The Almighty NoFollow Tag
May 28th, 2008
As bloggers we all become relatively aware of the nofollow tag. We might not know what it means or why we use it but we know about it. For most of us the nofollow attribute is automatically added to the links people post in our comments. This is to help us stop comment spamming. (I know you know what that is. What blogger hasn’t opened their admin to see a ton of nonsense and links to gambling, insurance or porn sites.)
Well, the rel=”nofollow” added to the html of a standard link tells a search engine not to follow that link. By not following the link they will not count that link towards that sites link popularity. Has this knowledge stopped the spammers? No. Does it hurt you or your blog? No. It does, however, hurt the people you would like to be linking to. Therefore I do not recommend using the nofollow tag in your posts if you wish to give that person some internet props and help out their link popularity and ultimately their page ranks.
It seems all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) have agreed to honor this new tag. Although it appears that is not the case and it is largely ignored.
My advice to you is to make sure all your hard work in getting reciprocal links is not destroyed by those two little words. Be sure you request a link back to you that is does not contain that particular little snippet of coding. Why anyone seeking links or articles to drive traffic or exposure would choose to use that tag is beyond me.
Check out the Search Engine Journal’s article 13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck for a better explanation why you don’t want or need this tag clogging up your html code. But as a blogger the best defense against comment spamming is to moderate your comments carefully to keep that junk from even hitting your site. Your readers will appreciate being able to actually read the comments instead of all the ping backs and scrolling nonsense text.
Entry Filed under: Blogging, Computers, Rants, Website Stuff, Writing
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