Georgie Porgie, Puddin' and Pie, Didn't like links and made them cry,
When the links came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away
"Dofollow" Guidelines for Webmasters and Bloggers
Nofollow was introduced by Google in 2005. Basically, it is a microformat that adds the following to the html of a link: rel=â€nofollowâ€.
This tells the search engine – Yahoo and MSN / Live as well as Google – that the link is not to be counted.
It puts up a sign that says, Don't follow this link!
Why? According to Google it was to stop “people who try to raise their own websites' search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like "Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site."
To read the full post from January 2005 click on here.
What's the big deal with links? In Search Engine Optimization incoming links to a website count for a lot. If you want to reach the first page in a Google search and have the extra visitors that come with this, then good quality, incoming links are essential.
Spammers try to find any means possible to add links to somebody else's content.
Has nofollow stopped spam? Has it hell. Take a look at the Akismet figures. These show that levels of internet crap dramatically increased after Google instituted its nofollow directive.
Right from the beginning some bloggers and website owners were unhappy about it all.
They knew the importance of incoming links and didn't want to implement the nofollow microformat in order that their regular contributors could be rewarded.
So they intentionally didn't use nofollow, the counter term being labelled “dofollow†although there is no such html code which reads as such.
It may be that you would like to use “dofollow†for your site. If so read on for some advice.
First, be wary. Unfortunately, a lot of the spamming pricks will interpret your “dofollow†stance as if you have C-U-N-T written across your forehead.
It may be that your "dofollow" blog receives unwanted attention from the spamming hoards, but there are ways of countering this.
DoFollow 001 is aware of this which is why although this site is user-generated we will remove a listing if the website owner requests it.
Firstly, on your blogging platform or content management system use an effective anti-spam block such as Akismet of Mollom.
Pretty much every CMS has its own third-party plugin that utilises these automatic spam removal tools.
They are very effective and come highly recommended.
Another option is using Bad Behaviour as this will stop spam bots before they have even had a chance to leave a comment.
Again, every CMS has its own third-party Bad Behaviour plugin.
If you have the Wordpress platform, then nofollow is written into the core files. To remove this use you can use the dofollow plugin.
Another alternative is DoFollow 4.0 which will give you more flexibility in your settings including automatically flipping comment links to nofollow after a set amount of time.
Or how about Link Love? This will allow dofollow after a user has posted 10 links or more.
As for those using Blogger, check out Halo Scan. The implementation of which will allow “dofollow†links.
As a rule you should hold back comments unpublished until you have had a chance to check them first, and don't allow links to adult sites.
It's good as well to make your comment policy clear to users who visit your site. If you only allow “dofollow†after 10 comments, then declare that; if you don't allow anchor text, then inform your visitors.
If you have never used "dofollow" before consider giving it a whirl for a month to see how it pans out.
It is worth reading Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins - Banish Nofollow From Comments and Trackbacks at Andy Beard's blog.
Drop us a line or add a comment if there is anything that has been missed out above.
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