Decaflon

NoFollow is something used mainly in links out from comments, forums, guestbooks (anything subject to spam bots) so the search bots (most of them anyway) don't follow that link and index that site.

It basically tells the bot what to do with the link, though I believe SEs like Ask and Alta Vista ignore nofollow.

It's related to the HTML attribute. Apparently there are entire communities that either want to use it or remove it...

So it's probably not a reference to you, unless I'm misunderstanding the context, but on the issue of whether you want robots to be able to follow the links you post. For example, WP by default puts a rel="nofollow" tag on commenter's website links to deter spammers. You can read up on it on the link I posted to Wikipedia above.

Hope this helps.

Yea, I just came across a whole community dedicated to taking out "no follow" and I had no clue what it was, or if I was by default "no follow".

Someone had told me at one time to get rid of the no follow, some time ago, but as I had no idea what it was at the time and had no interest in finding out I didn't pay attention to it.

I don't particularly want robots to follow me anywhere. Unlike you hthth I am not fond of robots.

This is largely a SEO - Search Engine Optimization topic. Basically all external links carry a certain "in-favour-of" weight with them, unless there is a rel="nofollow" - then the link is supposed to be ignored.

You want to not follow any "spammy" links, as that reflects badly on you by association.

Arguably you want to follow relevant links as that offers value.

If you make it clear that your blogs comments are followed, it might attract more replies from SEO aware readers.

It's also a good strategy to use nofollow to block out robots from things such as duplicate content or irrelevant links. Although it's probably a better idea to get that done in robots.txt file.

It's also called the 'link condom' and in my opinion it's a joke. The idea behind it is that you use the attribute on links that might fall into the advertising sector or perhaps on all links with the hope of hoarding that novelty called pagerank. Some search engines will then either ignore or de-value a sites incoming links that are 'no-followed' while others couldn't care less.

If you feel compelled to place a link on your site I see no reason why it should have the no-follow attribute. You're linking to that site for a reason and that site deserves to receive credit for that link regardless of whether it's a paid placement or not.

It's also a good strategy to use nofollow to block out robots from things such as duplicate content or irrelevant links. Although it's probably a better idea to get that done in robots.txt file.

I think that if you rely on that method to address any dupe content you're going to be really disappointed with the results. Just about every engine has demonstrated an inability to adhere to both no-follow and a robots file.

But it's my understanding that wordpress is "no follow" by default is that not the case?

I always assumed the links I link to were in some way followed although I shut of pingbacks for awhile. Are pingbacks different?

I always assumed the links I link to were in some way followed although I shut of pingbacks for awhile

Comment links are by default nofollow — like, if I'd post a comment on your page and include my website in the "website" field, then it'd get the "no follow" attribute.

But any links you post in your actual articles are followed, unless you specificially type in rel="nofollow" in the link's URL. As for pingbacks... I'm not sure, let me check ... On my site, WP automatically puts rel='external nofollow' on everybody who's pinged me. Looking it up, it's the same as 'nofollow' except that the bot will know that it's a link to an external site. So yes, all links that are not initiated by you, the owner of the blog, WP marks by default as 'nofollow'.

Wordpress adds rel="nofollow" to any links in the comments section. Links that you post in the article itself will be followed. There are a number of plugins that offer various degrees of "follow" for comments as well.

I think that pingbacks are treated as a type of a comment.

Yeah, I'm with MangoFalls on nofollow. It's rude, bad karma, and makes me want to break up with any hot rich actress who would have me if she believes in it.

You should manage the comments on your site, it's part of running a blog or a forum or whatever you allow people to use to add their links to your site. If you get SPAM, delete it.

But if you're linking to any page on the Internet, or you allow your users to link to any page, that page deserves to get the associated value and PageRank from it.

WP should definitely provide a checkbox to allow you to get rid of this blight on the world of wide webs, in my o.

Google's PageRank is based on backlinks (other sites linking to you)... blogs and forums were exploited for creating backlinks with little or no value to the blog/forum in which comment was posted.

To overcome this problem, Google cameup with Rel="NoFollow" (added as attribute to anchor). By default Blogs/forums have NoFollow applied to all comments so that comment spamming is minimized (however spammers still do it for the little traffic that follows these links)... Links with NoFollow are not considered for calculating PageRank.

Bloggers who feel that Rel="NoFollow" should not be applied to comments, do so using some settings/plugin. They however then need to actively track all comments manually and remove spam comments. Links that are not "NoFollow" are termed "DoFollow" links

There's no point to allowing links if you have them as nofollows.

There's no point to allowing links if you have them as nofollows.

I think there is a point. If you give even the slightest damn about search engine optimisation, you have to care what links are going out from your pages.

Nofollow doesn't alter the organic use of your pages. People using your site can still see them and use them if they chose but using nofollow in comments is a means of telling a search engine that user-submitted data does not represent the opinion of the domain owner.

If you want to trust a user unconditionally, get a membership system and use nofollow contextually. Just allowing anybody to ruin your profile with the search engines is just silly, not good karma.

If someone comments on your site, and it's a legit comment and not spam, then their links are relevant to your site. Relevant to both readers and search engines.

Maybe if I was blogging for money I'd care about page rankings. I care more about the people and ideas being expressed being linked together instead of ingnored.

If they're legit comments then anything else is simply dishonest, I view it as abusing the system. Instead of the real pictures as far as interconnections (the whole point of the web,) you're presenting just a portion. It's a misrepresentation. If you want to be a reference site, don't allow people to post links.

You're trying to pair two completely different directions.

Allowing links allows users to communicate with each other. So freedom of expression is there. A link is a lot more expressive than having them paste the URL in.

Why should that commenter care about whether a search engine follows their link? Self-promotion and spam are the only two answers to that question.

You're also raising the differences between a blog and a forum/community and how links represent the relationships. If your pages are more about the discussion, sure, links in comments have relational value but if it's more like an article, the author's is the only text on the page that a spider should be reading.

I've got to stress this again: why would a commenter care? In either scenario, they're commenting on the site to add value to the document for other users or to ask the author or other users to add something to benefit everybody.

I'm not talking about freedom of expression at all. Most commenters don't care too much, unless as you pointed out they want some promotion ( which I think they should get if they're contributing. ) It's not for them. I'm talking about the value of your commenters being associated with your entries. Much like you state!

I've got to stress this again: why would a commenter care? In either scenario, they're commenting on the site to add value to the document for other users or to ask the author or other users to add something to benefit everybody.

As a blog reader, I find it very valuable. The people that comment on a blog are sometimes more important than the entry itself on many blogs I read. If someone is commenting on your blog often, then of course their site should be associated with yours in the seach engine logic. Trackbacks serve this purpose to an extent, but they're not as inclusive.

Say we worked together. I always see you going to lunch with Joe and Jill. Joe and Jill become part of my perception of you at work--naturally. If you snuck out to lunch and met people there, I wouldn't have the association.

It comes down to how open you want to be I suppose. I think if you have nofollow on, you're essentially saying the people contributing links aren't valueable. That's fine, personal preference, I just don't get it. I really don't draw as hard a line between blogs and forums. For me the difference is a blog is directed and lead.

But the ability of search engines to follow a link doesn't alter the value of that link for somebody on the page. Stopping spiders go through a users content isn't the same as stopping people access the links.

If someone is commenting on your blog often, then of course their site should be associated with yours in the seach engine logic.

As OpenID develops, that will change a little. URLs will become a viable identity method but that's really not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about links inside the reply body. They can be relevant to the main post. Stopping these links is an anti-spam measure and it helps keep links.

By all means go for a semi-moderated method where you vet links but I would never endorse an open house.

Wanging nofollows on links to people's websites keeps the spiderable links on the page relevant.

Well that's the disagreement then. I think they're completely relevant.

I don't think it's much of a spam issue. On over 12 sites that I run that allow comments, I've never needed more than akismet or other basic rules. It's just a non issue. I get hundreds of spam comments, but they're 99.99% caught automatically. Now and then one gets by and I'll go and nuke it manually.

I'd much rather design and work for the overwhelming good majority rather than limit valuable relational data for everyone because of the misbehaving minority.

Wordpress turns this on by default, but I've been meaning to disable it. I don't think the people who participate on my site should be punished because of rogue spam. After all, isn't the burden of spam on my shoulders and not my readers?

Fix for wordpress's default behavior

There's no point to allowing links if you have them as nofollows.

Though it doesnot add value to pagerank, it still brings in relevent traffic... people who see your comments and temp to read more from you.