DoFollow or NoFollow, That is the Question

A couple of years ago when I was still active in Entrecard the idea of making your blog a DoFollow was heavily stressed. There is even a badge for your blog announcing that if U Comment I Follow. What this really meant is the rel="nofollow" attribute was removed from comments and backlinks telling search engines to follow and index that link. The premise was that making your blog a DoFollow blog comments would increase and for many they did.  An underlying problem that many bloggers didn't realize though is that with increased comments come increased comment spam. 

There are a few ways of dealing with increased comment spam with one of the most effective being comment moderation.  Increased comment spam through making your blog a DoFollow means increased work on your end for moderating comments.  Blogger now has comment spam detection so that is a help as well.

The biggest problem that bloggers didn't realize is by making their blog DoFollow is some of the backlinks went to what would be classified by the search engines as spammy sites or worse into bad neighbourhoods.  Essentially search engines do not like you giving link love to spam sites whether you knew they were a spam site or not.  Unfortunately, Mr. G. does penalize your blog for having these types of links on your blog whether they are in the main part of the blog or in the comments. 

There are two solutions to this problem.  The first and easiest solution is to make your blog a nofollow blog.  If you want to keep your blog as a DoFollow then you must, must, must check out each and every link left in the comments.  It's not good enough that you check them only when posted either as many spammers are great at setting up redirects.  If in doubt, do not allow that link at all.  You can strip the url if you wish or simply reject the comment.

Garden Gnome
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