No nofollow is Back with new Blog Theme

August 16th, 2007 | 7 comments

Many of you know that I don’t agree with blogs using nofollow tags in their comments. After recently changing my wp theme, I completely forgot nofollow tags are default so pagerank wasn’t passing for the last few days.

This post is to let you know that I’ve installed and activated Denis de Bernardy’s “DoFollow” plugin and your links will now receive pagerank once again.

So why do blogs use the nofollow tags anyway? In my opinion it’s because they’re selfish! With the creation of the Akismet spam plugin, the comment spam problem is greatly reduced, eliminating the tedious moderation process.

That eliminates the excuse of comment spam, which is why nofollow was created in the first place. So next time you visit a blog that uses nofollow, ask them why they do it? I mean, you’re updating their pages by creating unique content, the least they can do is pass a little pagerank your way!

7 comments

Francois du Toit
16th August, 2007 at 8:34 pm

Hi Josh,

Read your thread on Warrior Forum about NoFollow tags. Fully agree that most blogs will get more comments (and fresh content) by not using NoFollow tags. However, I do feel that blog owners should at least moderate comments to discourage spammers from posting off-topic replies. By the way, great blog!
Josh Spaulding
16th August, 2007 at 8:42 pm

Hi Francois, thanks for stopping by. You’re absolutely right. If you don’t moderate your comments, you’ll eventually end up with a spam comment here and there. So every blogger should be moderating no matter what. My argument is that we should be rewarding our “commenters” for contributing Thanks for contributing.
The Hypocrisy of Paid Link Discrimination
19th August, 2007 at 5:24 am

[...] Two of those beliefs are written about in a few of my recent posts. One being the selfishness of using nofollow tags in blog comments and the other being Googles dislike of paid [...]
Vlad (7 comments.)
21st August, 2007 at 1:59 pm

I agree that with so many spam filtering plugins there is no valid reason for “nofollow” in your comments. Comments contribute to to content of your blog. I can’t tell you how many time my posts come up for the keywords found in the comments.

I did have some bad experience with Akismet when it caught as spam some legitimate comments and since I have been using Spam Karma instead.
Josh Spaulding
21st August, 2007 at 3:43 pm

I have noticed akismet tends to filter trackback URL’s but I always go through the list to prevent that. So far, for me anyway, it’s done an excellent job. I’ll take a look at spam karma though and possible give it a shot.
Chuck (70 comments.)
23rd August, 2007 at 1:50 am

I also think it’s worth mentioning that somewhere in the sidebar of your blog that your a No Nofollow guy. There are several logo options available now that other bloggers can quickly recognize. You’ve linked to the group at Bumpzee, and you’ll find some there. I’ve recently created one here (http://chuckbrown.com/no-nofollow-logo.html) and I’ve seen a few others popping up here and there.

The reason I think this is important is because not everyone uses that Firefox plugin that shows which links are using rel nofollow…so it’s nice to have a visual cue/reminder.
Josh Spaulding
23rd August, 2007 at 2:28 am

Nice to hear from you Chuck. Take a look at the sidebar now. I had that logo up before the theme switch and completely forgot about it. You have a good point.

It wasn’t long ago when I installed that nofollow highlight plugin as well (wish I could remember the name of it) It’s pretty damn useful though.