Growing Tired Of Anchor Text In Comments – Switching Off Dofollow

Everton | Feb 07, 2008 | Comments


Apologies to my regular readers who haven’t been abusing my generousity, but I’ve been forced into turning off ‘dofollow‘ on comments. Too many users are trying to take advantage and it’s taking too much time each day to delete or edit their comments.

If users still want to receive a link back from this site, they can still achieve this by becoming a ‘top commentator’ and getting a link to their site in my footer.

WordPress defaults to ‘nofollow’ and I initially switched on dofollow to try and reward regular commentators. However, this seems to have attracted too many commentators like ’seocontest2008′, who use anchor text in their comments. I think John Chow has a lot to answer for by encouraging this practice as it has really got out of control, and has become a pain in the ass for other bloggers to manage.

I am certain that this move will not deter genuine comments and I hope that you can understand my situation.


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • huh, nothing to do with my comments. But still feeling with that your posts are now loosing something, that keeps me off from here nowadays...
  • Bummer...I'm not so sure the spammers will stop trying to get links though. But, I suppose you won't have to spend all that time deleting them either.
  • @Smackall

    You were complaining about the frequency of posts previosly smackall, which has now been fixed e.g. 5 posts in the last 24 hours. Is something else still bothering you?

    @Micah

    It won't deter some, but at least I don't have to worry about getting penalised by Google from the ones I miss now.
  • I think it's a good idea, not sure if auto-spam bots detect blogs with nofollow and avoid them or what, but as you say it won't affect the genuine commenters anyway.
  • I recently turned off my 'dofollow' plugin too due to a combination of spam comments and also I'm wondering if Google will start penalising blogs that have dofollow comment links as it can be used to influence search engine rankings.
  • @E - I can only imagine the volume you have to deal with in comments. Recently, I have noticed a rash of "in comment" linking which I have to take time to edit. However, I do not think I will remove DoFollow yet, as I still need to encourage real comments. What widget are you using to generate your footer top commenter box?

    @Zath - I wonder if Google starts penalizing for everything what they will end up being left to rank with *grins*
  • I've actually been wondering this for quite awhile, and this seems a good a place as any to ask.

    If I come here, become a loyal reader.. earn my spot as top commentator for the duration of the current top commentator period.. and then later, I get busy, or stop coming back, or was just here for the link in the first place..

    Will the loss of that link hurt me as much as the link helped me in the first place?

    I did when top commentators was first introduced go experiment by commenting on lots and lots of blogs with 4flush.com as my website, that site is a bit bigger and pretty solid as far as ranking goes, so not as temperamental as the one I'm working on right now..
  • @Bingo

    I think you have a fair point. I think even getting your name their for a week is beneficial as google spiders big sites constantly, so it could improve your own indexing/rankings
  • Matias
    @bingo
    Having links to your site appear one day and disappear suddenly may look a little spammy to google.
  • I see Top Commentators has been removed. Shame as it is a nice reward for regular commentors.
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