Recently, Shoemoney blogger Pamcakes recorded a video in which she says the dofollow movement a “became a blogroll circle jerk” of brandnew or low quality blogs “dragging on for months”, announced that Greg Bozer is setting up a dofollow list for ‘quality’ blogs, and then tells us she’s “looking forward to the follow on blogposts where people tell us how much more time people have spent moderating after removing nofollow from their comments”.
What is Pam’s evidence that the dofollow movement is a blogroll circle jerk? Or that the dofollow blogs will have trouble with spam? Eyerolls.
Still many bloggers read Shoemoney; many might ask: Are dofollow blogs poor quality? Brandnew? Full of spammy comments?
If so, why is the dofollow movement gaining popularity? And, more importantly, why do I run across so many good dofollow blogs?!
Obviously, just as there are poor “dofollow” blogs; there are also loads of poor “nofollow” blogs. There are brand new dofollow blogs; there are tons of brand new “nofollow” blogs. What of it?
But the insinuation that dofollow disproportionately attracts spam is just flat out, wrong.
The reality is Dofollow often raises the level of comments.
How does dofollow raise the level of comments?
First, dofollow encourages visitors to comment. Since many visitors subscribe to comments, they often return and conversation ensues. As a blogger, I like this! As a blog visitor, I find these dynamics conversations attractive. They improve the quality of the blog- and ultimately improve the bloggers own content.
Contrary to Pam’s eyerolls, we dofollow bloggers figured out how to deal with spammy pointless comments months ago. This is done both through vigilance, and by appropriate choice of dofollow plugin. (I wrote L’s Linky Love to help me filter human comment spam.)
In fact, we can learn a lot about the effect of “dofollow” on comments by comparing the first three comments at Pam’s post slamming dofollow blogs and Andy Beard’s response post.
Evidence that ‘Dofollow Blogs’ have better comments than ‘Nofollow Blogs’:
| Pamcake’s Post Nofollow  |
Andy’s Post Dofollow |
|
Comment by HustleStrategy 2007-10-27 09:31:17 Pam going to be at pubcon partying like a rock star?  |
Meg wrote: One of my biggest disappointments at the moment is that my “subscribe to comments” plugin is not playing nicely with the others, or my theme, so I’ve had to deactivate it. I really appreciate the ability to “subscribe” (except when I made the mistake of subscribing to Liz’s birthday bash, went to bed and found 328 emails when I woke up)! |
| Comment by David Wilkinson 2007-10-27 09:45:10 ROFL! |
James - DigitalKeyToInfo wrote:
I think Liz is a model for us all to follow. I just hope I can develop a community like hers. |
| Comment by SonicReducer 2007-10-27 10:09:12 I think the value of the contest just increased by a large margin. |
Maki wrote: Liz has a real charm to her and is a top-notch conversationalist. The comments on her blog reflect her commitment to her readers and a two way dialog. It’ll be interesting to compare her model with Perez Hilton or entertainment sites in general. 600 comments is sweet but tiny compared to a single one word blog post by Perez which received 7217 comments. They are left by real people who don’t want anything from his site (traffic/links). Are they still junk? Maybe. Celebrity blogs are a riot.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a celeb blogger actually leave a comment as a response to their readers. |
Need I say more?
Lesson for Pamcakes
Andy’s post responding to Pam’s slam of the dofollow movement was named: BlogRoll Circle Jerk? - If You Encourage Junk Comments That Is What You Get
Maybe Pam should stop and think for a minute. She may realize that “dofollow” isn’t what encourages junk comments. What does? Well, substitute eyerolls for thoughtful commentary on a popular blog you’ll get worse than junk comments. You’ll get comment smegma.
Sounds like there’s going to be A list do followers and B list do followers if you take Greg’s post to heart.
The do follow list that I maintain and the Bumpzee do follow community that Andy runs may have different standards for the blogs that end up getting listed, but each blog that makes it onto these lists are checked for certain qualities.
They certainly aren’t like the chain d-lists going around the internet that I’m sure the people who copy and paste those lists onto their blogs do not check each and every blog to make sure it’s one they really want their site to be associated with!
As for Pam’s comments? I had as much spam coming in before I turned into a do follow blogger as I do now.
Yes I was getting a little more human generated comment spam before I started using your do follow plugin, but I moderated my comments the same way I did when I had a nofollow blog - carefully. Removing comments and links when they don’t contribute to the post in any way or appear to be from a spammer.
I’ve been a do follow blogger for almost two years now. Yes the movement gained popularity in the Spring and Summer, but it’s been going on a long time. This isn’t something new.
As for the type of comments left after Pams podcast - Yikes! LOL
My blog is a dofollow blog, and I personally have not found Pam’s statements to be true at all. While there are certainly those bloggers who try to leave some snippet comment screaming of spam (“nice post, come visit my blog at http:blah-blah-blah), in no way related to the topic of the post, my personal experience has been that most comments left are well thought out, articulate, adding meaningful points to the discussion.
My favorite part to date is that most of those who comment on my blog, come back often and keep good conversation in play, and we’ve built a community-like relationship of sorts by getting to know each other.
@Mitch
Try Andy’s post here
http://andybeard.eu/2007/03/how-to-remove-nofollow-on-new-blogger-dofollow-on-blogspot.html
or pop over to BetaBlogger for Dummies whohas also described how to do it here
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2007/03/remove-nofollow-attribute-on-comments.html