Page Rank Thieves? Bunglers!
As some may or may not be aware, there is a trend for some blogs to eliminate the “nofollow” tag on comments. This tag was initially instituted by Google to reduce the incentive for spammers to fill blogs with links to spammy sites. Remember how spammers used to fill comments with links to spammy sites? Well, the nofollow tag reduced their incentive to spam by letting the blog software writers to insert a tag in comments telling Google that that link is not trusted.
Unfortunately, nofollow didn’t slow down the spammer one bit. What really stopped them was better spam filters.
But, nofollow did, eventually, have another effect. The “nofollow” tag is no automatically inserted in most comments. This means real honest to goodness commenters who leave good relevant comments and links don’t get google-page rank credits for links they post when they post a comment to a site.
It turns out that some individual bloggers do want to give credit to links left by their commenters, and they’ve modified their blogs to eliminate this ‘nofollow’ tag.
So, for example, if you visit Midlife Musings, leave a comment and post your blogs URL, you’ll get a “real link”; (that is a link Google ‘counts’ when granting page rank.)
I like the do-follow trend. It’s a nice idea provided that you have a good spam filter (and there are very good ones now.) It’s also a nice idea if the bloggers leaving comments occupy your blog niche and leave links to their own decent blogs. (Which is the case at my knitting blog. My regular commenters have great knitting blogs!)
Ok, but everything silver lining always has a black cloud around it. Something not so very good but doesn’t surprise me much has occurred. (And I’m longwinded, so you’ll have to read some of the not so bad bits first! 
)
First: Bloggers who use “do follow” publicized the fact. (In fact, I publicized it at an article about DoFollow at my knitting blog.)
Then: Bloggers started reading the list and making a habit of visiting the “dofollow” blogs and leaving links to get google-juice.
Well… of course commenters did this. I expected it. In fact, I’m glad to get the traffic associated with the bloggers who leave comments. I’m hoping a few visitors will like my blog enough to visit again. (There is some evidence that one person who leaves relevant remarks actually found me this way. Guess what? She has a knitting blog too! I found two or three blogs I like in the process also! )
But now, we are starting to get to the sort of bad part. Some of the comments are lame. It’s as if… imagine this… an unsuspecting blogger clicked a link on a dofollow list and visited my knitting blog. When they arrived and read the blog entry, they discovered … they don’t really give a hoot about knitting but as long as they were at the blog, they left a comment. They tried to make it relevant, but I can sort of tell they aren’t really into the knitting topic! So, the comment is sort of… well… lame.
You know what? I expected that too. You spent time visiting. You boosted my traffic. (Which I want.) You gave my blog a shot. Then, knowing I use “dofollow” so you left a comment. Sure, it’s not a very knitting oriented comment, but I expected that. (Frankly, I think you probably deserve the google juice just for visiting a knitting blog!)
But, something else is happening, and it’s not really not so hot. (Yes, we’ve reached the bad part.)
There are bloggers who do this:
They joined the dofollow list telling people they use dofollow at their blogs. But they don’t. Then, they visit the real dofollow bloggers and leave comments- gaining themselves google-juice.
And then, the deadly sin: they lure unsuspecting bloggers to visit their blog about some boring niche topic (like say, watching crabgrass grow). Then the poor bloggers and waste their time reading the blog about crabgrass, trying to think of some remotely not-lame comment and leave a comment. (Yes, to get the google juice they think they deserve for reading the silly post.)
So, these crab-grass bloggers a) get the extra traffic, b) get the extra links c) don’t give out the links they say they’ll give and waste everyone’s time.
Well, you know what Suni says about that? “It’s rude. It’s indecent and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
But you know what else? That strategy ain’t gonna work! We all know how to read the source for a page. We all know to check and search for a comment. And, in less than a week, if you’re lying about using “dofollow”, you will find that people checked. And those people are never visiting your blog again. And they will tell other people.
And even worse for you: They are going back to their blog and delete your comment!
So, the trick ain’t gonna work. The fact is, pretending to be a do follow blogger when you aren’t is just a waste of time! Don’t bother.
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11 Responses to “Page Rank Thieves? Bunglers!”
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Oh, I’m much meaner than that. See, I earned that traffic. I’m keeping the comments. I’ll just strip their little link right out of it.
Interesting. The thing about the follow/no follow controversy is that people want the best of both worlds. Not everyone that reads this blog is going to be interested in the blog as a whole….it may be just one post. That’s the beauty of blogging, you can post whatever you want and usually those different topics won’t hurt you. All of your readers may not have a blog either, but they may have another site. People will try to “game” the system. There are always going to be those who will try to cheat. You’re just going to have to figure out if its worth your time to chase down those that do. Its too bad that they can’t adjust it so the commentors only get a link after 10 or more approved comments. That would eliminate the pharmacy and adult spammers. Who knows, maybe someone will make a plugin….
OH! When I was here earlier, I only read this one post. I didn’t realize you had set up a blog about making moolah!
I think that’s a great area to explore, and I *gasp* have a blog about that. Now, I won’t be so horrid as to leave the actual link here in the comment. I’ll just hint that it might be the one that I left in the URL field of this particular comment that I am typing. It’s a following blog as well!
I am adding this new blog of your to my feed reader. One of the things I most enjoy, is the way the world of blogging has opened up the ability to share knowledge about our passions with each other.
And also, I’m beginning to think we may be related, what with the knitting, the money-ing, and who knows what else. I suppose next you’re going to tell me you have a passion for hot coffee in the morning!
Actually, you could adjust it to do this.
I adjusted for now to only give dofollow for 90 days on my main blog. I’m going to be fixing this so it only gives do follow after april 2007. (I’d have done that in the first place, but I screwed up with the date formats. I need to test on a side blog than my blog, because… well.. I screwed up my no follow/ do follow for a day. {blush}
I did the do follow thing on layercake.net and the comments I got were ok. I use the same guidelines that Steve at howtosplitanatom uses. If the comment is interesting and the blogger isn’t obnoxious, ie “more about this topic on my blog” the comment stays. I do take some issue with the names people leave. I mean if you enter your website for the name link, is it really necessary for your name to be listed as “moneymakeblog4u” or whatever? I also do the top comments and recent comments in my sidebar so it just makes my home page look cheesie when those names show up. So when they do, I typically delete them. My question for you guys is this, even though I did the do follow thing and have commented on some blogs that I find interesting or educational, I don’t see links showing up on technorati. Does this mean I’ve encountered fake do follows? Would love your help with understanding this. Also, your list is much shorter than the list at Courtney Tuttles blog. It’s nice the way you have it in a frame too. I’m not in there but somehow I got a referral from you, so thank you. I’ll be by later to see what you think of my do follow question if you have a chance to answer.
Heidi
Oops, helps to type my link correctly. :-|. Tried to fix it but it was too late..
I’ve noticed dofollow links I leave are showing up on Technorati. I was almost surprised by that.
You can check whether or not the blogger is using do follow fairly easily if you use firefox and feel comfortable editing the userContent-example.css file.
(If you have FireFox installed, this is in a directory on your machine. The first few directory names vary, but the full path always terminates with:
Firefox\Profiles\xxx.default\chrome\userContent-example.css
Open that file, then want to add this line:
a[rel~=”nofollow”] { border: thin dashed firebrick! important; background-color: rgb(255, 200, 200)! important; }
and, rename the file userContent.css file and keep it in the appropriate directory
After your are done, come back to this test page at BigBucksBlogger. You should see the link by “KnittingFiend” highlighed in pink. That’s a “nofollow”. The comment by “BigBucks” will has the dofollow stripped.
Bear in mind: Some bloggers only do follow after a comment is 24 hours old- that’s the default for the dofollow plugin. So, if they forgot to visit the dofollow panel, you’ll see that. Go back a day later and check.
If the link is still pink… well…
If you are using Firefox, install the Search Status extension. It will highlight Nofollow links, plus give you a quick look at Google PR, Alexa Rank, and Compete Rank.
Thanks for that information Tips! I had just manually adjusted my firefox, but extensions are great!
The best thing about the Search Status extension is that you have one-click to enable/disable the Nofollow highlighting feature. Comes in handy when you surf websites that are heavily no-followed (eg: Wikipedia, Technorati, etc.)
I have a real DoFollow Blog and yes I don’t care that this is a NOFollow link…