Why are the Comment Links on Your Blog Set to Nofollow?
Something I’ve noticed recently is that a lot of the blogs I routinely visit have their commentator links set to nofollow. Yes, out of curiosity I usually view the source and check. Having nofollow enabled has no bearing on whether or not I leave a comment on that blog. I really just don’t understand the whole thought process behind setting comment links to nofollow. I really started thinking about this after reading one of Sara’s posts in the Blogging Experiment Forums.
Stopping Spam?
The nofollow attribute was originally adopted to stop search engines from following links inside of comments. The thought was that the only reason spammers target comment areas of a site is because they can easily get a backlink to their own site simply by writing a comment. This would in turn build a site’s Google Page Rank as well as help in Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) the site. The problem is that it doesn’t stop spam. Spammers will spam regardless of the nofollow attribute being applied to links.
All the Big Boys are Doing it
I’ve also noticed that majority of the blogs I would consider to be on the “A-List” have the nofollow attribute in place on comment links. I realize these blogs see thousands upon thousands of visitors and sometimes hundreds of comments, but even at that, if you have a decent spam plugin installed, it shouldn’t be a problem. I guess if you’re worried about commentators leaving comments like “nice post” or something similar then using the nofollow attribute might stop a little of that, but even then, no one is completely sure how search engines handle the nofollow attribute and majority of your visitors are not going to take the time to view your source code to see if you’ve got nofollow in place. So, what’s the point?
Thanks for Taking the Time to Comment, but no Link Love for You
Essentially what you’re telling your commentators by enabling nofollow is “Thanks, but no link love for you.” To me, it seems like if someone is going to take the time out of their busy schedule to assist in building your site’s content in the form of a comment, at least have the common courtesy to reward them with a linkback to their site, so it’s a win-win situation for both parties involved.
Part of the Problem is Wordpress
Wordpress is the most widely used publishing platform available. I don’t use Wordpress, but from what I understand, by default, Wordpress enables the nofollow attribute on links. A special plugin is needed to disable nofollow on sites powered by Wordpress. The thing is, a lot of blog owners are not web developers nor could they give a crap about how the website works. They simply load up an existing theme in Wordpress and off they go, thus leaving the nofollow in place.
If You NoFollow, Let me Know Why
If you’re a blogger and have intentionally set your links to nofollow, in the form of a comment, please let me know why. When things don’t make sense to me, I’m curious to learn so that they do make sense. So, enlighten me. 
By the way, Random Jabber is set to dofollow which means that anytime you post a comment, you’ll be rewarded with some link love. Comment away. 
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Comments
Yeah, sorry. I should have added that it’s any website, not just blogs. I guess I got off on a tangent talking about blog comments.
You’re right in that they have a higher Page Rank and like it that way, but more than likely they got that high Page Rank by using some of the techniques preached to new blog owners every day: comment on other articles, ask for link exchanges, etc., so why not give back a little?
By having a high Page Rank (or any Page Rank for that matter) and linking to other sites with dofollow, does that theoretically hurt your Page Rank? Obviously, no one knows for sure, but is that the general consensus?
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
Well, even when the blogger with higher pagerank comment on other blogger’s blog it more likely than not have a no-follow tag. Generally comment in other’s blog is not about pagerank but networking and gain traffic. Its hard, if not impossible to get high pagerank by commenting on someone else’s blog, exchange links etc is another matter, there is no nofollow there.
Of course no one knows exactly how google works but its more of a accepted fact that inbound links give you some pagerank and outbound links takes away some pagerank. However outbound links takes away a fraction of a percentage of pagerank than an inbound link give you (which is already very little).
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
I actually never paid attention to whether comments on my blog were nofollow or not. Now i check that it isn’t, i will set it to dofollow. I do believe that commenters should get the linklove they deserve after posting a comment.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
Hey Deron.
I think like Josh - I’ve never actually thought about it. The Wordpress installation comes with nofollow turned on, and since I installed a Top Commentors, I thought that would be a better reward for commenters, who would get a higher PR link through the homepage, rather than a bad link in the comments at the bottom of the page (although it could be argued that all links are good links).
It’s not something I’ve done on purpose, just have never got round to thinking about it - thanks for reminding me 
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
I run the dofollow plugin on my blogs and have it set to remove the nofollow after 24 hours. Just allows me to check on the link as even authorised commentors can still change their link (in WP it’s only their email that’s authorised).
The only time I put nofollow into a link is when I want to link to somewhere but not give them any credability, which is usually pretty rare.
Also Stavanger mentioned that comments on a post would probably not attribute to your PR however I’d disagree, as the front page can maybe link to that page, and usually I find that say the front page of a blog is PR 5 then often the pages linked from that page are PR4 (not always, but I have seen it). Plus if a post gets a lot of links because of its content then that PR could in fact be better that the front page.
Oh, and no I don’t comment for PR, I comment because I have something to say
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
I thought long and hard about whether to keep nofollow tags on my blog or not.
In the end I decided to keep them for two reasons.
1. Comment Spam - back when I made this decision my blog was being overrun with comment spam. I was stressed and depressed by it and despite spending a good hour or two a day moderating comments spam still got through for things that disgusted me (child porn included). My hope was that no follow would at least stop the page rank benefits that these comments were gaining. Since then I’ve been using Akisment which stops a lot of the spam (it’s stopped 1,755,693 spam comments in the last 18 or so months) but with that kind of number of comments being directed at my blog some still gets through.
2. Junk Comments - this is different from Spam comments in my eyes because it comes from humans who simply comment for page rank benefit. While I don’t mind people benefiting from my blog I’ve noticed an increase in the practice of leaving quick, irrelevant and junky comments on blogs. Two words with a link back to their blog. I get a tonne of these. While I do moderate some out of my blog the weight of it is beyond me to keep up with. No follow stops some doing it (the smart ones who check first are put off - I know this for a fact having talked to some who do this practice) and those who still do it and get through my checking at least don’t gain from it.
In an ideal world I would remove no-follow but I’m afraid that I just can’t afford to because of the massive numbers of people I have trying to use my blog for personal gain through comments. Sometimes one’s ideals (link love for all) and the practicalities of their reality just can’t match up.
I will say however - that if people want to play by the rules and get a little link love with no nofollow tags that I regularly run group writing projects which give thousands of links to people with legitimate sites.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
I am also part of the DoFollow movement, but I can certainly see how many of the very popular blogs opt for NoFollow.
Like Darren mentioned, in an ideal world removing the no-follow wouldn’t be an issue, but people are not all commenting for the right reasons and many probably just want a nice fat piece of comment/link love.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
Stavanger: Yeah, I would say commenting on blogs doesn’t have a huge effect on Page Rank, but I’d guess that it does help some. Like you said though, who really knows besides Google, right?
Josh: I think a lot of bloggers using Wordpress are just like you. Probably just something they never thought about.
Adnan: Yeah, I can understand the nofollow I guess if you have the top commentator plugin installed. At least you’re giving some reward for people taking time to comment. They just have to beat others to get the reward.
SarahG: Whatever Sarah, I know you’re only commenting here to get some of my Page Rank juice! Oh wait, it’s still zero, dang!
I agree also that commentating would help a person’s Page Rank, but again like was mentioned, who really knows but Google? Everything that seems like common knowledge to a lot of people could be completely false and Google is just sitting back laughing at us all.
Darren: The reasons you’ve outlined above are what I figured were the main reasons for blogs such as yours to set the nofollow attribute.
I definitely hope (I don’t think you did, but just in case) that by my article you don’t think that I’m trying give nofollowers a bad name or put them down. Not my intention. I was curious and your comment definitely has shed some light on the subject. I guess being new to the blogosphere and not receiving even a fraction of the traffic that you do and zero spam thus far, I just had no idea how much you have to deal with on a daily basis. The fact that you’ve received nearly two million spam comments in the last year and a half is just mind numbing.
I assumed the the junk comments were the main reason. I really hate to see these types of comments on your and other blog popular blogs. I don’t know why people will waste their time, but it is what it is I guess. It’s the nature of the beast.
I will keep an eye out for your group writing projects.
Paul: It’s unfortunate that in the blogosphere as in life, there are always people trying to abuse the system rather than add something useful to it. Sometimes it really make no sense why people do what they do and have to ruin a good thing for the rest of us.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
I personally haven’t bothered changing the comments on my blog to dofollow. I guess it’s more of a hassle to change it to that and I don’t get many comments as it is. The one’s I do get are spam.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
I am currently set to no-follow, but my top commentators get follow. Im not sure if i will change it or not
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007
Same here, i left the nofollow attribute for the commentators on the comments page because i have installed the top commentators plugin, which i am trying to incentive a competition between commentators to get on the list.
Unfortunately even this has the bad side, as i have to not publish many stupid or nonsense comments to the given post just because commentator is commenting to reach higher on the top commentators instead of discuss the topic. After all, i have a low number of commentators as of yet, but i still feel like i should place them in order now and show them how it works with my blog, instead of doing it later when they are used to get their nonsense comments published.
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007
Woah - weird.
The comments are working now (duh - lol), and there’s a lot of comments!
I have actually not been aware of that.
I think I’ll look into it - especially if Wordpress has that built in - because that’s what I use.
Thanks for the heads up!
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007
I’ll go set my comments to follow now. I fall under the ignorant category.
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007
Shaun: Hmm, maybe set dofollow on your blog and somewhat promote it. I’d say that would get you a few more comments. Although it also could bring more spam, but I would think the good could outweigh the bad.
Colin: I hope you consider changing it to dofollow. I think it only helps everyone in the blogosphere to pass around the link love.
SEO Optimization: Sorry to hear you’re getting some junk comments because of your top commentators plugin. I guess I’ve been lucky thus far, I’ve not received any junk comments or spam comments yet. Hopefully I won’t jinx myself and have a flood of them come in.
Brian: Sorry about the comments. They are working but earlier when you tried my site may have been up and down. My host has been having a little issue with the server. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.
Chuck: Don’t feel bad man, a lot of bloggers using Wordpress simply don’t realize it’s set to nofollow by default. Glad you’re changing.
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007
I don’t feel bad, but I do hope I haven’t scared off any savvy commenters.
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007
I have recently opened a new blog on blogspot and realized that comments were also set to nofollow as a default. I have changed it immediately. I love receiving and sharing link love…
Anyway, I think that the main reason is page rank, as the others also said already…
Posted on Fri Aug 24, 2007
You know how I feel. I don’t get 1000s of comments so it’s not an issue for me to moderate poor comments. I try to include it in my basic install when I set up a blog.
Posted on Fri Aug 24, 2007
Chuck: Nah, I doubt it. Or at least it wouldn’t scare me off. If I feel the need to leave a comment I’ll do it regardless. Most people (unless they’re researching for an article such as this) won’t even take the time to look.
Marina: Thanks for leaving a comment. Glad you’re part of the dofollow crowd.
Sara: Yeah, I know you’re in the dofollow crowd. I like that you’ve got it set up on Blog Experiment to nofollow after three posts (it is three posts, right?). I don’t belive ExpressionEngine would allow me to do that, but as of yet, I wouldn’t need to as I don’t really get any spam comments.
Posted on Fri Aug 24, 2007
I have a music recording blog. I post fairly randomly, but it’s all on topic. I setup ‘dofollow’ using a link love plugin (can’t remember it’s exact name). I never really received all that many comments before. Every so often someone would ask a tech question I’d try to answer. Within a week of installing the plugin, the number of comments went through the roof. I’d hoped that it might encourage more comments and discussion, but instead it’s just brought in a whole heap of people who clearly aren’t interested in my blogs subject matter, and are just there to leave their trail behind. People leaving nicknames is fine with me, but when someone leaves their name as “Making Money Online” or “Real Estate Trading Made Easy” that kinda bugs me.
I’m rambling now, but to summarise, removing nofollow has done two things for my blog.
1. increased the quantity of comments.
2. massively reduced the quality of comments.
Based on this I decided to set a 3 comment limit on comments, meaning someone has to leave three comments before the nofollow is removed. Sorry to ramble but I had to share.
Posted on Mon Aug 27, 2007
Flathead Fisher: I’m not sure if ExpressionEngine has any plugins for nofollow that allow it to automatically set it to dofollow after three valid comments. I see your frustration and don’t blame you for doing that. At least you are setting it to dofollow after three comments rather than boycotting altogether.
I guess I’ve just been lucky to not receive any spam yet here on this blog. So far, no one is leaving nicknames in comments either. Hopefully I won’t have to ever deal with it, but I’m sure that time will come.
Thanks for commenting.
Posted on Mon Aug 27, 2007
It’s a shame that the minority spoil it for the majority. I have dofollow on my comments, but don’t overly advertise that fact. There are more than enough ‘do follow lists’ doing the rounds that display blogs by Page Rank, aimed at those who only want the linkback benefit and have no interest in the content they’re reading.
I completely empathise with the scale of spam Darren receives. I have nowhere near his traffic and I get frustrated sometimes.
Thankfully, it usually doesn’t take too long to moderate those junk and spam comments, leaving the authentic ones to get a link.
Posted on Tue Aug 28, 2007
David: Yes, as in life, the minority spoils it for the majority. Just like the people that steal items from the supermarket. The honest consumer has to absorb higher prices to make up for the loss of stolen goods. It’s a shame really.
Yeah, I knew Darren gets a lot of traffic (obviously, right?) but the amount of spam he’s seeing is crazy and I almost don’t blame him for setting nofollow even though I’m still not convinced it stops his spam/junk comments because most people won’t even look to see if nofollow is set and will still post their junk.
Posted on Tue Aug 28, 2007
I was having big trouble getting comments, til i found out I was making people register before they could comment.
I have just added a top commenter plugin, and removed no follow. It works really well!
Posted on Thu Sep 20, 2007
Thomas: Yeah, I noticed that the other day. I was on my way to leave a comment and couldn’t without registering so I didn’t leave one.
Glad you’re a part of the dofollow crowd! Welcome.
Posted on Thu Sep 20, 2007
Its ironic that many bloggers talk about this but then they actually use no follow I have seen many blogs leeching off the dofollow movement claiming to be dofollow sites but actually use nofollow, they are worse than the comment spammers in my eyes.
Posted on Fri Sep 28, 2007
Bape: Yes, you’re right. I’ve noticed that too. In some (not all) bloggers defense, it may seem like they use nofollow because there is a wordpress plugin that allows you to specify nofollow on comments until the commentator leaves at least comments and then it automatically switches over to dofollow.
Posted on Sat Sep 29, 2007
.. but what do you lose really when you share some link love?
is it like losing something tangible, for example sharing a part of one slice of pie with someone else, and so you have a smaller piece left to yourself?
Posted on Mon Nov 5, 2007
Roy: Yes, I think that is the idea Roy. If you link out a lot, you are essentially giving away slices of pie and leaving yourself with less. Only we’re dealing with Page Rank and not pie. So, a lot of people are selfish and have nofollow on every link because they are afraid of losing Page Rank, when in reality Page Rank doesn’t matter much anyway.
Although, really everything is just speculation as no one knows besides Google.
Thanks for stopping by Roy.
Posted on Mon Nov 5, 2007
Wow - I was only searching for a wordpress plugin when I started reading this post - got a whole lot more - insight into the pros and cons of dofollow/nofollow from both the newbie and the high ranking blogger perspective. After consideration I’ve decided that having an excess of comments, even if they are trivial, is still a better problem to have than having few comments. I still have akismet to filter the gross stuff. So, I’m going to give dofollow a try....once I actually do find that plugin!
Posted on Wed Nov 21, 2007
Liz: Yeah, it’s amazing some of the stuff you come across when doing searches. I’m glad you were able to stumble across this post and were kind enough to leave your thoughts though!
I’m glad you’ve decided to be one of the “good guys” and enable dofollow.
Thanks for stopping by!
Posted on Wed Nov 21, 2007
I’m a follower, only because I see no real point in nofollow. After all, Akismet stops all comment spam for me and people who feel moved to comment on my pithy blog should be rewarded with a cookie. Or the next best thing, a linkback.
Where’d you get your smileys? And, are you using the Core version of EE?
Posted on Sun Dec 16, 2007
Bobby: Yeah, I just installed Akismet to try and stop the spam that was still getting around my captcha. Must be an actual person(s) doing it, but I’ve been getting a ton on some of my older articles. I’m getting tired of logging in to delete them.
As for my smiley’s, you can download them from this page on EE’s site: Chipper Smiley’s.
Yep, I’m using the Core version right now. Thinking about switching to a Personal License though. I’ve got another Personal License (three total) that I’m not doing anything with currently.
Posted on Mon Dec 17, 2007
For people like Darren and other high-trafficked sites I can definitely see the need for nofollow. Now that I’ve moved over to Wordpress and have Askimet and dofollow plugin after 3 comments, I’ve been bombarded with having to moderate a lot more junk links, robot sites attempting trackbacks etc.
For those who regularly comment on my blog, I think it’s very nice karma to give a little link love back. I moderate all of my comments, and delete anything spammy without hesitation. I personally don’t care if the blogs I comment on are dofollow or nofollow (nor do I check), because I’m there to participate in the discussion, get to know fellow bloggers more personally, and that’s all.
Posted on Sat Jan 5, 2008
Lin: I think you’re sentiments are identical to those of many bloggers who have non-malicious intentions when commenting on blogs. I comment for the discussion and because I liked what the author had to say, not for the benefit of the link back, which is probably small.
Posted on Sun Jan 6, 2008
You’re right about site visitors should get some LinkLove back to their site. A visitor takes much pain (well, almost) to visit the site (most probably, (s)he will never return), but when (sh)he is on the site, and the site has the comment box open for the visitor, then why cheat the visitor by enforcing the “nofollow” parameter?
Well, the makers of Wordpress, etc can create a very good anti-spam plug-in free-of-cost for its bloggers. This way there will be better interaction between bloggers and comment-makers.
There can be ‘n’ number of views and opinions on this, but I must admit that this site has a non-hypocrisy policy of allowing good comments to get credit through “LinkLove”. I have really liked your views on this.
Regards & Thanks
Posted on Wed Jan 16, 2008
Santosh: I agree. Thank you very much for your thoughts and visiting the site.
Posted on Thu Jan 17, 2008
it depends of the blogger, some care and some dont if they get a couple of spam comments on their blog, in the end it should be the bloggers choice in my opinion
Posted on Mon Jan 28, 2008
Art: I definitely agree. It should be the bloggers choice. Either way, it won’t change how I comment on blogs.
Posted on Mon Jan 28, 2008
most people who are strict with their nofollow tags just are afraid that if they use the dofollow that their blog is gonna be a all spammed out but its not really true to use linking to network with other bloggers lets others find our blog easier and also rank better.
Posted on Tue Jan 29, 2008
There are a lot of interesting points here… and if I may add, from my own experience I have received tremendous amounts of traffic, referral visitors through links strategically found on other pages in the form of comments on blogs, I thought to myself… if I am getting about 200 to 300 visits just from 1 link alone, I won’t mind if it that link is set to no follow. We must all realize that no follow, link love and other related terms are something to do with PageRank. High Page rank does not absolutely mean you are getting high traffic, and it does not absolutely mean you are getting high referral visitors if you have a link on a high PR site, one of my sites is just a PR1 but outperforms all my other higher PR sites, simply because of well chosen links on other blogs that are not necessarily high PR themselves, but high traffic on a blog host that is a hot topic and with visitors who are click rabid, searching for more information about the product or item discussed in the post.
For more marketing info, please swing by http://internetmarketing.roysencio.com
Posted on Wed Jan 30, 2008
The majority thinks, that pagerank flows away from their sites through nofollow.
Posted on Fri Feb 8, 2008
Controlling the spamming activities nofollow will really help,
Though, quality of moderator’s work is required to approved comments.
Visitors always visit the place of great resources,
And put their own views and ideas and may ask the blog owners questions related to this.
In rewards blog owner should use dofollow for their great efforts.
Regards,
Posted on Mon Feb 11, 2008
some are afraid of spammers , but if the blogger regulary check their blog the spam comments wont be a problem really they can be deleted easily, leavinf comments is great for sharing resources too.
Posted on Thu Feb 14, 2008
Roy Good points there. For me, nofollow really doesn’t bother me. I don’t look at the source code before commenting to make sure that the blog has dofollow enabled. I will still leave a comment regardless. I think people get to wrapped up in nofollow. It was originally designed to stop spam but now it’s used to stop passing page rank to someone else. Who knows what it will be used for tomorrow?
Posted on Mon Feb 18, 2008
Thanks, I’ll keep that in my mind and Thank you for the information…
Very wonderful idea…
Posted on Tue Feb 19, 2008
Hi there, thanks for the information , but i still confused, what is the difference between no follow and do follow?? why everyone want to do follow???
Posted on Tue Feb 19, 2008
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My name is Deron Sizemore and I am a web designer, web publisher, blogger and serial internet entrepreneur living in Lexington, Kentucky.
Its not just blogs but any kind of website that visitors can add content. I think the main reason is that people have high PageRank and they like it that way, but its gets ridiculous when directory have nofollow on all the sites in their directory.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007