Twitter deciding to nofollow links 2 years ago really annoyed me.
When they decided to close all loopholes in creating an active link within the bio area, it prevented me linking to my disclosure policy – that annoyed me as well, especially with all the terrible attempts of providing adequate disclosure within paid tweets that are currently being used/proposed.
There was a huge outcry from the SEO community.
There seems to be a new trend with internet marketers running some kind of mentorship or bonus program.
It runs something like this (though I haven't signed up to one to get exact details)
The backlinks are sometimes the link reserved for the comment author, or sometimes product mentions
If you don't know what you are doing with nofollow, noindex and robots.txt you can royally mess* things up (face to face I would use a stronger term). Even if you do know what you are doing, you can still mess things up.
I can understand why Matt Cutts might want to change what noindex does, it is not just Koreans making occasional mistake, for instance I just noticed the whole WebProNews video blog is currently noindex nofollow. I am sure that is a mistake, it is easy to make in Wordpress… just one click and save.
All in one
Lets face it, I have social profiles all over the web and I am or have been an active participant in tons of conversations on blogs and forums.
3 years ago Google introduced rel="nofollow", very similar to rel="me" , rel="friend" and other XFN and FOAF standards. Today Google are championing their new API with the slogan "URLs Are People Too"
3 years ago that was true, now URLs on many (most) places where people congregate on the web are no longer "people" because in a supposed attempt to combat comment spam, Google encouraged major sites to use rel="nofollow" making the
I would like to congratulate the Techcrunch team for finally coming to the realization that linking to sponsors within posts, without using nofollow on the links might be in violation of Google's Webmaster guidelines.
This was previously written about by Ted Murphy of Izea, and vehemently defended by Techcrunch, so it is surprising that they have made a significant change in their stance without also making a public statement about it.
I also wrote about this situation in a previous article on paid links and the PageRank update (round 5).
Here is their previous links to sponsors post from
As I had hoped, ( http://community.izea.com/blog/2007/12/an-invitation-t.html ) Ted Murphy had a chance to chat with Google's Matt Cutts at Pubcon
It seems Google want all links within content that "wouldn't exist without payment" to use nofollow, but seems to be focusing on services like PayPerPost, and not other forms of links which wouldn't exist without compensation.
Blogcatalog Members today are collectively blogging about abuse.
I thought of blogging about all kinds of abuse that affect real people day in, day out, but decided that ultimately that doesn't fit in with my audience, or really add any authority to the words I would be writing.
As it happens, today part of a 2 hour interview with me was published in the Guardian (Digg Story you know you want to). I honestly didn't expect any more words in print from the article, because it was so wide ranging, and such
Not all blogs that write a post about dofollow, link through to plugins, and stick up a Dofollow logo have actually removed nofollow from their comments.
Over the last few months I have rejected over 100 blogs to the No Nofollow / Dofollow community on Bumpzee, and all but about 20 were because they didn't have nofollow removed correctly from their comments.
Fortunately about 30 of those subsequently either contacted me to have this explained to them, or fixed the problem and then notified me that things were resolved.
Lots of people for some reason don't get back in touch with
News of Twitter adopting rel="nofollow" is disturbing.
Sure links from Twitter can be abused, because Twitter profiles are so heavily interlinked.
What they should have done is stuck nofollow on your "twitter blogroll" links thus making each Twitter account a little more independent and negating the benefit of building up mass friendships for more than traffic generation.
It isn't a minor thing, Twitter has just become another "Wikipedia", a black hole sucking in link juice and only allowing it to flow internally.
I would no longer class Twitter as a microblogging application, because in many ways the content you submit
Download squad often has some high quality articles, but sometimes I wonder whether the writers really understand what they are writing about, or are compiling their content whilst referring to multiple sources.
Read more on Steal Content From Download Squad to get links!…
Chuck is a notable web designer and song-writer and one of many supporters of the removal of nofollow from approved comments.
There are all kinds of blogs in the blogosphere, and some of the logos created and used by supporters of the “cause” are a little on the tame side.
Having spent so much time over the last 6 months evangelising the adoption of dofollow plugins and solutions to remove nofollow from comments, the last week has been filled with highs and lows.
So now people have calmed down a little from their running around like headless chickens leaving comments on every blog they could find that used Dofollow, and then linking through to unrelated content, lets start looking at how to link a little more strategically.
Ben instigated a community writing project on productivity, and Dawud thoughtfully decided to encourage me to get involved, after also giving some great tips on how to be productive and stay focused.
Well more to the point, he asked me some damn tough questions that made me think for more than 5 minutes before answering them. Actually I spent quite some time on the reply, and it wasn’t as straight forward as I was expecting.
Gothwalk just pinged me to say that he has now written a guide on how to remove Nofollow on Moveable Type.
Gothwalk had been scratching his head all weekend, because he wanted his blogs to be included in the new DoFollow community on Bumpzee, but everytime he thought he had it cracked, I would spot that something wasn’t quite right.
For two years people have been struggling to remove Nofollow from Typepad so they can share the link love with their regular visitors who add great value to the conversation on the host blog.
Many blog owners are unaware that the links people leave on their blogs are shrouded with a “link condom” which tells the major search engines to ignore any links left that provide a benefit to the blog community.
Read more on Mike Sansone Cracks The Secret Code to Removing Nofollow From Typepad…
For a long time I have been promising myself to build a community site for the Dofollow movement I strongly support, but it just wasn’t happening fast enough to support the growing community.
Read more on Exclusive: No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Bumpzee Community…
If you weren’t already aware, this week is reader appreciation week. Now the idea of reader appreciation is fairly good, give out some prizes, give a reader a link, etc etc.
I missed this a few days ago
At the request of WhiteHat SEO community on April the 1st this year all major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN Live declared their joint support for a newly developed XFN standard.
The new attribute rel=follow is designed to complement the notorious rel=nofollow. However unlike nofollow attribute rel=follow is designed to express not negative but positive relationship between a linking website and a website rel=follow link points to.
I’ll try to explain it in layman’s terms…
Read more on Google | Yahoo | MSN | Cooperatively Introduce rel=”follow” tag…
When Blogcatalog announced their entry into the social network of blogging I almost totally ignored it. Oops…
In June 2005 Brad Jasper sold Blogcatalog to Jacob Gower
Whilst the traditional saying is “Pretty in Pink” that saying is not universally true. Vlad clearly demonstrates how ugly a website can be when dressed in pink.
How many blogs link to Technorati on every post they publish? Many blogs also use followable links to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, and social news sites such as Digg on every single page of their site? Google in their recently disclosed patent are saying that it could be a negative indication of quality.
Read more on Destroy Your Blog Rankings Linking To Digg or Technorati?…
When I wrote my Ultimate Guide to DoFollow plugins, I hadn’t read a solution to removing Nofollow from comments for Blogger that actually passed the link credit from your own domain.
Read more on How To Remove Nofollow On New Blogger – Dofollow on Blogspot…
I benefit from being a top commenter on a number of blogs simply because I am consistently active on those sites, and I have gained the benefit without changing my commenting habits.
Some of my blogging friends are aware of the problems, but have opted to use such a plugin anyway – I fully respect that decision, but many make that decision “blindly” without being aware of the possible consequences.
Read more on Multiple Reasons Why I Loathe Top Commenters Plugins…
This plugin retroactively places the rel=”nofollow” tag on all links to Shoemoney.com – you don’t have to modify any links manually, and it is easy to switch off should you feel in the future that the site no longer contains offensive material.
Wordpress by default, just like other blogging platforms, has automatically been adding the "nofollow" microformat extension to all links from user generated content such as comments and trackbacks. To support the growing rejection of NoFollow for blog comments, I have compiled this list of plugins that help you remove nofollow from your blog forever.
I read a couple of days ago an interesting post by Bill Hartzer regarding the time it takes for link attribution to take effect on an almost dead website, that receives a high pagerank inbound link.
Read more on How Timing of Link Attribution Affects Syndication and Search Results…
I actually applied only recently for Tino Buntie to add my name to the 2000 Bloggers collage. I thought it was a cool idea, although the SEO benefit is probably minimal simply because although massive cross-linking is happening, it could be looked on as:-
Am I the only one who feels slightly disconnected from the conversation when blogs using Moveable Type, or a modified Wordpress installation don’t trackback.
If your blog doesn’t trackback, I am less inclined to link to you and join your conversation. I might just comment, but that doesn’t send my readers to see what you wrote either.
Read more on Trackbacks to Moveable Type and Hacked Wordpress Sites…
I started tapping out a comment on Chris’s Search Anyway blog, but decided it would be much better to send him some visitors. It is not like I can send him a massive wave of visitors, because not all my subscribers are heavily into the nitty gritty of the nofollow debate in various contexts, though it is something that fascinates me.
Read more on Ive Just Been Floored – Am I Out For The Count?…
Sociable has been due for an update for a long time. In popularity I am sure it is among the top 20 plugins in use, maybe even top 10 – it is certainly very visible on blogs, more so than the very discreet Share This plugin.
Read more on Sociable Beta | PlugIm | Bumpzee | Technorati WTF…
I mentioned I was willing to create such a plugin, I was even cobbling the code together.
Then I noticed a mention over on Matt’s blog (just search for Matt) in the comments that somone had written one.
I am going to start off with
Matt was commenting on the Wikipedia announcement, and made the following statement.
Hmm excerpt? – Matt please forgive me, but it is so short I am going to include it all.
Read more on Wordpress Founder – Admits Nofollow Didn’t Work…
Once upon a time, a scientist wrote a brilliant blog post solving the answer to life, the universe and everything. A few people linked to him, and anyone searching for the answer to the ultimate question could find it easily, by just a simple search in Google.
The scientist appeared right at the top of the results.
The news today seems to be that Wikipedia have added nofollow to external links.
I have seen a lot of sites mention that all the search engines respect nofollow. Actually they don’t. Anlaysis has shown that Yahoo certainly follow and index pages despite the nofollow tag.
Ezine Articles are in the process of implementing a new comments policy for their blog, and the good part is that they are also removing nofollow from the comments.
I love Ezine Articles, and the blog is one I read “religiously”. Bloggers can learn an awful lot from Article Marketing, and in fact I recommend that all bloggers also use article marketing especially when they have a new blog with low readership.
It is five years, almost to the day that Yahoo started charging $299 per year for a listing in their directory as this article on Pandia clearly illustrates.
The main benefit of being in the Yahoo directory isn’t traffic, it is pagerank / trustrank. Who actually uses the Yahoo directory for anything other than listing their own sites?
It is many years since I went to Yahoo to lookup an entry for anything other than a competitor in a niche.
When I did my round up of readers taking action of various kinds with seo, I missed out on one very active reader. I hadn’t been by his blog in a few days, and there has been quite a significant change.
One of the most rewarding things about blogging, at least for me, is when you see people taking action based on something you have suggested.
There are actually 2 distinct stages in taking action
Here are some more links discussing the use of NoFollow for SEO purposes.
Seo Blog has a solid overview of how each search engine treats nofollow.
I am not sure the final conclusion regarding Yahoo and treating nofollow for ranking purposes is correct. I know many people who have done well with blog comments with Yahoo search, even on blogs using nofollow. I haven’t got any recent data.
You should always try to make it easy for people to link to you, especially if you are running a blog which isn’t using nofollow for trackbacks as additional encouragement.
Thus you should provide copy and paste linking.
On my blogs, I prefer not to use nofollow for comments and trackback.
It is my belief that if someone adds to the conversation on my blogs, the least I can do is offer them a backlink for their trouble.
I prefer people to write a post about me than to add me to their blogroll. I know a blogroll link theoretically gives me more Google Juice, but if they give 200 people a blogroll link, suddenly the value of that link from every page is greatly deminished.
The “nofollow” tag prevents (in theory) search engines attributing weight to links for Page Rank. It also in theory prevents them following the link and indexing the content.
Recent proof suggests that this is not necessarily true with Yahoo and as I showed in my original post regarding Google Reader and Splogs, Yahoo can be used to find links to Google Reader Linkblogs.
Twitter Nofollow – My 7 Day Ultimatum
Unlike many people in the SEO, Tech or Marketing community, I don’t write posts just for linkbait & traffic, and when I make up my mind about whether I want to continue being involved in a community, that decision is final.
Read more on Twitter Nofollow – My 7 Day Ultimatum…