Wordpress, like most other major blogging platforms, automatic add ‘no follow’ tags to the urls left in any visitor comments or trackbacks. This was initially done in an effort to combat blog comment spam. But there are now a growing number of people who believe ‘no follow’ tags create more blog spam - not less!
Why would I (or anybody) remove the ‘no follow’ tags from all visitor comments & trackbacks on their blog?
Community Fairness, Equity, & Available Technology
Community fairness, equity? People who legitimately comment on this blog (and all blogs) aren’t spammers. They are contributing to an ongoing, distributed conversation - their comments provide value to the sites they post on.
Why were ‘no follow’ tags originally embedded into many blogging platforms anyway? From my understanding, this was done to prevent link juice - search engine rankings boosts - from being given to comment spammer who didn’t deserve the link juice. But what about everyone else - all the commenters that don’t spam blogs? If any type of inbound link deserves to earn SEO link juice, it’s comment links embedded in legitimate comments. Since commenters are sharing value with websites that they comment on, why not reward the commenter with a little link love?
Read an excellent article about link juice.
Put it in perspective with all the links submitted to online directories. Wouldn’t you rather pass link value to a person whose written an insightful blog comment over a person who has simply self-submitted keyword-laden links to an online directory? Yet I don’t think that ‘no follow’ tags are standard issue in most directory scripts.
Anyway. Technology allows bloggers to moderate comment spam is so much more easily than when these ‘no follow’ tags were originally put in place on blogging platforms. Anti-spam tools are free and do a great job to block comment spam from the site. Any suspected spam comments go into a moderation bin, while obvious offenders are simply labeled ’spam’.
This blog is powered up by Wordpress. Here are the anti-spam Wordpress plugins used on this site:
Akismet - Ships default with Wordpress
Spam Karma 2 - Yes, it uses weighted comment karma!
Is it a perfect system?
Obviously, no. It’s not perfect. occasionally, a spammy comment will make it through the spam filters. But most bloggers check their blog regularly, and I’ve always been able to remove the spam quickly. As a blogger, you could easily remove any spam links before the link spammers never receive an SEO benefit from a spam comment. (There is VERY little SEO benefit from comment spam anyway, by the way.)
Get Your Own ‘Do Follow’ Plugin
There is a great ‘no follow’ plugin list on andybeard.eu - not just for Wordpress, but ‘no follow’/'do follow’ plugins are also listed for Blogger, Typepad, & Movable Type.. Reading Andy’s blog actually inspired me to finally TKO the No Follow tags on the Social Media Experience, though he utilizes (and recommends to others) a plugin for slapping the ‘no follow’ onto your outbound Wikipedia links as Wikipedia shares no link love. I’ll be setting up that plugin soon enough.
Anti-Spam Plugins for Typepad, Movable Type, Blogger?
If anyone knows good anti-spam plugins for any other blogging engine, feel free to list them in the comments - you’ll even get a link out of it!
Comparing “No Follow” Attribute to Target=”_Blank”
The TARGET=”_BLANK” attribute and similar JavaScript code has been used to force website visitors to open new browser windows when they click any links that lead to external sites. Johan Petersson wrote about forcing visitors to open new windows: “forcing new windows to open is disrespectful and hostile to web site visitors”. He explains that the TARGET=”_BLANK” attribute discourages some visitors from returning to your site.
In a similar sense, forcing ‘no follow’ tags on all comment & trackback links is disrespectful and hostile to the people who support you and appreciate what you do - commenters on your site and other blogger who write about you. Essentially, by including the ‘no follow’ attribute on all outbound links, you treat your biggest contributers like they are untrusted spammers. Give credit where credit is due.
What’s Your Experience?
How do you feel about No Follow tags on blog comments? Do you know of some great plugins for blogging platforms? How do you feel about the comparison between ‘No Follow’ and TARGET=”_BLANK”?
