Comments on: To Follow or Not To Follow, That is the Question http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/ WordPress and Web Dev From the Ground Up Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:40:58 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Ways to Increase Visitor Activity on Your Blog « OMNINOGGIN http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-721 Ways to Increase Visitor Activity on Your Blog « OMNINOGGIN Sat, 27 Dec 2008 20:53:25 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-721 [...] Dofollow your comments [...] [...] Dofollow your comments [...]

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-452 Thaya Kareeson Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:18:15 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-452 I wish I was getting 1000 comments per month to moderate. That would be a good problem to have on my site :). I wish I was getting 1000 comments per month to moderate. That would be a good problem to have on my site :) .

]]> By: Andy Beard http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-449 Andy Beard Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:44:35 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-449 I haven't been very active for the last 2 months so had 2000 comments to moderate (those are the ones that made it through Spam Karma on very harsh settings) Of those, 50% of the trackbacks and pingbacks were accepted, and maybe 25% of the comments. 75% of the comments wouldn't be missed. I haven’t been very active for the last 2 months so had 2000 comments to moderate (those are the ones that made it through Spam Karma on very harsh settings)

Of those, 50% of the trackbacks and pingbacks were accepted, and maybe 25% of the comments.

75% of the comments wouldn’t be missed.

]]> By: Widgett Walls http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-365 Widgett Walls Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:17:21 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-365 You know, it's interesting. I get a lot of those sort of "Awesome!" comments but they're not bearing links. Usually I'm removing the URL from people who have tried to put their e-mail address where the URL is supposed to go. But I agree with the other commenter: if somebody's really trying to be obnoxious and just get a link--and they haven't brought anything to the party--I'll generally just remove the URL. Come to think of it, though, I did make an example of a couple of dumb linkers early on in the process by changing their URL to something a bit...shall we say...caustic. Maybe that's it. :) You know, it’s interesting. I get a lot of those sort of “Awesome!” comments but they’re not bearing links. Usually I’m removing the URL from people who have tried to put their e-mail address where the URL is supposed to go. But I agree with the other commenter: if somebody’s really trying to be obnoxious and just get a link–and they haven’t brought anything to the party–I’ll generally just remove the URL.

Come to think of it, though, I did make an example of a couple of dumb linkers early on in the process by changing their URL to something a bit…shall we say…caustic. Maybe that’s it. :)

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-355 Thaya Kareeson Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:42:37 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-355 @Talk Binary Thank you for visiting and for commenting! I hope you find this site helpful in developing your new website. At a glace, your site looks professional and you seem like a good writer so you shouldn't have anything to worry about. @Talk Binary
Thank you for visiting and for commenting! I hope you find this site helpful in developing your new website. At a glace, your site looks professional and you seem like a good writer so you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

]]> By: Talk Binary http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-354 Talk Binary Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:22:03 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-354 I recently came through your page through Plurk! Got to agree, I love your site and the way you respond to user comments! Makes me want to keep commenting! Keep up the great job! I just recently started a website so starting conversations is still a little hard for me. =) I recently came through your page through Plurk! Got to agree, I love your site and the way you respond to user comments! Makes me want to keep commenting! Keep up the great job!

I just recently started a website so starting conversations is still a little hard for me. =)

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-345 Thaya Kareeson Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:51:10 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-345 @Jon Do Haha, that is a good measure of intelligence. I will up the number of required words per comment. This will hopefully help filter out these manual spammers. @Jon Do
Haha, that is a good measure of intelligence. I will up the number of required words per comment. This will hopefully help filter out these manual spammers.

]]> By: Jon Do http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-343 Jon Do Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:46:58 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-343 Yes, captcha is pretty annoying. Anyway for "manual spammers" I think a good method is to increase the number of words per comment and more than 30% of this spammers will give up ... because a lot of them doesn't know more than 10 words in English :) Yes, captcha is pretty annoying. Anyway for “manual spammers” I think a good method is to increase the number of words per comment and more than 30% of this spammers will give up … because a lot of them doesn’t know more than 10 words in English :)

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-341 Thaya Kareeson Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:24:28 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-341 @Jon Do I used to use captcha plugins on this site but after getting frustrated by many sites with captcha on the net, I've decided to turn it off on this blog. Instead, I use a combination of Akismet, Project Honey Pot Http:BL, and Ajax Force Comment Preview plugins to alleviate my automated spam. The problem I have now is just manual spammers who come through do-follow search engines and leave irrelevant comments. Hopefully I can plug this hole once StupidFilter comes online. @Jon Do
I used to use captcha plugins on this site but after getting frustrated by many sites with captcha on the net, I’ve decided to turn it off on this blog. Instead, I use a combination of Akismet, Project Honey Pot Http:BL, and Ajax Force Comment Preview plugins to alleviate my automated spam. The problem I have now is just manual spammers who come through do-follow search engines and leave irrelevant comments. Hopefully I can plug this hole once StupidFilter comes online.

]]> By: Jon Do http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-340 Jon Do Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:05:10 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-340 Spam is our biggest problem, but with little moderation and some "captcha" plugins we can solve 90% from spam. Anyway if you have 30-40 comments per day is easy to moderate the posts ... but more than that I think is pain in the ass. Also if we increase the minimum number of words in a comment I think it can be useful. I'm also intersted in a plugin like "StupidFilter" ... Regards Spam is our biggest problem, but with little moderation and some “captcha” plugins we can solve 90% from spam. Anyway if you have 30-40 comments per day is easy to moderate the posts … but more than that I think is pain in the ass.

Also if we increase the minimum number of words in a comment I think it can be useful.

I’m also intersted in a plugin like “StupidFilter” …

Regards

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-338 Thaya Kareeson Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:55:54 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-338 @Brian Spam protection does help fight this battle since it works well against most automated spamming and some semi-automated spamming. But it does not protect you from real life spammers who go around commenting "nice post thankz" on every dofollow blog just so they can gain link juice. I've been looking at something like <a href="http://stupidfilter.org" rel="nofollow">StupidFilter</a> to help combat this, but the project has not completed yet. Do you know of any similar service? @Brian
Spam protection does help fight this battle since it works well against most automated spamming and some semi-automated spamming. But it does not protect you from real life spammers who go around commenting “nice post thankz” on every dofollow blog just so they can gain link juice. I’ve been looking at something like StupidFilter to help combat this, but the project has not completed yet. Do you know of any similar service?

]]> By: Brian http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-337 Brian Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:39:38 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-337 Wouldn't it make sense for blog owners to enable dofollow if they have spam protection in place? Wouldn’t it make sense for blog owners to enable dofollow if they have spam protection in place?

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-329 Thaya Kareeson Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:02:48 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-329 @Mark You have a good point about grey area posts. I guess Andy Beard said it right the first time: "If I delete it, will it be missed?"<br/> Thank you for adding me to your rss reader. I do not post as often as many other bloggers, but that's because I only post when I have something important to say/share. So please keep me up there in your reader, I won't disappoint you. :) @Mark
You have a good point about grey area posts. I guess Andy Beard said it right the first time: “If I delete it, will it be missed?”

Thank you for adding me to your rss reader. I do not post as often as many other bloggers, but that’s because I only post when I have something important to say/share. So please keep me up there in your reader, I won’t disappoint you. :)

]]> By: Mark http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-328 Mark Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:50:34 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-328 Hi Thaya I just found your blog recently and added it to the top of my rss reader :) I wasnt trying to dissuade you from making a no-follow blog, just had to air my rambling of thoughts I had recently on the subject. For the gray area posts like "nice post thankz" I would just delete the comment! You'll be doing yourself and your readers a favor by showing that you are interested only in meaningful comments. Why waste any more of your time on a comment that the commenter didn't spend more than 0.5 nanoseconds thinking up? There is also a lot of controversy on the weight of no-follow and do-follow links so spammers may still be happy getting a no-follow link from you. Keep up the good work! Hi Thaya

I just found your blog recently and added it to the top of my rss reader :)

I wasnt trying to dissuade you from making a no-follow blog, just had to air my rambling of thoughts I had recently on the subject.

For the gray area posts like “nice post thankz” I would just delete the comment! You’ll be doing yourself and your readers a favor by showing that you are interested only in meaningful comments. Why waste any more of your time on a comment that the commenter didn’t spend more than 0.5 nanoseconds thinking up?

There is also a lot of controversy on the weight of no-follow and do-follow links so spammers may still be happy getting a no-follow link from you.

Keep up the good work!

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-327 Thaya Kareeson Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:41:00 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-327 @Mark Thank you for visiting! It's nice to see fellow BSD lovers comment once in a while. :)<br/> I'm sorry if I have misled you into thinking that I will be making comment links no-follow. Implementing no-follow was never my intention at all. My plan is to keep the comment links do-follow forever *by default*, but I would like to have an option to mark a link as no-follow if I really wanted to.<br/> A lot of my visitors give great comments (like yours!), but I sometimes get "gray area" comments (the ones that I'm not sure if the purpose was just to gain link juice or not). This no-follow toggle method would be a good tool for me to deal with these "gray area" comment. Also leaving things as do-follow by default should alleviate a lot of this moderation work, freeing time for quality post generation. :) @Mark
Thank you for visiting! It’s nice to see fellow BSD lovers comment once in a while. :)

I’m sorry if I have misled you into thinking that I will be making comment links no-follow. Implementing no-follow was never my intention at all. My plan is to keep the comment links do-follow forever *by default*, but I would like to have an option to mark a link as no-follow if I really wanted to.

A lot of my visitors give great comments (like yours!), but I sometimes get “gray area” comments (the ones that I’m not sure if the purpose was just to gain link juice or not). This no-follow toggle method would be a good tool for me to deal with these “gray area” comment. Also leaving things as do-follow by default should alleviate a lot of this moderation work, freeing time for quality post generation. :)

]]> By: Mark http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-326 Mark Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:17:31 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-326 I think a no-follow/do-follow toggle is a bad idea. Spammers will see a do-follow comment and that will encourage them to leave comments so that they too can get a do-follow link from you. Then you end up wasting your time toggling peoples posts between no-follow and do-follow. The spam has won the battle as you have now had to spend more time regulating it instead of writing content for your blog! I also don't like the idea of a toggle switch because it furthers the concept of webmasters building sites and pages for search engines instead of visitors. I bet most of your visitors would rather read your commentary and thoughts rather than see that you are devoted to de-valuing some people's links in the comments. Furthermore, I've seen no-follow blogs still get plenty of spam comments so I don't think the argument of making your blog no-follow is really valid. I think a no-follow/do-follow toggle is a bad idea. Spammers will see a do-follow comment and that will encourage them to leave comments so that they too can get a do-follow link from you. Then you end up wasting your time toggling peoples posts between no-follow and do-follow. The spam has won the battle as you have now had to spend more time regulating it instead of writing content for your blog!

I also don’t like the idea of a toggle switch because it furthers the concept of webmasters building sites and pages for search engines instead of visitors. I bet most of your visitors would rather read your commentary and thoughts rather than see that you are devoted to de-valuing some people’s links in the comments.

Furthermore, I’ve seen no-follow blogs still get plenty of spam comments so I don’t think the argument of making your blog no-follow is really valid.

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-321 Thaya Kareeson Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:52:28 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-321 Definitely not too incredible a task, but I just wouldn't want to reinvent the wheel. :) By the way, I love the Shaler jump. I love the one you did on 4th of July. Instant classic. Definitely not too incredible a task, but I just wouldn’t want to reinvent the wheel. :) By the way, I love the Shaler jump. I love the one you did on 4th of July. Instant classic.

]]> By: Brian http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-320 Brian Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:31:10 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-320 I don't know of any, but it doesn't seem like it would be too incredible a task, no? I don’t know of any, but it doesn’t seem like it would be too incredible a task, no?

]]> By: Thaya Kareeson http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-319 Thaya Kareeson Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:26:32 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-319 @Brian Thank you for your great suggestions about how to deal with comments that fall in the gray area. Do you know of any plugins out there that let you toggle do-follow/no-follow on a per-comment basis? @Brian
Thank you for your great suggestions about how to deal with comments that fall in the gray area. Do you know of any plugins out there that let you toggle do-follow/no-follow on a per-comment basis?

]]> By: Brian http://omninoggin.com/search-engine-marketing/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is-the-question/#comment-318 Brian Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:30:10 +0000 http://omninoggin.com/?p=207#comment-318 Two alternatives would be removing the link from the comment, or perhaps rigging a WP plug-in to allow you to toggle do-follow/no-follow on a per-comment basis. Blatant do-follow abuse might as well be deleted, but it seems like some might fall in a gray area. Just $0.02 Two alternatives would be removing the link from the comment, or perhaps rigging a WP plug-in to allow you to toggle do-follow/no-follow on a per-comment basis. Blatant do-follow abuse might as well be deleted, but it seems like some might fall in a gray area. Just $0.02

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