In a previous post on Blog Linking and the Comment Spam Fix , I voiced my support for this move by Google which I believe will deter comment spam in blogs.
According to the latest issue of Search Engine News from Planet Ocean, evidence suggests that Google was already discounting links from blogs and guestbooks. So the necessity of this tag may be somewhat questionable.
The implications for bloggers, webmasters and rankings.
- Your readers will be less likely to post comments for the sole purpose of gaining link popularity. I believe this is a good change because comments will now largely be posted by those who mean them
- The change will affect the linkage structure of the web and we will see significant ranking changes taking place. Good for some, not for others.
- The change will make it easier for webmasters to start hoarding Pagerank by adding the tag to all off-site links. Not good for anyone!
Not everyone is happy with the change however. The text link broking guys are not amused and make their views clear, with a hilarious take on the new tag and how it will get abused at Link Condom
Linda Bruton in her article Should Bloggers be Helping Google Fix Their PageRank System? questions whether bloggers should be penalised because Google’s Pagerank system is screwed. After all blogging software already has a number of plug-ins and an active developer community that helps prevent comment spam.
Hmm, she does have a point there! A good one I might add.
Another excellent point she makes is that the problem to bloggers isn't that those comment links pass PR. It's the fact that those spam posts make your blog look like garbage.
It's the time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and the detraction to their sites that affects bloggers more than the PR issue. The nofollow tag won't prevent that problem.
True, but like I said earlier, it will deter people from posting comments for the sole purpose of boosting link popularity.
I believe that the tag wont deter genuine comments made for the purpose of voicing opinion – which is what you ultimately want on your blog.
# posted by Priya Shah @ 10:27 PM
