The Tentative End of Comments on My Blogs

Like many bloggers, I enjoy getting comments on my blogs.  Comments are by their very nature problematic in that you are opening yourself up to comment spam and watering down of PR.  In fact the current trend amongst SEO experts is to not allow comments.  The problem is as a blogger you can't have your cake and eat it too.  Comment spam is the norm and even if you have comments set to moderation you still have to go through and delete the spam.  What really ticked me off this week in inadvertently paying for comment spam.  You see I pay to advertise one of my blogs to the tune of $14 per month.  This month I'm running two ads so it's $28.  Another member of the blog advertising network decided comment spam was a good idea so left not one but two comment spams for me to deal with.  It was the final straw!

Last night I was talking with one of our kids who is very much into SEO.  The general consensus was agreeing with the SEO experts that comments should not be allowed on blogs.  Following our kid's advice I went in and changed my settings to hide comments which effectively removes any audience spammers would get.  Then I went back and turned off comments for all new posts.  I honestly don't know how this will affect my PR and I really don't care at the moment.  All I care about is ridding myself of the problem of comment spam.  As with all major blog changes, I will test this setting out for a month but the reality is, I've pretty much made up my mind I am not wasting my time dealing with comment spam so the chances of going back to allowing comments is pretty slim.

Garden Gnome
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