Just a quick note to let Google know how much I HATE the rel='NOFOLLOW' attribute added to links. It's especially bothersome that Google has made Blogger a NOFOLLOW blog by default. In an earlier post, I gave instructions on how to change your blog to a DOFOLLOW site.
If I link to another site, I'm "voting" for them just like Google wants. They have something of interest to me, or content that might be useful to other readers. If Google wants to enforce the NOFOLLOW on paid links, so be it, but leave my damn blog code alone!
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
I've joined the DOFOLLOW movement
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The problem is that too many people aren't using blog comments for anything other than the backlinks, which skews Google results. I think captchas are one approach to stopping spam, every blog should have one.
As you're a Google watcher, chek out the backlinks for the company coming first for "investment property". Bought and paid for, almost all of them. So are most of the others on the results page. So, Google have a new problem, if people can get to the top of Google by buying links, it makes it pointless for searchers who want quality recommendations to use it. So if it has no visitors, Google will sell no ads on its pages. But, how does it tell which links are paid for so it can disallow the link juice? That's the next big issue with Google.
BB
Google will never be able to completely identify and discount paid links. Trying to do so is merely treating a symptom of the larger problem: Google has pushed Pagerank so much, and webmasters have become so accustomed to using it as the primary benchmark of a successful SEO campaign that paid links are inevitable.
I've seen how some large companies that purchase links can quickly push themselves up the PR food-chain and gain high level SERPs with nothing more than a large stack of cash.
Unfortunately, Google is in a quandary: their primary source of income is paid links, and yet they want to shut down the practice to other webmasters.
I see the problem coming to a head in the very near future. Is Google still progressive enough to come up with an innovative and fair solution? Or will they bow down to their new masters (share holders) and go for the most financially rewarding solution? Only time will tell...
Its ironic that many bloggers talk about this but then they actually use no follow.
Hi Bapes,
If you've found a place on my blog that uses NOFOLLOW, please let me know so I can fix it.
(Note - I do know that the comment page has NOFOLLOW links, but the new Blogger templates are a pain in the butt to work with, and I haven't figured out exactly how to switch the NOFOLLOW off on the comment pages.)
I think bapes is just saying that a lot of bloggers use the whole do-follow movement just to get comments that help them and then they attach dofollow at least thats what i have noticed a lot online. Nofollow is just plain stupid its not going to stop the hardcore spammers.
I think that removing nofollow is one of those things you could do for your blog in order to grow. Really. I rather have people commenting than a good PR and nobody commenting.
It is a double edged sword but it helps your blog get comments and people linking to you so overall it is good, in my opinion.
google will never be able to make the difference between a paid and a non paid link. I belive every blogger should have the nofollow deactivated because people have to communicate. If they dont post their link to their site, they wont bother to leave a comment...thats my opinion
Do following is ok, I think one have just to moderate your own comments and really discern if someone is just posting for link juice or for a real valuable comment in the end there is nothing wrong to contribute to a topic with some value on your comment in exchange for a link exchange.
I support de I-Follow Movement! :)
Keep the great work everybody
Here I am a year later and while the Google paid links problem has to a degree been addressed, I see that it now has a dofollow problem to worry about, judging by recent links from here :-( The consequence of observing dofollow is that you have to become a slave to your moderation, not always practical.
BB