An excellent discussion of this new tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch: Blog.searchenginewatch.com
Google announced the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog: Google.com - Google Blog
AndMicrosoft added their support to the new tag in this post:Blogs.msdn.com
Atfirst blush, anything that can help cut down the comment spam that mostbloggers are daily subjected to would seem to be a good thing. It canbe pretty upsetting to access your blog in the morning and find 50 junkcomments with links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your bloghas any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage pollutingyour site every day. Fighting the spread of comment spam has become anecessity.
But after first cheering the proactiveness of thesearch engines, many bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer lookand they don't like what they see. You can read a sampling of theirthoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum: Forums.searchenginewatch.com
BrianTurner's incisive article "New Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but FailsBlogs" discusses some of the potential abuses of the new nofollow tag: Platinax.co.uk
AndJim Pryke's article "Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search RankingsPlummet" makes it very clear that not only will this NOT stop commentspam. But it will actually hurt bloggers as a community: Netinstitute.com
Foran hilarious take on the new tag and how it will get abused, be sure totake a look at Link Condom: Linkcondom.com
I haveto agree with these bloggers that the nofollow tag won't even put adent in the problem of comment spam. You have to realize that thecomment spammers who cause the most problems are the ones who useautomated bots to spread their spam onto every blog they find. The factthat they find a blog using the nofollow tag won't stop the bot fromposting. If you have a popular blog, you'll still wake up every morningto find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You'll still have tospend the time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.
Yousee, the problem to bloggers isn't that those comment links pass PR.It's the fact that those spam posts make your blog look like garbage.Whether the links pass PR or not isn't the big issue for bloggers. It'sthe time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and the detraction totheir sites. The nofollow tag won't do a thing about that problem.You'll still have the problems, even if you use the tag.
Thinkabout this: how effective have email filters been in stopping emailspam? As most of us know, they've hardly done any good at all. Emailspam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers really don't care ifsome of their emails are blocked. They just send more of it tocompensate. The same will be true of the automated comment spam bots.
Thefact of the matter is, there are already much better tools in mostblogging software to fight comment spam AND save the time and effort ofthe blogger at the same time. There are already a number of plugins forWordPress, Moveable Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly bemore in the future. These tools are already more effective at fightingcomment spam than this nofollow tag will ever be.
What isunfortunate is that the people the nofollow tag will really hurt isbloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have read and commented ineach other's blogs. And these comments have added value. When I writean article for my blog, I love it when other bloggers take the time toadd their insights on the topic I'm discussing. These comments addcontent to my site and continue the discussion. This is one of thereasons blogs are so easy to grow into topic-specific information-richsites that are popular with readers. Unlike static sites, they offertwo-way communication between reader and blogger. They becomecommunities.
When someone adds this kind of value to my blog,I am more than happy to give them a link to their blog that passes PR.That will help them build the readership of their own blog, grow thecommunity even larger, and add to the richness of the discussion. Theseare exactly the kinds of links that any webmaster should want on theirsite!
Adding a nofollow tag to comments can only quash thisdiscussion. It can only discourage commenters with the most tocontribute from taking the time to add to the discussion. After all, ifthe time I spend on another blog doesn't contribute to the growth ofthe blogging community as a whole or aid in the visibility of my ownblog, am I going to spend as much time and effort doing it?
Anything that decreases the open flow of discussion currently enjoyed in the blogging community is a bad deal for bloggers.
Thequestion that should be asked is this: why is comment spam soprofitable? After all, if it weren't profitable, so many peoplewouldn't be going to such ridiculous lengths to do it.
Theanswer to this is obviously Google's link-heavy PageRank algorithm thatforces webmasters to get every link they can to get their site'sindexed and ranked. Most webmasters know that in order to get ranked inGoogle, they had better have a ton of links to their site.
That'sthe problem with PageRank as an algorithm. It encourages artificiallinking between sites that no longer has any relevance whatsoever tothe goal of providing good resources to visitors. Do we really believethat most reciprocal link directories provide a resource to ourvisitors? Not likely! If websites are real estate, reciprocal linkdirectories are the slums, the seedy bars and tattoo parlors on theedges of polite society.
Whole businesses have sprung up as areaction to PageRank. I'm talking about the link auction and linkselling sites. Under the PageRank system, sites aren't being ranked bywho provides the best content, but by who has the deepest pockets tobuy the most links. Or, in the case of comment spammers, whoever wantsto spread their bots all over the internet spamming blogs. This systemhas over time totally skewed the natural linking between sites thatonce dominated the internet - the very thing that Google's PageRanksystem is supposed to reward.
Ironically, blogs are one of thefew places left on the web where linking is actually about providinggood content to visitors and rewarding value provided on other sites.Bloggers as a group are the most likely to link to sites because of thecontent value to their visitors. Their links are very likely to be verytopic specific. You don't find that on other sites. These are the kindsof links that I would assume Google would want to encourage throughtheir PageRank system, not those junky reciprocal link directories orpurchased links.
It would seem to me that the only effective wayto cut down on comment spam and all the artificial linking techniquesGoogle purportedly wants to thwart is not by making life harder forbloggers - the very people who link in the most relevant fashion. Butat taking a second look at their own PageRank system and whether it isreally serving the usefulness of their own search engine and the wholeweb in 2005.
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