DoFollow 001Letting the link love flow

It's not often that I visit Andy Beard’s blog, but browsing through his latest entries yesterday I flipped on my NoDoFollow Firefox plugin and was surprised to see outgoing comment links highlighted in red.

I then checked the comments of several other articles and they were all using the nofollow microformat.

I don't usually make an issue about bloggers switching over from “dofollow” to nofollow, but Andy Beard was once the King of DoFollow – the Pied Piper that lead a host of other bloggers down his well-publicized path and received a great deal of attention for doing so. Andy using nofollow is kind of like the Pope using condoms.

Surprised, I presumed that he had forgotten to switch on a Wordpress plugin after upgrading.

But no, it's true – Beardy has flipped to the nofollow side about one month ago. He states:

Matt Cutts in the same post highlighted again who you link to matters, and I think Google is going to place more and more emphasis on this. It is a lot of work for the average blogger to keep control of user generated content, and even the best comments sometimes come with spammy links. I have always maintained that "dofollow" isn't for everyone because of the time commitment.

http://andybeard.eu/1904/disqus-why-95-of-bloggers-should-switch.html

Back in 2007 Andy was probably the leading internet “dofollow” evangelist, and even today his post Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins still remains a good starting point for bloggers seeking to remove nofollow.

He even set up a site on Bumpzee, No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Community; but which now seems to be dead, and as recently as June 3 he was claiming that his blog is dofollow

Let’s remind ourselves about his past declarations on the subject:

What Do You Gain? (by removing nofollow)

I think the biggest gain is in community

* I don't have to write all the content myself, my readers contribute and gain a small reward
* What happens when you engage a community of linkerati? They link to you more often
* If you gain more links, you are just sharing part of a bigger pie
* The tools are keyword based - people with websites covering a specific topic visit your site - maybe initially to just drop links, but it is amazing how many can be converted to regular visitors who leave constructive comments, and link to you from their own sites

http://andybeard.eu/1373/why-you-should-nofollow-your-blog-comments.html

I regard this as a niche based on the philosophical idea that commenters give value to a blog, provide great content and are part of your community. As such it is great to reward them for commenting on your blog in a simple way, showing them respect by not sticking NoFollow on their links, and likewise providing a link back when they link to a post and use trackback / pingback..

http://andybeard.eu/651/exclusive-no-nofollow-i-follow-dofollow-bumpzee-...

I am aware that taking part (in the Bumpzee community) will subject your blog to potentially increased spam, but the backlinks will be worth it.

http://andybeard.eu/119/no-nofollow-no-nofollowcom.html

Actually, rereading his past articles on the subject in detail it is apparent that Andy is too intelligent to give any grand and outlandish statements on the merits of removing nofollow. He has always been open about the potential pitfalls for “dofollow” webmasters and makes the repeated claim that it “isn’t for everyone”.

*** STOP PRESS! ***

I've just received this email from him:

It's nothing permanent, was testing Disqus for a while, and was going to hack it to dofollow, but will be removing it soon.

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