Advice for Nofollow Bloggers
Sunday, July 20th, 2008
Like this blog, I’ve noticed a growing trend of bloggers removing the rel=”nofollow” attribute from their blogs which essentially encourages users to comment on posts without loosing what might be a valuable link to their own site. However, as some people including myself have found out, this drasticallyincreases the level of spam following each of your posts. At first I accepted this and simply deleted them from my moderation panel before they were allowed to be set live, but after a while this became a very drawn-out and exhausting process.
The answer is definately an anti-spam challenge that each user must complete before submitting a comment. The challenegs are usually so simple that a monkey could answer them, but not a robot. The one I use is called Math Comment Spam Protectionand has worked a treat since adding to my comment form.
Download here: MathCommentSpamProtection.zip
Once up and running, I also reccommend adding one fo these U Comment, I Follow Icons to your blog to let people know instantly that your blog is nofollow-free, this will surely encourage interactivity among readers. It’s also treated as a ‘badge of honour’ among bloggers who believe users should be rewarded with at least a decent link for contributing quality comments to a post. That’s how I see it anyway.
9 Responses to “Advice for Nofollow Bloggers”
By David North on Jul 20, 2008
How about akismet - http://akismet.com/ - I’ve found to be ultra reliable.
By Ian Parker on Jul 20, 2008
As David mentioned, what about Akismet (or some other anti-spam services like Typepad’s)? Do those not work well enough to catch all of the spam, or is it just a matter of not wanting to deal with volume of it on your CMS control panel?
I like the “U Comment, I Follow” system and am pleased to see it gaining traction. Have you found it beneficial on your sites?
By Stephan Miller on Jul 20, 2008
All of my blogs are currently dofollow. Some are set to give a dofollow link from the very first comment and others give a dofollow link after 3 comments. And asikmet seems to work great for them. In fact, one blog had over 100,000 comments that akismet caught. That would have been a lot to go through manually.
By Matti on Aug 21, 2008
From time to time I look here by and read the always interesting and well written contributions. Here I would like to leave gladly a greeting from Thuringia in Germany!
By TigerTom on Sep 16, 2008
I saw an even better plugin recently. It asked a tricky question which I had to think about (’which one of these does not belong?’).
Glad this simpler one is working for you.
By Anuva on Sep 19, 2008
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
By Matt on Oct 18, 2008
Can anyone tell me that is there any difference betwen rel=nofollow and rel=external nofollow.
By steve on Oct 23, 2008
i appreciate your movement for dofollow tag. At least the people who are contributing should get a decent link and also in this proces you can attrat visitors to your blog.
By David Hamill on Oct 26, 2008
This is a great idea. I’ve downloaded it and will look to put it on my blog. I agree that commenting on blogs should be encouraged if you’re actually adding to the conversation.