Advice for Nofollow Bloggers
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.
How about akismet - http://akismet.com/ - I’ve found to be ultra reliable.
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?
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.
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!
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.
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
Can anyone tell me that is there any difference betwen rel=nofollow and rel=external nofollow.
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.
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.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
kaylee
http://www.thinkpadonline.info
Hi,
Exactly I too agree with your comment that if one can make a good comment on a post than he must be rewarded with some sort which will encourage him to take part in such discussion.
At last but not the least I appreciate you for the same moment.
http://www.marblehost.com
Yes its true.Nowadays people are doing what you said in your post.Good idea what you have given for us.Let us try this…I think it will work.Thanks in advance.Let you know my feedback soon.
removing no follow tag is no doubt good for seo, but for a blog owner, it may be painful when he gets lots of irrelevant posts everyday. so, i think, the blogger should approve all the comments after reviewing only.
I removed the “nofollow” some time ago and have experienced a significant raise in the number of comments on my blogs. So it’s worth it, despite the spamming, as aksimet catches all the unwanted stuff.
Its amazing what you have to do to find a link to your website. We do Website Design in Luton and are always looking for websites that offer links. It is a pity about spammers…most of which are automated bots!
Hi its nice to see one more supporting do follow movement, I can’t understand why many of them still stick to no follow when there is no reason to do so except to stop spam which can be done by many other means. Do follow not only spreads link juice but also encourages the commentators to comment on the blog
I had the same thing happen with a huge surge of spam after removing nofollow tags. I started using Bad Behaviour as well as Akismet, which works great.