There seems to be a bit of confusion about the new request by Google for blogs software developers to incorporate a “nofollow” tag to deter comment spammers.
One of my subscribers wrote in asking: “I just read an article, that Google is going to begin punishing websites, that use blogs for promotion of websites by linking. It said, there would be a tag created to top spiders from following certain links. Have you looked into this situation, or know anything about it?”
Here’s what the Googleblog says about it (emphasis added)
If you're a blogger (or a blog reader), you're painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites' search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like "Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site."
This is called comment spam, we don't like it either, and we've been testing a new tag that blocks it.
From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.
This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.
We hope the web software community will quickly adopt this attribute and we're pleased that a number of blog software makers have already signed on:
Any link that a user can create on your site automatically gets a new "nofollow" attribute. So if a blog spammer previously added a comment like
Visit my <a href="http://www.example.com/">discount pharmaceuticals</a> site.
That comment would be transformed to
Visit my <a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">discount pharmaceuticals</a> site.
We encourage you to use the rel="nofollow" attribute anywhere that users can add links by themselves, including within comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.
Comment areas receive the most attention, but securing every location where someone can add a link is the way to keep spammers at bay.
Don’t put rel="nofollow" on the link to your comments page because lots of interesting discussion can happen there.
The best places to add this attribute are the actual links that other people can create. So only the links within comments and the link immediately after "Posted by:" would get the rel="nofollow" attribute.
Any piece of software that allows others to add links to an author's site (including guestbooks, visitor stats, or referrer lists) can use this attribute. We're working primarily with blog software makers for now because blogs are such a common target.
This request is targeted at blog software developers. When they update their software most bloggers will get these changes automatically. Individual bloggers don’t need to do anything.
Danny Sullivan covers it in detail on the Search Engine Watch blog. I am really in favour of this move because it will deter comment spam.
The only worry is if developers start using it to block links in trackbacks. But that is unlikely, or if they do offer that it will probably be optional.
Trackbacks are created because of (usually) genuine comments that other bloggers make about your post on their blog and they are one way of interlinking between blogs.
Well, all I have to say is that this is a good thing and I hope developers start implementing it soon. 
# posted by Priya Shah @ 2:28 AM
