So, how to solve this problem? After some search, I have found a little, but effective WordPress plugin that helps me to provide full feeds even after using the <!––more––> tag. The plugin is called Full Text Feed plugin. It is very simple to use and compatible with WordPress 2.1 onwards.

How to use this plugin?

• Just download the plugin from here. Presently it is in version 1.04.
• Unzip and upload the plugin file to your wp-content/plugins directory.
• Activate the plugin from your WordPress Admin area.
• That’s it. Make a new post and see the magic of this plugin!

If you are facing the same problem with your RSS feeds, simply use this plugin. I am sure that it will work!

Update: Due to some reasons, it is not working on this blog. Yesterday it was working fine. I’m trying to solve the problem. – EarnBlogger.

This post is for all new and wannabe publishers of Google AdSense. Want to earn some money with AdSense ads on your blogs or websites? Have some doubts about the income potentials from AdSense? Watch this video and get inspired! This video was prepared by Amit Agarwal, the most successful Professional Blogger from India.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSN0ywpVLzI]

Amit was the first professional blogger from India.