I’ve been reading with interest over the last couple of months bloggers, particularly in the SEO community, arguing that the link=nofollow attribute, the attribute launched with much fan fare a few years back as a solution to comment spam has been a complete waste of time.
The main argument is that comment spam hasn’t decreased at all, and you know what: they’re right. It’s worse than ever.
I also saw an argument some where (forgive me, I cant remember where…it is was you, let me know) that by using nofollow you are unfairly punishing people who participate in the conversation at your site….that it’s basically anti-community if you like, and in many ways this is a fair call.
Then there’s Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo, who wrote:
Look. Linking is part of what makes the web work. If you’re actually concerned about every link you make being counted in some global database of site endorsements, you’re probably over-thinking just a bit. Life’s too short for that, ya know? Link and be linked to. Let the search engines sort it out.
So hence today, as a bit of an experiment at least, and with comment spam under control here thanks to Akismet, I’ve installed this plugin that removes the nofollow attribute from my comments here at duncanriley.com. It’s only here at duncanriley.com at the moment, it’s not a b5media thing and I won’t be implementing it anywhere else (for the time being) until I see what the effect of this is, but please feel free to comment on the issue…because I’m sharing the link love again in the comments, and I’ll follow this up in a while once I see what happens.
