I don’t understand No Follow

Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

Today’s question:

I don’t understand the NoFollow plugin. I know it has to do with comments, but what exactly is it for and how does it affect users who comment?

First the plugin is called Do Follow.

WordPress right out of the box has no follow built in to the script. This tells the search engine robot’s not to follow any links in the comments of the blog.

You can still click the link and go to the site but Google won’t count the link when formulating your Page Rank (or at least not as much as a do follow link as no one knows exactly what Google does ).

This also does not count as a link off of your site so it does not bleed off your page rank. This came about because of blog spammers that post comments just to create a back link for their site. They don’t take part in the conversation they are takers not participants that add to the value of the blog.

The Do Follow plugin allows the owner of the blog to easily change that and reward those that comment on their blog. If you add to my value here I am more than happy to allow you a link to the site of your choice that the spiders can follow.

Now this only works if you heavily moderate your blog as with a decent PR ranking and a do follow philosophy the spammers will come a knocking. I encourage participation so for me it is worth it to give all my readers an extra incentive to take part in the conversation. Each person has to make their own decision on that as there is no right or wrong answer.

Hope that clears things up for you.

As always your question and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold