Hammered by Spammers - Time for DoFollow to Go
12 March 2008 – 4:06 pmI’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. Currently my comment links are set to Dofollow. I’ve always thought that it is the least I can do to thank people who take the time to comment on my posts and contribute.
But I’m getting slammed by spammers. Until a few days ago, this blog was PR6. A PR6 Dofollow blog? Spammer heaven!
I have to ask myself, why am I sweating this dofollow comment thing? Is it really worth it the hassle?
I’ve been keeping it at bay pretty well. For a while, I tried putting comments into moderation. I don’t like that because it disrupts conversations if I’m not around to approve them. So I turn off moderation and I try to be super diligent to clean up the spam. But then there are the faux-commenters who pretend they’re writing a useful comment when they’re just coming by to use me. And then I have to psychoanalyze the commenters to divine their intentions.
Then today, @PsPrint_Trish asked today on Twitter: “Can some people weigh in for me for a blog post - are you for or against DoFollow links in blogs?”
A few us weighed in that it’s just not worth the hassle trying to be good about rewarding commenters with dofollow links. She’s going to include the quotes in her blog, so I won’t steal them here. I’ll link over when she posts it. (Added: Here’s Trish’s post)
I love getting comments and I love that my posts often generate double-digit comment counts.
But I can’t take the spammers. So I’m turning it off. Spammers ruin everything.
Time to find out who my friends are. I’ll find another way to reward them.
What do you think? Go for it? Talk me out of it?
If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed
23 Responses to “Hammered by Spammers - Time for DoFollow to Go”
Personally, I would just nofollow the comments - then you won’t have to worry about the spammers at all.
People that have something to say will continue to comment because they value your writing and opinions - not just for the link value.
By Ben Winchell on Mar 12, 2008
Ha! Glad I could spark some food for thought! Since I’m still a relative “little guy” in concerns to blogging I’m going to experiment with the dofollow methods, but we’ll see where it goes.
By Trisha Fawver on Mar 12, 2008
Wow, I did not even remember you removed the nofollow…all that PR juice’s getting redistributed to other sites, i mean you get lots of comments like on the non aff. related posts.
Now the PR drop makes sense! I suggest the nofollow as well.
By Damien on Mar 12, 2008
Oh, just an idea with regards to rewarding the people participating the most…maybe you could add a top commenter plugin.
By Damien on Mar 12, 2008
Thanks Ben, I’d like to think that’s the case.
Trisha, I’ll trade you. You turn on do follow, I’ll turn it off. Equilibrium in the world. Ready….. go.
Damien, yes, lots of link juice getting distributed. But on the non-aff marketing posts with all the comments, like the TV stuff, virtually none of the 1000+ commenters even provide a URL. Imagine that. How selfless.
Top Commenters plugin is in the works, yes. That’ll be part of the redesign.
By Scott on Mar 12, 2008
Drop it!
By Chris O'Byrne on Mar 12, 2008
Yes… have to maintain karmic balance! I’m not sure how long the dofollow will stay with me but that’s why it’s called an experiment
By Trisha Fawver on Mar 12, 2008
I ceremoniously hand the do-follow torch over to you Trisha
By Scott on Mar 12, 2008
Sad to see it go, but you gotta do what’s necessary for your blog. PR is overrated imo, but it’s always nice to have. Hopefully your comments/traffic stay around even though nofollow reigns…
By Seduction Tips on Mar 13, 2008
You are better than me I never seen our PR drop because I PR0.
By Prai on Mar 13, 2008
You are better than me I never seen our PR drop because I PR0. If every one known please tell me.
By Prai on Mar 13, 2008
You know, there are a couple of possible, and complicated solutions involving making a nice wordpress plugin (I dont code)
1. It looks at the site it is linking back to, and it has to have nearly equal pagerank. This approach isn’t great for more than one reason.
2. what about a voting mechanism for “best comments” like on digg. only the best comments from other registered users counts. maybe even combine with that other plugin that only allows long time contributors to get dofollow.
I still think google should give slightly higher rankings to sites that use dofollow.
By web design blog on Mar 13, 2008
I installed this on 4 do-follow blogs:
http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/spam-filter/
I’ve hardly been bothered by spam since then. If you really prefer to keep do-follow, it might be worth a try.
By Sapphire on Mar 13, 2008
I have been supporter of dofollow for some time. I benefited from commenting on your blog and other blogs a lot in the past…. But, I have wrestled with myself over the same issue.
I have not PR as of yet on my blog but 50+ spam monkeys wonder to my blog daily. I just can imagine what you guys have to go through if you enable the moderation.
I think I might be just follow you Scot in removing dofollow plugin from my blogs.
What about BumpZee? You probably need to hire a full time moderator to keep up with spam there.
By Vlad on Mar 13, 2008
It would be nice if bloggers had a comment ‘whitelist’ of people who contribute regularly. Only posts from people you manually put on a whitelist enjoy the backlink benefit.
By Jason Forthofer on Mar 13, 2008
Hey Scott:
I’m almost afraid to leave a comment as I don’t want you to think I’m spamming. However, I’m a fan of do follow. I follow on my blog simply because I view readers as customers and I’m all about my customers. Having said that, I believe your decision should come down to the value of do follow for you. If the cost is more than the value - then you should drop the do follow. If not - then keep it - it’s really that simple. Also, I would ask this from you - if I may? If you decide to shut down do follow - I would appreciate that you not be negative toward do follow or those of us that choose to have do follow on our blogs. What’s great for me might be a pain for you and vice versa….
By E Lawrence Welch on Mar 14, 2008
Hey E Lawrence. Judging from your commment, you are probably relatively new to my blog. I’ve been a very long-time supporter of do follow, and the reasons for that haven’t changed. I had been using it since probably 2004. Four years is a pretty good run.
If you want to use dofollow, great. I have nothing against it. Just the people who use and abuse others.
I think always been very lenient on commenters, generally assuming the best of people, even if they stuff keywords into their name.
And that’s just the thing. I don’t want to *have* to worry about your intentions or whether you’re a spammer with motives other than sharing your opinion. So I’m giving this a shot.
By Scott on Mar 14, 2008
Hey Scott:
Actually, i’ve been reading your blog for about 6 months now. I rarely comment on any blog unless it’s a topic I feel very srong about. You and Andy Beard are the reason I began do follow on my own blog.
I never meant to imply that you are “anti - do follow” or anything like that. I just didn’t want to see you become “anti do follow” because of your specific situation.
If I were in your shoes - I would do the same thing - but that’s what I meant about the value of do follow. It’s obviously become a liability to you and I can respect that.
By E Lawrence Welch on Mar 15, 2008
I won’t become anti-anything-you-want-to-do-with-your-own-blog
I’m also working on an alternative way to reward people to participate here than do-follow.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear more from you.
By Scott on Mar 15, 2008
There are more than a few plugins that will nofollow commentors links until they make a pre-determined number of comments. Very useful for this kind of situation.
By Omaha SEO on Mar 22, 2008
Pretty good article. I like it, keep it up.
By Digital SLR Joe on Apr 24, 2008
hmmm… I like a blog post that makes me think.
By David Wh1te on May 1, 2008