Hammered by Spammers – Time for DoFollow to Go

by Scott Jangro on 12 March 2008

I’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?

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  • Scott
    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.
  • 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.
  • Scott
    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.
  • 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....
  • 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.
  • 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.
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