More People Spread Link Love With DoFollow
Turns out we’ve got a movement on our hands.
I wrote about removing NoFollow from your blog just about a month ago. Since then more and more people have followed suit. I didn’t start the movement, but it’s nice to be a part of it and push it along.
For those catching up, NoFollow is a tag added automatically to URLs input into comments so that those URLs don’t gain any link love / Google juice from you. It was a means to deter spammers from posting comments to try and boost their URLs search rankings. Of course it didn’t deter spammers at all. And people who comment properly and regularly on your blog weren’t getting as much value as they could from doing so.
Removing NoFollow is extremely easy and there are numerous WordPress plugins for doing so.
What’s particularly interesting about this whole thing is the true movement of people making the switch to DoFollow - inspired by others.
Randa Clay has made the move, and on top of that she’s created a cool little icon you can put in your sidebar to let people know that you’ve setup DoFollow.
It’s a nice way for bloggers to show they care about the people who comment regularly and add real value. Plus, it’s a great move on Randa’s part to do a little marketing of her own…nice work Randa!
If you haven’t setup DoFollow yet, go for it. Don’t be shy. You won’t get more spam. You won’t have more work to do. At minimum you’ll be helping others. You may also start to see more comments and interesting discussion take place on your blog, which is what it’s all about.
Added Note: Andy Beard just informed me of his No NoFollow I Follow DoFollow Community setup through BUMPzee. I’ve just signed up to show my support for the cause.
[…] More People Spread Link Love With DoFollow and a list of DoFollow WordPress […]
That’s really cool that this thing is gaining momentum. Besides, a couple of comments won’t spoil your page rank.
Ben - thanks for helping spread the word! I love the logos Randa made.
Great idea. I followed your advice and removed the no-follow tag. It will be interesting to see if no-follow sites become bigger targets for comment spam, but I’m willing to try, because it makes sense to reward visitors with useful comments.
I really wouldn’t worry about more comment spam, just not going to happen. And even if it does Akismet or Spam Karma can handle it fairly well. Enough that the benefits outweigh the risks.
I agree that DoFollow helps increase comments and I am all for rewarding commenters regardless if they comment once or twenty times in a month. I am actually running a challenge to help promote blogs that use DoFollow over at the DoFollow Pingback Challenge so if you have a minute and can pop over I would appreciate it.
i’d have to agree.. i don’t think there are too many cons with this dofollow.
You might get more people leaving comments with their desired anchor text as their name, but as long as they contribute to the discussion then there shouldn’t be a problem.
I’m using the DoFollow plugin on my blog Nice4Rice.com, and also use one of Randa’s icons to let people know. This DoFollow movement is really picking up pace.
[…] saying about the “U Comment I Follow” movement, and on the front page was a link titled More People Spread Link Love With DoFollow : Instigator Blog. No harm in posting a comment and getting a cheeky backlink I thought. Little did I realize what I […]
I agree, the pros of disabling the nofollow plug (gives people more reasons to comment properly, improves pagerank, eternally-grateful readers and comment-posters) definitely outweighs the cons.
Hope more bloggers follow your example.
Fruit Engine - I think the movement for DoFollow will grow over time. I wouldn’t be surprised if future versions of blogging software did away with the automatic NoFollow or even created a toggle. That’d make perfect sense, just build the functionality right into something like WordPress.
I couldn’t agree more; my blog has been ‘link love enabled’ from the outset. I have consequently reaped the rewards of rewarding contributors to my blog. Everyone is happy
- Martin Reed
[…] course, this isn’t a new idea. I’ve been meaning to do this for months. Better late than never, right? I’ve also […]
thanks for posting this information. I have seem many people taking away nofollow from there blogs.
i am using wp in my blogs and i will try to remove the no follow from my blogs too. probably will have to edit the php files ..
Gautam,
If you’re using WordPress on your own servers then install one of the plugins. It’s easy and doesn’t require any hacking around in PHP code.
If you’re using the WordPress.com hosted service then you can’t hack around with PHP code anyway…
yay..no editing of php. i just installed a plugin and everything is working fine
cheers !
Ben,
I came here after reading Wendy’s blog - followed the link - and I was wondering if you still feel as you did when you said:
“I really wouldn’t worry about more comment spam, just not going to happen.”
Clearly it does but maybe not that much. I am new to this so I don’t get any spam.
Roger,
I don’t think I’ve been getting more comment spam because I removed NoFollow. As a blog grows in popularity it’s going to get more spam or questionable comments no matter what.
And even if there’s a small increase that could be attributed to removing NoFollow, the links and positivity you get back from others more than makes up for it.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
I have to say that this is such a great plugin. I have to say that this gives so much power for bloggers to communicate so well. I think we can learn faster and create so much more thanks to the need to communicate more.
I agree that do follow should be the way to go! Not only it gives a little morale boost to the blog poster but every now and then people post some great comments which in return they get some link love.
I agree. I’ve done the same to my blog.
[…] was going to follow Jamie and set my comment number to (7), but then I read that Ben Yoskovitz, entrepreneur, set his to (2), and Wendy Piersall, online marketing entrepreneur, suggested that 2–3 would be […]
I agree. If someone is good enough to leave a relevant comment on my blog, they deserve a link back. The whole point of the dofollow movement is to allow relevant comments and weed out spammers.
[…] was going to follow Jamie and set my comment number to (7), but then I read that Ben Yoskovitz, entrepreneur, set his to (2), and Wendy Piersall, online marketing entrepreneur, suggested that 2–3 would be […]
Its ironic that many bloggers talk about this but then they actually use no follow.
A “nofollow” Internet makes for a cold, lifeless Internet. Let’s hope others follow suit.
Its a nice concept, but it also leads to increased ’spam’ with comments like ‘Good Job’ or ‘Nice blog’ that are not actually relevant to the post, but are just there because the poster saw a ‘DoFollow’ badge on the blog and wanted a backlink.
I suppose you could call this a double edged sword, it’d definitely get your more comments, but also increase your moderation work.
I’m not getting too many more “good job” comments, but I am getting people using the Name field for something SEO specific, which is OK in some cases, but I’m getting more and more frustrated with.
Don’t you think its kind of fair enough though? Maybe someone should mod wordpress to allow a name and anchor text, still only accepting valid comments but at least then the commenter gets something in return?
If you have the Firefox SEO plugin installed all no-follow links on page will show up bright red. Having this installed and accessing your page shows me that you have no-follow links.
“I’m not getting too many more “good job” comments, but I am getting people using the Name field for something SEO specific, which is OK in some cases, but I’m getting more and more frustrated with.”
If you stop trying to control everything and just moderate you will have better blogging experiences.
This is logical and in my opinion, perfectly acceptable. I have even done it here. The reason for this is that we are giving away benefit for useful contributions. If a person’s anchor text is always their name, it will create a spammy looking linking profile according to Google. I also try to alternate these titles to be appropriate to the post, as the fact that my name might be ‘John’ is alot less relevant than if I’m ‘Web Blog Developer’.
See, that FireFox SEO plugin link was a legitimate link, but it is glowing red on my screen. This is no good.
Aaron - since my redesign I haven’t fully tested out the Link Love plugin I’m using. It may not be setup correctly.
Having said that, I also set it (way back when) to only remove no-follow after you left 3 comments, which also might be why it’s still no-follow.
As for the anchor text you use for your name - I’ve asked people to use their name. I still haven’t put up a proper Comment Policy (but I will at some point.) This is a choice I’ve made with my blog - it might not suit everyone, and that’s OK. I don’t think it should stop people from leaving legitimate comments and joining the discussion.
For me, comments are about the conversation and the people, not trying to gain a bit of Google Juice with good anchor text. But again, that’s me, and my blog. Anyone else can have different policies for difference reasons.
hey cool i have been wondering what those u comment i follow buttons are about but now i know. I am going to install that on my blog as well
Great post, I’ve been noticing a lot of blogs that have disabled the nofollow function, I think this is great. Of course you gotta worry about spam and irrelevant comments but for the most part you’ll receive legit comments from readers who truly want to voice their opinion on your post.
BTW, my blog has dofollow…hit me up anytime!
Ben, great post! I have been seeing more and more bloggers joining in on the dofollow movement. I think it is a great idea. I am definitely installing the plugin on my blog! Thanks for leading the way!
Nice one. I agree, nofollow sucks and does nothing to encouraging commenting.
absolutely agree. i’ve removed my nofollow some months ago and people now comments often on my posts
I have seen this everywhere and I hope it’s not taking away rather than adding to. I’m going to give it a try on my blog and see what happens. Thanks for the post.
I just installed the dofollow plugin to my wordpress today. It seems like a great idea. The default no-follow seems to ruin the idea of xfn.
I use dofollow to make google find out the links of the blogs of my readers. If all bloggers make this we can have a much better web.
I’ve been using the DoFollo search engine off and on and it seems to be a pretty good idea. I’m not sure how it adds blogs to it’s index though. I seem to run across the same blogs a lot in my searches.
Search engines should do away with the nofollow attribute to bring back more trust in commenting. Let webmasters help to make SERPs relevant with allowing and disallowing comments relevant to the blog subject.
More power to you. Internet is meant to be a free exchange of information.
I do often wonder though, if google isn’t actually reading and ’scoring’ the ‘no-follow’ links. I mean, they are systematically gathering anything and everything. Some have said its that largest concentration of information ever gathered on the planet. I think that even the ‘no-follow’ links have some relevance, even if its just the actual text involved. Of course, they will never let us peek under the hood, so its all just a guess.
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