Links on Comments Here “DoFollow”
14 Mar 2007 (Wed)INSPIRED BY THE REASONING and examples of Lucas McDonnell (To Follow or Not To Follow) and Loren Baker (13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck), I’ve installed two plugins: DoFollow and ShowTopCommentators. I truly hope to encourage more meaningful discussions on my posts and at the same time reward commentators with links to their sites (and so help them improve their Google PageRank).
How is this possible? Basically, all external links in most blogs have automatic rel="nofollow" attributes. The DoFollow plugin disables these attributes and the Show Top Commentators plugin displays the names (linked to websites if desired) and number of comments that others have made recently on my blog. In other words, as Lucas put it, “…leaving a comment here gets you a followed link back to your own site through the top commentators on the sidebar.”
And since I have a good spam filter and will continue to moderate comments on this blog, I’m not worried about spam comments. Note though that only on-topic comments will be displayed. For off-topic comments, please Contact Me or just “Shout”.
Afternote on 2007-03-15: After reading Andy Beard’s Ultimate List of DoFollow Plugins, I’ve decided to reward commenters (who have posted 3 or more comments) and not just anyone. So, I’ve switched to LinkLove. I hope this won’t be perceived as calculating. I merely think that a dialog on a post (or with a blogger) surely isn’t made up of just one comment.
Afternote on 2007-03-16: “NoFollow” started because of spam. I started using DoFollow because I thought that we’ve got spam under control through spam filters. However, I forgot that there are other more subtle forms of spam — e.g. useless / meaningless one-liners. I’m waiting now to use the plugin that rewards special comments because basically, I’d like to reward Quality more than Quantity. And I believe that this is the principle behind Google’s PageRank too.
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Posted by J.K. in Search Engines, Technology | 18 Comments |
March 15th, 2007 at 12:08 am
Glad to see you’re trying out DoFollow. I haven’t had any problems with instituting DoFollow, and hopefully others have the seen some benefits from me instituting it.
One minor point however: please, call me Lucas! Last names are so formal.
March 15th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Glad to see you here. Right, have changed McDonnell to Lucas.
Interesting to see comments coming in and to note where my visitors/readers are coming from.
March 15th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Does it impose anything that I should also know about? Like will it disable anything etc??? I have to get that plug in!!!
March 15th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
What the heck does Andy know!!! By the way…im lost when you say your going with link love…help me out???
March 15th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Just do a Google search on LinkLove or go my Credits page. Basically, NoFollow is default in all blogs and this means commenting on a blog will not give you a link that Google would count towards PageRank. DoFollow undoes that restriction.
LinkLove, from what I understand, comes with a default 10 comments limit before NoFollow will be disabled. I’ve set it to a more realistic 3.
Afternote: AHA! Looks like there’s an even better plugin that rewards *special* comments. This would be much better since Quality and not Quantity would be rewarded.
March 16th, 2007 at 4:07 am
Hey cool, thx for the mention
Now I really have no excuse to delay the *special comments* (still trying to come up with a better suited name) plugin project. It will likely be available some time next week.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Is there a performance hit when you allow dofollow on your blog? My server seems to be slow at times, so I’m a bit adamant at running the plugin.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
My server does seem to be slow at times. I’m not using DoFollow though, but a variant called LinkLove which gives a link after a preset number of comment. It’s currently set at 3.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
The link for LinkLove currently has an error, but thanks for reiterating that. Lol, I didn’t read the fine print.
This is the link, right?
http://www.allpassionmarketing.com/blog
/2007/02/share-the-link-love-again.html
April 20th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Yup. Ah, you’re a Filipino, right? Why not increase your blog readership by joining the Asia Social Media Directory? Just three steps:
(1) Click “Join!” on the map.
(2) On the left menu, click “Join This Space” to become a member.
(3) On the left menu, choose your country page and click “Edit” to add your blog details.
April 20th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Yup, Filipina here. Thanks for the tip. I’ll bookmark the LinkLove site in the meantime. Visit my site and leave some comments too!
April 27th, 2007 at 3:04 am
Interesting that you decided to remove DoFollow and instead install LinkLove. I have never used that particular plug in but I will check it out, thanks. Rewarding commenters regardless whether they post one valid comment a month or twenty can only help to increase your exposure and overall good will. Anyway, I found your blog while researching for my latest challenge the DoFollow Pingback Challenge. Hope you pop over and take a look, either way glad I found your blog.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Don’t count this comment, it will be a one liner or two actually. I just wanted to say I love your domain name. I am adding it to my “Best Domain Names” page. Wait no this makes 4 lines, anyway, cool name. (shutting up now)
April 27th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Susan, our blogosphere is becoming more mercenary and meaningless with the emergence of bloggers who choose to blog for money AND NOT because they have something worthwhile to say OR because they love blogging.
Google does not encourage this kind of information. In fact, it conscientiously tries to discredit “paid” or “cheap” exchange links. I agree with its principles. Otherwise, the quality of an information search would deteriorate tremendously.
By the way, the guy who advocated LinkLove actually set a value of 10. Maybe I should follow suit.
April 27th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
J.K. I agree that the blogosphere does have an increasing number of people who blog for money versus the fact they have something to say, but then again if that is what they choose to do then so be it. Policing what a blogger chooses to do with their site is not something I am interested in doing and I hope no one else is either. I would hate to have someone tell me my blog is worthless simply because I post sponsored articles.
I understand why Google would want to discredit certain links but then again is that really a valid practice? After all is a post any less reliable just because someone got paid to post it? Content is content. Either it is good or it is bad.
Back to the comments, it is your site and you can obviously do with it as you please but on my site I have DoFollow set for all comments. If the comment is valid I approve it, if not I mark it as spam and delete it. Tools like Askimet others make this a much easier process than it use to be. Sorry for the long comment.
April 27th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Susan, you asked, “Is a post any less reliable just because someone got paid to post it?”
Yes, I would definitely consider such a post LESS reliable, especially if it’s a product review and that someone was paid by the product seller. There are many other similar possible scenarios. On the other hand, if that someone is paid like a journalist on a news team to write about something which does not have any inherent conflict of interest, then perhaps no.
Still, perhaps you missed my point. OR perhaps I didn’t explain this clearly enough earlier. Many “internet marketers” go around posting meaningless or useless comments on various sites just to get links back to their blogs. These links are used by traffic ranking groups like Google and Technorati to estimate the importance or recognition of sites/pages in the Internet/blogosphere. In such a case, these “marketers” are creating a false impression. This would constitute deception. I don’t want to be a part of this.
June 27th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Welcome aboard. Since we installed the Dofollow plugin a few months back and got involved in the BumpZee Dofollow community, we’ve had nothing but good news in terms of blog comments and customer interaction on our own site.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:42 am
something’s been bugging me though, does one lose page rank when one gives out link love?