Is the DoFollow Movement Getting Exploited?

Of course it is in every way. I don’t think people would comment half as much if it wasn’t to get a link back. It helps it definitely does, and in all essence if they are providing a genuine comment then albeit for me to stop them. I say rock on with ya bad self

Hi Wendy

There was always the danger, and when things first started off, back in November, I spent a huge amount of time warning people that they should have a clear comments policy, I used to have a huge almost contract thing before my comment form as well.

I now use the “Don’t Be An Idiot” logo instead.

If people see they can get away with spammy manual comment, they will leave spammy manual comments.

I have deleted lots of comments, or just remove the link, or modify it in some way.

It will get worse – tools like trackback spider and even some tools released before that look specifically for blogs that don’t have nofollow.

I also strongly promote the use of spam karma, maybe also using Akismet as an additional plugin.

At the end of the day, it is partially the “comment culture” you build up on a specific blog.

My initial plans before I started the community on Bumpzee was to use Wordpress as a hub site, with images containing a URL for each site, auto-generated, and no active link, so it would be harder work for spammers, and there would be nothing to scrape.

In the end I decided that spam tools would find you anyway, and that we just have to rely on anti-spam tools to defend against the automated ones, and manual moderation to defend against manual spammers.

Even before the lists, you could just search Google for the word Dofollow and get thousands of blogs.

Anchor text I tolerate for companies. I also tolerate specific nicknames.

I am less tolerant of names entered which are purely for SEO.

If I leave a deep link on blogs where I am a regular, or where I have already commented once in the thread, and the link is highly specific to the conversation, I might us something like

“Andy Beard on Deep Linking” to signify that the link is different to previous ones.

I haven’t left any comments I can remember where all I have dont is patted someone on the back for joining the movement.

In fact I have hardly promoted the Dofollow Community on Bumpzee either – I wanted it to grow a solid core of people who really wanted to be involved, and that is slowly happening.

The community on Bumpzee gives a lot of link love, and you don’t have to use the widgets, though the voting one helps traffic a lot, and sidebar one I would look on as useful.

The people who give you pagerank are more likely as not your regular readers, and I have seen some wonderful conversions where people who were initially using the links just for SEO have ended up being regular readers and really starting to share links.

In my opinion Top Commenters giving sitewide links is in many ways worse than gaming normal comment links, and totally changes the culture on a blog.

A little PS

You currently have more than 20 links on each single page that point to submission forms at social bookmarking sites, Technorati etc.

It would be good to stick nofollow on those links – grab my hacked version of the Sociable plugin “Antisocial”

From a user perspective, I’ve had a different problem. The SEM Zone was getting a lot of links from commenting – especially from one blog where the top commenters were rewarded with a dofollow link – but that link was on the sidebar and being indexed on every page. And the anchor text was my name.

So even though I was trying to participate in the conversation – the links were for my name and not the subject relevant to the blog.

I started using “Nathania Johnson – The SEM Zone” and then the same thing for Classic Movie Lounge (and now Guest-Blogger) – but only for ONE comment. And I only comment if I have something to say. After that, I try to just comment without linking. It’s not a great idea to have a bunch of links from one source.

I still leave links on comments from nofollow blogs – simply b/c you might still get traffic and I don’t have to worry about too many links from one source.

From the blogger’s perspective, all comments must be approved, so I just don’t approve spam, plain and simple. But if someone is offering value in a comment, even if I never see them again – no problem for me.

How about John Chows new plugin, but only giving the benefit to regular commentors (free)

Its not hard for you I imagine to see who these people are

I just put DoFollow on my blog a little while ago, but I already had anti-spam comment guards in place.

I moderate all comments and have Akismet besides. If I don’t like it, it doesn’t make it to the blog. Period. All you need to do is the same thing, and you should be good.

Wendy,

The dofollow list, while an excellent idea, certainly has had potential for abuse from day one. While it’s nice for those of us with smaller blogs to get link love from you, it may be time go nofollow or strip URLs from suspected spam comments. Looking through my stats, even the nofollow links that don’t count for anything other than being a link drive plenty of traffic to my site when they’re on a well respected blog such as yours.

I would say it wouldn’t really be punishing the rest of the group for bad apples, as most blogs are nofollow anyway, and people who actually have something to say are still commenting there.

I had the same problem, although of course on a much smaller scale. Since I don’t have the time to police the URLs of my commenters beyond the obvious*, I put nofollow back in and use the topcommentators plugin instead. It works out OK, and is much less time-consuming for me to monitor.

*The MLM folks seem to be the biggest abusers in my niche.

Google is pushing towards wanting you as a web site owner to identify paid links either by showing ad’s via javascript or using nofollow.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

It may not be feasible, but maybe you need some way to get to DoFollow mode. So someone needs to create an account, the account must be a month old and you must have 10 posts, then your link will show without the nofollow.

Unfortunately in this day and age, you can’t expect to give away free links and not have people take advantage of the system. That’s how I found this blog .. That being said, most of your comments seem to be very high quality. You should just pre-moderate comments and have a minimum threshold before any link credit is given.

Yes it’s a lot of extra work, but you also get the benefit of added exposure to your site.

As for Google, who knows what they will do or think.

Of course some momos have to take advantage of the movement. It hurts the entire community. Running a small blog I would be really sad to lose the link love from some of my favourite sites, but I would hate it even more if it ruins them.
For the second time today I have to agree with Andy Beard (this is becoming a habit, but he has some valid points). The plugin sounds like a good solution.

Hi Wendy,

I feel for you. I think that the biggest threat of this stuff is the loss of trust – my only suggestion would be to, as has been said already above, go through all comments and be a little ruthless. Like yourself, I’ve noticed a lot of seemingly innocuous “Hey dude, nice site” comments get followed up by dozens of link-heavy spam comments.

Wouldn’t it be good to push a button and make the spammers all go away?

Cheers, Andrew

Gosh – you all are amazingly smart and savvy, and you’ve given me lots of food for thought.

Honestly, this wasn’t a problem when I was getting 5-10 comments a day. But now I get 40-60 comments a day, and I can’t even respond to them all, let alone have the time to waste hunting around to see if a seemingly legitimate comment is indeed spam.

It’s a great problem to have, I know, but I have to draw the line at some point to keep guard over my time (AND my sanity!!).

Andy or Anyone – do you have any posts written on why it would be bad to have site-wide links for people? I’ve heard that it’s not ideal, but not BAD. It would be cool to create some kind of blogroll for commenters in lieu of DoFollow… but I don’t want to create more problems than I already have!

Also, I have noticed on the Weblogs, Inc. blogs, you have to confirm your email address by clicking on a confirmation link in order for a comment to appear.

Is there a WP plugin with the same functionality?

Wendy,

Your problem is on a whole different scale than mine. I’ve been using doFollow for quite a while, but I didn’t advertise it so generally people who really have something they want to say are commenting, and getting the boost from have nofollow removed from their comments. I also set it so there is a delay of several days before nofollow is removed to allow myself time to look over approved comments for any apparent abuse. Like Andy, I use SK2 to catch spam. If anything, it’s more prone to false positives than false negatives, and I’ve never had a problem with the Aksimet cage.

As far as checking comments for spam, it takes some time, but it’s our reputation on the line, so it isn’t wasted time. If we choose to remove nofollow, that’s one of the consequences.

I’ve avoided the top commenters plugins just because of this issue. I want people to comment because they have something to say, not to see their name in lights. I appreciate the links as much as the next person, but it is one class of plugin I wouldn’t miss.

I have seen a drastic increase in spam and spammy comments as well since I joined the Do Follow movement. At the moment, it is worth it for me because I am not that popular yet, so anything that encourages reader participation is good.

However, once I get to your level, I may consider going back to no follow. If the suggestions given by other commentors don´t work, you may have to drop off the D-list. Truth be told, I think you have interesting enough posts and loyal readers that you will still get plenty of comments.

I’ve also noticed a rise in comment spam since I first joined the blog roll. Since I update as frequently as I do, my name is usually at the top of the list and because of this I’m averaging around 20+ spam comments a day from random visitors. While I fully appreciate the people who are actually reading my site and commenting without spam being linked in…I, like you, run a business through my site and having the excess links to fish through can really be a hassle.

I hope things begin to clear up for you, and anyone having this issue. There’s always a few bad apples to spoil the bunch. It’s a shame.

Wendy – How about using the Link Love plugin and setting the bar fairly high? Maybe 5 or even 10 comments.

So NoFollow is only removed after someone leaves 5 or 10 comments. To me that’s a simple, elegant solution.

Any spammer/SEO blackhat type trying to mess around is going to have to be very aggressive and smart to put that many comments on your blog without you noticing it’s nonsense.

I use the LinkLove plugin and have it set to 2 or 3…maybe over time I’ll raise that bar.

I liked Ben’s idea. Wendy, may I suggest you this

http://www.johnchow.com/get-nofollow-removed-on-your-comments/

Either ways, at some point in time we do have to manage this manually.

@ Andrea – if the comment is from another blogger and I can tell there is a person behind it, I allow the comment. There isn’t anything wrong with linking to a blog that promotes anything – there is a problem with linking to splogs, though.

Also, building community is rather separate from the DoFollow movement, imho. You can do one without the other.

@ Wildwood – I mentioned in the post that I don’t mind friends putting keywords into the name field, and that legitimate commenters rock – which is why your comment, and other comments by you in the past, appear on the site.

Hi Wendy,

What an excellent conversation…I now have a lot to think about because I use dofollow….I have noticed that since I asked to be listed on a D-list that I have gotten several visitors and they almost always leave comments. I guess this is more traffic and potential new subscribers, but I have also noticed spam.

I don’t have the same problem as you because I don’t get nearly as many comments per day, but I never knew that you could get penalized from Google for certain outbound links from your site. I also didn’t know that the links could change on old comments and redirect to adult sites!

When you wrote that you charge $70 per month for advertisers to get a link on your site, I think that you would be completely justified on removing dofollow because of the abuse you are receiving. It is your site, and your livelihood, and it’s just too bad for everyone that your generosity is being abused, but you have every right to do what you need to do.

Makes me rethink the DoFollow option…

In answer to your question, generally for me, sitewide links are reserved for internal linking.

I experiment with lots of things to control my internal vs external linking.

I stick nofollow on lots of external links in various places, and on some of my blogs I also use nofollow a little to help control the floaw of juice around a site.

1. I think I have visited the blog of every person who leaves me a comment at least once, especially if they were even remotely spammy
2. Google isn’t going to give you a penalty if they discover a few links on your domain that sometime in the future point to something less desirable.
All it takes is for someone to decide not to renew a domain, and anyone could own it.
That could be anyone you have linked to in your content just as easily.

There are plenty of PR7 sites that use some kind of dofollow for links.

I think out of all the suggestions, Ben, your LinkLove plugin is probably the best.

Akismet and the rest of the spam catchers won’t catch the kinds of crafty spam I’m talking about in this post.

Here’s a great example – he even used my name in the comment. I’ve edited his URL to make it non-working, but if you change the -com to .com you’ll see the kind of site that is abusing the system.

Ponn you might not have had Spam Karma set up correctly, plus it was updated (though the old version worked well)

Akismet is infamous for false positives – I have experienced it lots of times
Bad Behaviour – I have had problems accessing some sites which may have been using it – I have heard there have been some improvements in that regard.

For me false positives are just not acceptable because those are genuinely interested visitors or commenters.

You won’t see a problem with Bad Behaviour because the person will never see your site to even get an email address.
With Akismet, when I get caught by it, I do not send people emails – it just happens far too often.

@ Andrea – I stated in the post above that I have no problem with regular readers and commenters leaving keywords in the name field. It’s the people who do this and obviously are doing it for the sake of the link, and are saying the bare minimum to try and slip under the radar that I have a problem with.

And I also stated above in my first response to you – if I can see there is a real author behind a blog, I leave the anchor text as is.

You can see just on the comments on this post that I let Andy Beard, Wildwood NJ, and Stephen Welton (Success Online) do it – these people comment regularly and I appreciate their participation, so I could care less if they use keywords or not.

And personally, when you are banned by Google, there’s really not much hope of getting reinstated. And with $20K life savings invested, I’ll protect my molehill.

That example is a little bit thin on the content, but actually seems reasonably legit, and just not very good at link building for a new site.

The site might not rank very well long term, but is unlikely to get banned from Google.

There even seems to be real contact details on the site.

Alright, I’m back already!

While I understand that site isn’t great, what was wrong with the comment itself? That seems like a ligit comment to me. It shows he read your article at least.

Btw, I prefer ‘Organic Girl’, hope you approve

@ Adam Kayce : Monk At Work

Were you referring to my post

Maybe… I’d go with Ben’s idea when time comes …

Google don’t follow nofollow links and no attribution.
Yahoo use it for discovery but don’t attribute anything to the link.
MSN/Live don’t follow nofollow links and no attribution.
Ask don’t take into account nofollow

All of those are based on official responses to a question raise by SEJ, other than MSN – MSN is based on some testing I have done, and testing read elsewhere.

Most search engines discount the value of comments already if they can detect them, and I think most can fairly easily for quite a while.

They also discount the value of sitewide links in your footer and sidebar.

How much they discount things is down to their algorithms, which change on a daily basis.

As with any trend there is a section who take advantage and don’t reciprocate and don’t get with the whole community thing. Scum sucking leeches I think the term is.

As a seo I hear you. I don’t think I’m a scum sucking seo but sometimes a lot of people think that seos are actually all SSLs. It’s not seo’s that are responsible for spam, it’s spammers.

Personally, I’d never leave a comment on a blog if I am not willing to participate in the conversation. I’d certainly never spam a blog after a comment was allowed.

Only tight moderation keeps your site safe, and I’d recommend if your site suddenly tanks in Google, I’d have a close look at who you are actually linking to. Remove any dubious links, and you’ll be safe.

Shaun

I have been surfing around for hours tonight reading up on dofollow abuse, especially with the launch of at least one SEO company that is accepting payment to place comments in blogs for advertisers.

Nonetheless, I believe in giving back to my readers, so as time consuming as it is, I hand moderate ALL my comments and I am liberal in stripping out URLs.

More and more dofollow blogs are going nofollow.

Blogspot has set it up so you can’t get links back from their blogs’ comments, either.

Honestly, I have no problem with this, because on several of my blogs I’ve been dealing with this same issue – people leaving comments that are obviously intended to game the system.

I suppose all bloggers inevitably will have this problem; I always feel a twinge of regret when I have to delete a questionable comment, only to find out later that that person was a long time reader and was deeply offended.