unshackled

"When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky" - Siddhartha Gautama
Mar 16th 2007
Tags: blogging, site, technology

Google is evil

I’ve always had this sense that anyone with this much power is evil. And even though there are well documented arguments (Google Watch, Gmail is too Creepy, and Scroogle) about the dubious tactics of Google, I’ve never done anything too crazy such as refusing to use Google products. I do use Yahoo for search, as I have found it to be more accurate.

About two years ago, the official Google blog announced a “solution” to blog spam in the form of a hyperlink attribute. Yahoo and MSN quickly gave their support in a measure that effectively disabled search-engine friendly backlinks in most blog comment sections.

Here’s the scoop in plain language. For example, if you create a basic link in html, it’ll look something like this:

<a href="http://www.artkauffman.com/">Art Kauffman</a>

On the other hand, with the Google attribute, the link will look something like this:

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.artkauffman.com/">Art Kauffman</a>

This attribute will tell every single search engine that the website displaying the link most definitely does not endorse the link. As a result, they will not index the link as having been linked by that website. So how does this play into fighting spam?

Google claims that when this attribute is integrated into blog commenting systems, blog spammers will begin to lessen their blog spam because of the realization that that link will not help them in search engine rankings. By default, any comment that you submit on a Wordpress blog will be tagged with a “nofollow” link.

It’s time to fight back. We little bloggers have a hard enough time getting high SEO scores (if that is indeed our objective). Our communal approach to the Internet has led to an increasing number of blog results in search engines. How much more would our page rank be improved if every quality comment we left on someone else’s site counted as a backlink?

Spam control such as Askimet and Spam Karma 2 are a much better defense to blog spam from Wordpress blogs than an indiscriminate attribute. In lieu of all this, I’ve decided to use and promote the Wordpress plugin called DoFollow. It will strip all your comments of the “nofollow” attribute after a specified number of days, allowing Google and other search engines to index the backlink. Thanks Kimmo!

Unless you have some brilliant idea about why we should be using “nofollow”, then go ahead and do the blogging community a favor and install DoFollow on your blog. Any thoughts?

About

me
18. tired alot. mac-aholic. designer. photographer. social media junkie. God-chaser. ordinary radical.

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Viewing 11 Comments

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    Well there are some SEO reasons for nofollow. Having every other "cool post" comment link out to an arbitrary location dilutes the value of the links that you do endorse explicitly. My personal choice is to moderate for quality comments that really extend the discussion of the post, and reward those on a case by case basis.

    Oh yeah, and it appears that spammers are not educated enough to know what rel='nofollow' is, as automated posts still flood the internet tubes.
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    Right. It wouldn't be prudent to link to just any site.
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    Wow. That's amazing we did this at the same time! :)

    you think google is evil but you still use their ads? :chuckle:
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    :) Right. But probably not for too long.
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    If I understand you right... you feel that leaving legitimate spam is okay. Any time you intrude on another persons page, with no regard of what is being said, simply to raise your score on google... you KNOW you already lost. Even "acting" like you care by posting "quality" comments, essentially what you are doing is a prettied up version of spam.

    That brings to question... is the way of the blogger to spam other "big boy" blogs (That never needed to spam in the first place) till someone reads his/her blog? How pathetic does THAT sound? Lets make an analogy. Just because Microsoft is big... doesn't mean it's competing companies can post graffiti ads all over it's buildings.

    And you know... I find it idiotic that these premade blogger tools STILL have a footer saying "Blog here... attack at will" a simple search for "powered by WordPress 2.1.2" would bring up this site, and a spam blogger auto fills in the fields and submits. Hell... the ONLY reason spam blogging is doable is because so many bloggers are HTML idiots (or php idiots) if you write your own blogging software (or remove all the elements that refer to the creator of said software) then people can't pinpoint your blog as being a blog to spam.

    Finally... is it REALLY that hard to remove the code for "nofollow" that you have to use a plugin? You don't even NEED "special software" to edit PHP files... just notepad. Hell, you don't even need to know how to PROGRAM in PHP... just do a search and replace for "nofollow" and replace it with "".

    Additionally... not ALL search engines are using this... just a few.

    Spammers are idiots... if there are 1 million links to your site on a site... or 1 link... it counts the same (so says "google"... all hail google). They don't know this... but they know enough about the protocol to know that links on many sites = high linkage. And that is what it is really all about... links.

    "If you want to be remembered, do something worth the writing, or write something worth the reading"
    ~Ben Franklin
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    Ben, it sounds like you really don't know what you are talking about. Quality comments are not spam by definition, as they contribute to the discussion and are wanted. The author gets a linkback out of it? Well it's a recognition of his/her contributions.

    Virtually all of the "spam" spam is caught by Akismet or Spam Karma plugins.

    And you clearly don't know how the WordPress platform works. Or much about good programming practices...
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    Bit of an overreaction Art old boy. You say Google is evil and also say how you are struggling to SEO your blog ie you want to exploit search engines for personal advantage!

    Sure the nofollow attribute on links means that any links you post on other people's blogs will not boost the linked-to site (in this case your own) in related searches BUT the link will still be there, and anyone reading the article you have commented will be able to follow your link should they feel inclined. Seems fair enough to me really.

    Anyway, in case you're wondering how I got here, no it wasn't down to your tireless SEO efforts! I actually saw this page on Google's info page about the rel nofollow attribute; it was listed there under 'pages that link to this site'....
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    [quote post="14"]Bit of an overreaction Art old boy. You say Google is evil and also say how you are struggling to SEO your blog ie you want to exploit search engines for personal advantage!

    Sure the nofollow attribute on links means that any links you post on other people’s blogs will not boost the linked-to site (in this case your own) in related searches BUT the link will still be there, and anyone reading the article you have commented will be able to follow your link should they feel inclined. Seems fair enough to me really.

    Anyway, in case you’re wondering how I got here, no it wasn’t down to your tireless SEO efforts! I actually saw this page on Google’s info page about the rel nofollow attribute; it was listed there under ‘pages that link to this site’….[/quote]

    You missed my point. My blog is not an SEO blog, nor is it my objective to get traffic via search engines.

    Thanks for stopping by. And I do think it indeed ironic that you commented when you knew the link to your site would be stripped of the "nofollow". ;)
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    Free stuff has it's good points and it's bad points. Guess what? Just yesterday, I tried logging into an old Yahoo account, which I hadn't logged into it for four months. It's gone. After four months of inactivity, Yahoo deletes these accounts. :( Don't worry though, this account wasn't my main one. Just a quick shout out to even the scales here....

    Also, this article wasn't too bad:

    http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4707
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    Thanks! I will definitely install dofollow!
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    dofollow is a no brainer now that we have akismet and various other ways of minimisig spam.
 
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