From time to time, I do some blog hopping and if I find some good
blogs, I try to emulate what they are doing. I have noticed the “U Comment I follow” sign but I never knew what that meant until lately I discovered its importance, so I placed one on this blog.
What the “U Comment I follow” sign basically means is that if you place a comment in this blog, hopefully the search engines will follow the author links, or the links on the comments that you placed. This will will result in the commenter hopefully getting a back link as a result of his comments.
I used the word “hopefully” since some search engines (like google) say they do not follow the links in the comments. However a test done has revealed otherwise. Others (like yahoo, msn etc.) say they treat the links as if it is any other link. But no matter what, disabling the “No follow” will both be of mutual benefit to the blogger and the visitors of the site.
So what is this “No follow” nonsense? Well it all started out with Google. They figured out that a lot of sites has been getting back links through spam comments made on blogs. (Remember that back links help boost a sites ranking in the search engines) So in order to avoid that situation and hopefully also curb or even stop spamming, Google implemented a “no follow” policy when it comes to comments. Other search engines soon followed.
Did they succeed ? Well spammers still spam. In fact the spam problem is much worse now than ever before. Word Press founder Matt Mullenweg has this to say about the failure of “No follow” – “In theory this should work perfectly, but in practice although all major blogging tools did this two years ago and comment and trackback spam is still 100 times worse now. In hindsight, I don’t think nofollow had much of an effect, though I’m still glad we tried it.”
So why should you continue to allow “no-follow” after all, it has no effect after. (This is enabled by default) You are better off protecting your blog by activating spam filters. The adverse effect of “no-follow” is that it punishes the visitors to your site with legitimate and sensible comments. As one blogger puts it so nicely, PUNISH SPAMMERS, NOT BLOGGERS.
P.S: Check out my word press tips for a review of a nice plugin that will remove the “no-follow” after your visitors makes several comments. This will surely encourage them to place more comments !!!
Hi ! my name is Zigfred Diaz. Thanks for visiting my personal blog ! Never miss a post from this blog. Subscribe to my full feeds for free. Click here to subscribe to zdiaz.com by Email
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I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Thanks ! More powert your blog as well !
Glad to have another dofollow blog to visit!:-
Your blog is already doing so well so this would be more of a “thank you” to your readers, I guess.
Thanks ! More power to your blog too !
You have a very quality and fancy blog.It was a lovely reading.Thanks for the post.
Yup! Comments encourage people to write even more. They are like psychic wages that inspire you. On the other hand, they also offer constructive criticism by which you can improve.