By StrangeWork.com: I decided to remove the nofollow code from my blog comments. Nofollow is an attribute that can be added to links to discourage comment spam. I use Akismet to block spam comments, which works about 98% of the time, so why penalize good comments from reaping the SEO benefits of outbound links on my blog?
I used the dofollow WordPress plugin. You can download the plugin here:
http://www.semiologic.com/software/wp-fixes/dofollow/
To install upload the dofollow plugin folder into your plugins directory and activate the plugin through your WordPress Plugins admin panel. Easy as that! Now readers of my blog who post comments will receive a good inbound link to their site. I wonder if this counts for good karma points?
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About Brad
Interesting perspective. You’re correct, Akismet seems to block spam comments so why not give link love to your active readers?
Unfortunately, the nofollow is being used more and more to hoard PageRank, rather then stop spam or not credit a site you link to you your blog that has questionable quality.
Good point. Everyone is so worried about pagerank these days. I say share the wealth! I’m more than happy to spread my pagerank to other sites that are contributing to mine.
Its ironic that many bloggers talk about this but then they actually use no follow I have seen many blogs leeching off the dofollow movement claiming to be dofollow sites but actually use nofollow, they are worse than the comment spammers in my eyes.
Agreed, unless it’s purely by accident. I would imagine some blog owners who update their plugins or wordpress probably forget to re-apply the changes and therefore accidently add the nofollow tag back in.
…which solves the question for me (are all these links on comments counting towards pagerank?)
-mp
Nice plugin, i install it now on my blog :)
I used a similar plugin from seopedia.org. I actually think WP should look into integrating one of these plugins so you can just easily turn it on or off in the options.
The dofollow WordPress plugin at semiologic works great. Thanks for sharing your article. I think it does count for good karma points!
Does any of these plugins actually include the facility to individually control each comment’s follow/nofollow setting ?
I know this is a way old post but I just wanted to say thanks for the link, the plugin seems useful however it should be updated to http://www.semiologic.com/software/wp-tweaks/dofollow/ as that is the new location of the download page for it.
Agree. A bit late in posting here but I think WP ought to have this option as standard. Not sure why they nofollow’d it in the first place with Akismet doing a sterling job.
We are going to remove the nofollow setting – as we approve comments anyway why not provide people with the benefit of search engine friendly link?
I totally agree. There should be an option within WordPress for everyone to decide which way they want to go. Akismet does a great job of filtering out the spam anyway so why should good commenters suffer when they have put the effort into writing feedback.
Its nice to read that many people are using various methods to remove nofollow from their comments. I will use this method to remove nofollow and i will implement dofollow system on my blogs.