WordPress’ Dougal Campbell reminds all us WordPress bloggers to Do Follow.
I consider this a must install WordPress plugin, essential for free culture to collaborate. Basically, what Kimmo Suominen’s dofollow plugin does is make your blog tell search engines that you think the links that commenters leave are important and part of a healthy Web.
Is there a Do Follow badge or button? Or a no “nofollow” one?
I have been meaning to write about this for some time. As Dougal writes:
Two years ago today, we released WordPress version 1.5. This was a pretty major release that introduced several new features that are still major staples of the current 2.1 branch: the Dashboard, Themes, and Pages. It also added a minor new change which was mildly controversial to some: comments were automatically flagged with the ‘nofollow’ attribute.
It probably was the correct decision at the time — there was definitely a lot of pressure from Google. But it still feels like it was a sledge hammer and that is reflected by Eric Meyer discussions on the issue at the time. But most of the services seemed to, which speaks to the real pain they felt.
Dougal continues:
These days, many sites have better anti-spam measure in place. Akismet has been very effective, and many WordPress users swear by Spam Karma 2. With measure like these in place, hardly any spams ever make it through to be displayed on your blog. And if they do, hopefully you delete them pretty quickly after they appear. So, that’s even better than just telling search engines not to index their links. They can’t index something that they never see in the first place, right?
I would like to see “nofollow” removed from WordPress.
Be part of the Web!
Comments (31)
I too would like to see the nofollow being removed from WordPress, but I don’t know if they intend to do so…
Make if enough people suggest it?
Hopefully one day the Wordpress team will see the light. I really like your idea about a DoFollow badge, I’m far more likely to contribute to site that does not use NoFollow.
So, when do we get it as an option on wordpress.com?
@that girl again,
For a hosted service like WordPress.com the issue likely has some different consideration.
I do not yet have the experience to weigh in. The service ultimately takes responsibility for its influence on the health of the web.
My intuition suggests removing “nofollow” seems like the right experience there as well and would reflect well on the values and abilities of the community, Akismet, and staff on controlling SEO spam on WordPress.com .
What’s interesting is how this “breaks” Technorati.
The entire Technorati ranking scheme falls apart once you can get links to your blog just by commenting on another blog.
Not that it’s a bad thing… I give Technorati about 2 more years.
@engtech, breaks Technorati? Or makes it work?
Excellent. I’m also a proponent of the anti-NoFollow movement.
I think the Do Follow plug in is a great way to be selfless and help a lot of people generate an opportunity for success through the help of others. I am in favor of the plugin and I hope nothing will happen because of it. How has it fared for you so far?
Hi Lloyd,
Thanks for drawing my attention to this plugin. I think passing link love will definately help get the discussion flowing on our blogs and with Akismet there is no need to fear blog comments anymore.
“Do Follow” or “I Follow” is catching on and it is nice to see so many bloggers taking a part in this movement. I had no idea that WP was not providing link love to my commentators; the plug-in has taken care of the problem and the comments are flowing in.
Couldn’t agree more. We’ve removed Nofollow and with Akismet installed we don’t have any bad karma as of yet….
I have the do follow mod on my wordpress blogs. I think it’s odd that it defaults to no follow. Hrm.
I just added “no follow” to another blog launched yesterday. I am sort of an evangelist for this plug-in and have noticed that many bloggers have added this attribute to their blogs.
Wordpress removing nofollow – thats just a dream… Spammers will always be on the Net, and nofollow is one way to keep them away. My advice? If you are moderating your blog 24/7, remove nofollow; otherwise….
i think that Do follow plugin can prove to be a great tool to get more comments on one’s blog..
What would you think about a plugin that can do both: follow plus (optional) nofollow links?
You might have recognized my do/no follow plugin already. It`s called “Nofollow Case by Case”. The plugin was written so that you can decide yourself where you want to give link juice to. It`s a “Do Follow Plugin” but allows you to make some modifications if you think that a link that you don`t like to delete seems to be a little bit too spammy to be supported.
Many comment links as well as trackback links come from spammers so that it could be a good idea not to support them. Some people send you a nofollow link in order to get a normal backlink. Other people want a link to a page titled “coming soon” (no content) or a page that obviously is a Google AdSense Power Pack only – nothing else – or a brand new link list with many categories but without any content…
Feel free to make use of my WordPress Plugin if you like. Than you will have both, follow links but nofollow as an option for the bad links.
I want the Do Follow but it does worry me. I am pretty new to blogging although I am an old dog when it comes to the internet. So far no spam, but I am very aware of the fact that there will now be a healthy link from this page to my website as are all the others on this page. Just out of interest have you had much spam on this blog?
Icon Man, see the sidebar heading “Spam Blocked”, Akismet has protected me from over 50,000 spam! I don’t think that increased because i-follow.
I think its pretty cool that sites are doing this. I will be going do follow later on tonight.
Hi,
I’m keeping an updated Do Follow List on my site and since yours is do-follow as well, I want to ask you if you want to join my list too.
There are over 220 websites featured here, so go on and start commenting on those appealing to you.
Let me know!
Thanks,
Nick
I agree wholeheartedly. I don’t think that it has alleviated the problem it was meant for. It has probably made the problem worse in many ways.
I’m a supporter of do follow. The no follow tag made a lot of people upset, bloggers mainly because now google will not follow them that have links with this tag, and fair enough! I personally think the nofollow tag is not really necessary and indeed the name is a big no no. I have heard reports that it has not slowed down or stopped spam at all.
I think for most blogs, the amount of google juice spent on increased traffic and comments is well worth going dofollow.
I have just started a new blog and am in the process of installing the do follow plugin now!
I do-follow links now on my Aussie housewife blog. After a long time procastinating I have seen the importance of dofollow and using the “do follow” principal to help keep the Internet better connected. http://www.reallyreally.net – Take a look at my dofollow blog and feel free to comment. Thank you, Regards Bree.
Here is something about nofollow tag that you never have heard before. Take a look yourself
http://seomization.blogspot.com/2007/10/nofollow-tag.html
I joined the DoFollow movement back in June and also installed the NoFollow Case by Case plugin mentioned above. However, in practice I have never used nofollow on any comments because I wind up deleting the ones that are obvious spam anyway.
Meanwhile, according to my Firefox search status, it seems that this blog is still using nofollow. I’m seeing lots of pink rectangles…
I repurposed one of my blogs recently, but it isn’t no follow — yet. I’m hesitant to add the badge, as Dawud suggests, wondering if it’ll be a spam magnet. Any thoughts on this?
I understand that from a purely SEO-perspective, removing nofollow on comments is great for the spammers, and that is the problem. Although Akismet and other Wordpress plugins are very effective for battling comment spam, the few comments that does make it though here and there will be much more attractive if do-follow was implemented.
I think the amount of comment spam will increase tremendously if nofollow was removed per default from Wordpress.
It would be nice to have a plug-in that would allow the blog owner to selectively approve certain commenters with do follow status. I can understand why a blog owner would leave the default no follow in place but that status need not apply to every blog visitor.
There are some options see http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/02/27/how-to-successfully-spam-blogs-and-how-to-fight-back/
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Follow you, follow me (13 comments) Last comment by: Jason Today at 7:40 pm WordPress 1.5 “Strayhorn” released (15 comments) Last comment by: A Fool’s Wisdom » Do Follow WordPress Today at 5:21 pm
let your readers know that when they leave comments, they’re going to get link love. Sure, you can write a few post about it and even remind readers from time to time. But many will not see it. But the badge, that stays and your readers can see it. More and more bloggers are removing nofollow every day. So what are you waiting for? Hop on over to Randa’s blog and get yourself a nofollow badge. And if you still have nofollow on your comments, take it off,
[...] Do Follow. Lloyd makes a point I hadn’t considered before. No-follow seemed like a good idea at the time, but the possible benefits no longer outweigh the downsides. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. [...]
[...] 16, 2007 | Links Having read this last night, and now this and this, I have decided that I agree entirely and have added the dofollow plugin to both Binary Moon and [...]
[...] taking nofollow away awards the spammer a victory, until you get around to deleting it of course. Remove nofollow from Wordpress? I don’t think we are ready for this yet. This had almost made my mind up on [...]
[...] More and more bloggers are removing nofollow every day. So what are you waiting for? Hop on over to Randa’s blog and get yourself a nofollow badge. [...]