Argument Against the Nofollow Tag
This guy has a pretty convincing argument against the Google nofollow tag. He says it’s not effective against comment spam (hasn’t helped me!) but is effective at reducing the influence of blogs on Google — which is, he says, what Google wanted all along.
Hmmmmm.
UPDATE: What was I smoking when I wrote the above? The author’s argument assumes that nofollow is being used in posts. But, as commenters below point out, most of us use it only in comments. How does that harm blogs?
I should have seen this point myself.
The argument adds nothing new to the debate. As I said when nofollow came out:
Assuming you have nofollow installed in the standard manner, this comment won’t affect my Google ranking, Venomous Kate’s, or Lonewacko’s. However, if you, as the proprietor of the blog, decide that what I’ve said is so friggin’ insighful as to be worth quoting in the main entry, it will. That’s as it should be IMNSHO.
Xrlq (f52b4f) — 3/8/2006 @ 6:14 amNot really appropriate to this topic, but speaking of “Blogging Matters,” have you ever considered making a PDA friendly page without all the links and images? I would like to download the site (including the comments) in the morning so I could read it in court, but the mobile favorites gets bogged down in the blogroll etc.
I really enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work (here and professionally).
Steve M. (138df5) — 3/8/2006 @ 7:35 amThe author approvingly quotes this: “If your blog software inserts nofollow, then in order for you to give another blog Google juice, you have to go out of your way to link to them without nofollow, such as in your blogroll.”
If your blog software adds a nofollow parameter to every link you post, you need to get new blog software. Mine only adds nofollow to links posted in comments, which is the whole point.
Les Jones (514bb2) — 3/8/2006 @ 8:20 amThis is a rather complex subject, but in brief, from my perspective it’s a matter of fairness and also of not changing the web to suit the search engines.
Here’s an example: many blog platforms put nofollow tags on trackbacks. Yet, when someone sends a completely valid trackback, they don’t put a nofollow tag on their outgoing link. That means they’re getting ripped off: they’ve given a valid link, but they’re getting a crap link in return.
A similar situation obtains with commentors. I certainly wish I had as many commentors as this blog does at my blog. It would increase the community, encourage more visitors, and all those comments would create free content for me.
That’s specifically why many people start forums and similar sites: people come by, write content, and then search engines deliver people searching for that content. The more people who come by, the more income is generated.
I also have almost twenty blogs, and none of them use nofollow. There are other reasons why, but one of the major ones is that if someone builds content and community for me, I would consider it unethical to then rip them off by not giving them a link should they take advantage of that feature.
As for those other reasons why I don’t use nofollow, there are some, and hopefully those sites that make extensive use of the tag will suffer as a result.
I also tend to think that as time goes on Daniel Brandt will be seen as having been largely correct.
And, there are other sites that make indiscriminate use of the tag, for instance drupal.org.
If you use Firefox, I’d suggest installing the one-line script he presents so you can see right away if someone is using that tag.
TheDreadedLonewacko (b596a2) — 3/8/2006 @ 11:38 pmI’d also suggest searching for nofollowpolicy at my site, especially after having installed that one-line script.
TheDreadedLonewacko (b596a2) — 3/8/2006 @ 11:41 pmLike I said, it’s a complex topic.
From the google-as-dictator department, here’s one of the reasons why they want you to use nofollow:
mattcutts.com/blog/text-link-follow-up
Of course, unless you’re familiar with the subject you’re going to have to do a lot of research into that matter.
As far as stopping spam or abusive comments are concerned, let’s say someone leaves a bunch of comments linking to their XXXXXXXXX-rated site, complete with some really bad phrases. Don’t worry! You’ve got nofollow on the links!
Of course, you’ve still got all those XXXXXXXXXXXX-rated terms on your page, so the nofollow tag has not only not dissuaded them, it hasn’t prevented damage to your site.
The best way to deal with spammers is… oh, gee, that’s a head scratcher… wait! how about just deleting the spam? I know that’s the old-fashioned way favored by fuddy-duddies, but that’s the way that’s guaranteed to work.
In fact, everything is best solved the old-fashioned way. Personally, I delete large amounts of spam using a MySQL shell, also plugging their URLs into mt-blacklist.
TheDreadedLonewacko (b596a2) — 3/9/2006 @ 12:05 amThen let’s drag them out behind the gym and beat the snot out of ’em.
McGehee (5664e1) — 3/9/2006 @ 9:43 am