Comments on: Google Says Spamming Other Sites Can Lower Site Ranking

By: SEO Expert Arpit Kothari

SEO Expert Arpit Kothari — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:18:30 +0000

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.

By: John S. Britsios

John S. Britsios — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:20:42 +0000

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

By: John S. Britsios

John S. Britsios — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:56:49 +0000

@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?

By: John S. Britsios

John S. Britsios — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:54:31 +0000

@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?

By: John S. Britsios

John S. Britsios — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:50:55 +0000

@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.

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:08:12 +0000

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.

By: CAP Digisoft

CAP Digisoft — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:31:48 +0000

Thanks god, my website is not one among the websites being blocked by google. :)

By: Syed

Syed — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:06:07 +0000

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?

By: Webmaster Chronic

Webmaster Chronic — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:01:12 +0000

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

By: Carlo/Carlo At Your Service Productions

Carlo/Carlo At Your Service Productions — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:58:45 +0000

More people need to know this. Great post!