Search Engines Accepting the Blog Comment Spam Nofollow Attribute
Yesterday we found out the nofollow attribute was coming to a search engine near you. Google, Yahoo, and MSN all announced this news yesterday at their respective blogs. I assume if Ask Jeeves had a blog, they would have been part of this announcement. Major blog development supporters include SixPart – MovableType, LiveJournal, Google’s Blogger, WordPress, Flickr, Buzznet, Blojsom, Blosxom, and MSN Spaces.
Danny Sullivan has an excellent write up on what this is all about at his entry named Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links. Personally, I think I might add the tag to the comments here. But I am not yet sure. Since adding the image security code to SERoundTable.com, I have had two comments that were spam. So I am thinking about just opening it up and linking directly.
Why? Because people who comment on blogs are on topic to the entries and provide insight. This tag is to prevent comment link spam, or any link spam – if you do not have a link spam problem, then you should be fine. I think this should be a default option in all blog software, all guest books and some forums – because many people just let their sites go to hell. It is an excellent way to prevent linkage spam in that case.
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Columnist Barry Schwartz is the Editor of Search Engine Roundtable and President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales.
