The NoFollow Tag Circus!
By Bud Wiser

Why do people use the nofollow tag? To stop spam? It doesn’t stop spam. There are so many more effective ways to stop spam then using the nofollow tag. It seems more and more blogs are using them. It now gets shipped with all wordpress blogs, but at least with wp there are a number of plugins that removes the nofollow to restore blogging the way it was intended.

I was surfing the web tonight just to see how many blogs I could find that did not have the nofollow. I restricted my search to wordpress blogs because it’s the easiest to remove on wp. I searched 100 wp blogs checking the source codes on urls in comments. My little search resulted in finding only 3 blogs that have removed the nofollow tag.

That’s pretty sad because we are all hurting each other. What are we afraid of? Spammers are going to pound your blog with or with out the nofollow. So what is it? Don’t want to give up any of your PageRank? You won’t loose any PR. So please some one tell me what good reason is there to use the nofollow?

The nofollow tag tells search engines NOT to follow the out going link! That means if I contribute to your blog by leaving a comment, and I leave my URL to my blog, search engines won’t see my link! This not only robs me of a valid legitimate way to get spidered by search engines, but it also feels disrespectful. What is wrong with all these bloggers?

If you are concerned about comment spam, you can do several things to actually eliminate it all together! You do NOT have to use the rude nofollow tag. You could moderate your comments, you could use any one of the hundreds of plugins for spam, you could use one of the third party services that filter spam. All these ways will stop the spam! The nofollow in case you have not noticed, does not stop the spam! It only hurts legitimate comments, and why pray tell do you want to penalize your loyal readership?

Here at Army Of Blogs one of the first things I did was remove the nofollow tag from my blog. I did so because I feel it takes away from the full blogging experience. I want my posters to get followed by search engines. It’s the very least I can do for some one who took the time to visit my blog and leave a comment! I moderate the comments, the spam never goes through unless I let it. What can I say, as a long time spammer, I like good spam. So when ever I do see a cool spam comment that is creative and original, I will let it go through. But before you get any ideas, those are very few and far apart!

Some of the blogs I visited where so paranoid they used multiple filters, captcha, more word filters, logins all on top of the nofollow, and one guy had all that and added a warning that went some thing like this, “WARNING: I AGGRESSIVELY GO AFTER SPAMMERS! IF YOU SPAM ME, YOU WILL LOOSE YOUR BLOG!” What kind of drugs is that guy on? He has 20 filters, and the nofollow, but still needs to add a warning? His blog was a PR0 on top of all that. The only traffic he use get was probably from spammers

All I’m saying is this, you do not need to use the nofollow tag. It only hurts legitimate posts. Spammers like me could give a rat’s ass if you have the nofollow, we will still spam you simply to get some extra foot traffic from your blog. If you want to stop comment spam, do it in one of the many ways that will not penalize your real visitors! Some thing to think about no? Any comments? I promise even if I don’t agree I will follow you!

Technorati Tags : nofollow, spam, spammers, army, of, blogs, wordpress

Posted by Administrator on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 12:01 am.