
A few years back, comment spam became a bigger and bigger problem for blogs - and Google needed to figure out a solution. Comment spam allowed spammers to unfairly game Google and get ranked for terms that they shouldn’t have ranked. Comment spam definitely started to become a problem. Enter rel=nofollow.
What is rel=nofollow?
Rel=nofollow tells search engines to STOP and do NOT follow the link. This means that the links will not affect the search ranking of the site being linked to. This should discourage spammers - as they usually spam to get higher Google rankings. To aid in Google’s effort, Wordpress put in a default setting - to make comment posts link back to the authors as “nofollow”.
However, this has a disadvantage - this means that comment authors will not get the link juice they deserve when they comment on a blog. Also, it seems that nofollow has not stopped the spam flood - anyone who runs a blog today knows that comment spam is definitely a problem worth looking out for.
Enter Akismet
Akismet, the spam detection plugin.
Ask any blogger - and Akismet will most likely be the most useful plugin that they have enabled. On Krazyness itself, Akismet has blocked 11,482 spam comments. Akismet has been very useful at eliminating comment spam - while Google’s rel=nofollow has not.
Do Follow
That’s why I’ve taken this time to enable the do follow plugin on Wordpress. This means that whenever any one of you comments on Krazyness - you will get free link juice from Krazyness to award yourself for your efforts.
I don’t think I’ll recieve much more spam (other than what Akismet already blocks) - and I’ll probably see more comments on this blog from now on. I would strongly encourage other blogs to follow suit - and disable nofollow.
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Akismet is easily the most important wordpress plugin. It catches all the spam comments on my blog and so far hasn’t blocked anything that isn’t spam.
I also use the dofollow plugin as well ![]()
I never realized that you used that plugin.
Yeah - Akismet is a great plugin.
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