Ever since Google introduced the “nofollow” tag for following links back in Feb. 2005, comment contributers and spammers alike have been crying. While the intentions of this tag are good, in practice it doesn’t work so well.
This isn’t necessarily Google’s fault, but by default, Wordpress automatically adds “nofollow” tags to all comment and author links when anybody leaves a comment. This was done to reduce the benefits to comment spammers, but this also stops rewarding legitimate contributers. Plugins such as Akismet and Bad Behavior have all but completely stopped comment spamming for bloggers, so there isn’t as much risk if you leave off the nofollow tag.
I’ve decided to install the Dofollow Wordpress Plugin on this blog (and AutomoBlog.net,) because I believe that if someone takes the time out of their day to comment on one of my posts, then they deserve to be rewarded for it by a link back to their site. Obviously if this is going to be abused I’ll have to remove it, but i don’t see any problems in the near future.
Any thoughts?
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Bravo! I agree totally with your position that a legitimate contributer should be rewarded for value-added content. For some hobbiests who do not have the means to pay for market position with Google and the other SE beasts, thoughtful commenting in discussion forums may be one of the only ways to drive traffic to their small site. As you said, it is a small reward for someone who takes time out of their busy day to comment on a post. Most forums can counteract spammer attacks using a simple captcha script. Google provide a thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction that is a blow to legitimate authors and posters.
Googles heart was in the right place when implementing this, but altogether it’s a bad idea, especially when automatically applied to links. Wikipedia was a total bitch for adding the nofollow tag to all of their links. The articles are moderated, so spam is already taken out. There was no need for them to do that.