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?
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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!
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Comment moderation is the most effective way to stop spam comments. When Akismet and other spam fighters caught spam comments, why we need nofollow?
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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.
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Getting a do-follow link would be awesome. You could also set it so that do-follow would appear after like 3 days, in case some spam did get through Askimet, it has happened.
[...] I wrote earlier, almost all blogging software or platforms automatically adds the “nofollow” attribute to all user generated links. It is done to discourage Comment Spam in blogs. But [...]
I have had dofollow since day 1 of blogging. Recently though I have been thinking of making them no follow as there have been several posts recently. They talk about indications that Google may penalise the dofollow blogs at the next update.
So do you follow or not? I would like to think that my site does as people who comment are valuable to the life of a blog and really for the blogger. There are so many other software to catch the spammers (Akismet) anyway.
Totally agree that it doesn’t prevent spamming but I guess Google wants people to advertise through them and not buy paid links.