The Google Webmaster Blog has this short post explaining how abusing sites’ comment fields by putting up comment containing links to the poster’s site can actually hurt both sites’ ranking. That is of course if the comments posted are actually not related to the post or gibberish. In short, non legit comments whose objective is to raise the poster’s site ranking. If you have done this before to boost your site’s ranking, and your site was penalized by Google. Here’s what you need to do.
If you used this approach in the past and you want to solve this issue, you should have a look at your incoming links in Webmaster Tools. To do so, go to the Your site on the web section and click on Links to your site. If you see suspicious links coming from blogs or other platforms allowing comments, you should check these URLs. If you see a spammy link you created, try to delete it, else contact the webmaster to ask to remove the link. Once you’ve cleared the spammy inbound links you made, you can file a reconsideration request.
To avoid comment spam from hitting your sites, here are what you need to do:
- Disallow anonymous posting.
- Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming.
- Turn on comment moderation.
- Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field.
- Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
- Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.
If you currently own a site with tons of comment spams hitting you daily, you can also follow those steps.
And here’s a reminder from Google that we all should have known by now – original content and some search engine-friendly optimization is still the best way to get a better site ranking on Google search, since the web community will only link to your site through your great content.
Thanks for sharing! I have a question. I noticed that most of the incoming links to my site is from the same domain. When i clicked on that url and checked for my url, i failed to find it. Do you have any idea of it? Thanks!
Good now I know how to bring down the competition. Can even kill two birds with one stone.
Nice going Google =).
Arnold I already do all what you mentioned on all my blogs since ages, but the info from google is very interesting.
Thanks for sharing.
Arnold, it is me again.
You mentioned: “Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field.”
I thought that the nofollow attribute does not work anymore for a site internal links: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
Did Matt Cutts or myself miss something?
NOFOLLOW does work. In fact, by assigning a NOFOLLOW to all comments you are basically saying that you are not sure or responsible for quality of the website and so are unlikely or less likely to be punished by Google for having spam/bad quality links on your site.
I personally do not use it as I monitor comment links and remove spam manually. Also, I would prefer to have my blog visitors to benefit from the good ol’ PR juice! If the link is relevant (doesn’t matter who posts it), why not give the PR benefit to the site link that was posted?
Syed, I did not say that Google does not support the nofollow attribute for external sites links. I was talking about using nofollow for site internal links.
I went a bit further with my research and I found out that it works for internal pages, but not as it used to: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634387
And I moderate the comments in my blog too, but I also the spammers a favor before they attempt to add comments.
Check any article on my blog searcheditors.com to see what I mean. LOL
Webnauts, the only change Google made concerning nofollow on internal links is to strip the page with nofollowed internal links of the PageRank that would normally be assigned to those links if they were not nofollowed.
Google still handles nofollow as an indicator that a link should not be followed and that it should not be allowed to pass anchor text/PageRank to the destination.
@Michael Martinez, a few days ago I was reading somewhere that it is suspected that if you nofollow one of two links on a page to the same destination, both links will be dropped. What are your views on that?
I think you slightly misunderstood. It wont harm your site but it probably will not help either. See what Andreas said about bringing down the competition and how easy it would be if it dreally did hurt.
More people need to know this. Great post!
@carlo/Carlo if you read the blog post of Google they said:
“Others might tweak this approach a bit by posting a generic comment (like “Nice site!”) with a commercial user name linking to their site.”
Did you notice that your post here is exactly what Google is after?
Who was it that was complaining a week or so ago about their wife’s blog / site having to be taken down because of comment spammers? Someone A-list, but I can’t remember the name. Heh.
Anyway…
-kpaul
Thanks god, my website is not one among the websites being blocked by google. :)
@Cap Digisoft, why do you say that? Are you also one of those comment spammers? I ask because as I see, you only have two blog posts on your blog and no comments at all. If you were a comment spammer, don’t expect to be penalized over night. If that is the case, sit back and wait.
Yes, you are right:
* Disallow anonymous posting.
* Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming.
* Turn on comment moderation.
* Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field.
* Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
* Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.