I touched upon this on a previous post about how many bloggers will promote their blogs as do follow then come to find out down the road their site becomes no follow. You are now seeing this trend with a lot of popular social bookmarking sites.
There are many do follow blog lists out there and you will find out half the blogs on these lists are actual no follow blogs , now some blogs may look like no follow but actually have a comment policy where sometimes you have to leave a minimum amount of comments before it goes do follow. But most of these blogs just go bait and switch with the no follow.
So the link juice you think you are getting may only be temporary so if you plan on utilizing do follow commenting as your link building strategy be prepared for the fact that many of your comments and bookmarking links will eventually lose any value in terms of passing pagerank.
I like to comment on blogs whether they are do follow or no follow as long as they are relevant to my blog and I feel I can contribute to the blog and add value with my opinion. To me a link is a link and although you may not gain any value in googles eyes there are still other search engines that don’t utilize no follow, not to mention the fact you may pick up some new visitors from the comment you leave on the blog.
I however don’t like the fact of this trend and if I feel that the blogger does this intentionally they are going to lose me as a visitor and I am sure others as well. Now I know what you are saying who cares if they lose you, well that is fine by me but it is just the principle if you start a do follow blog then stay the course and don’t tell me the spam comments are to much to keep up with, you knew what it was going to be like from the get go.
Please I would love to hear your opinion on this.
{ 21 comments }
I have totally seen this. It is the classic bait and switch. Such a tease that will not achieve followers in the long haul.
Nancy´s last blog post..N on MP3 Players
People are tricky these days. I believe a good comment is worth a good link. However, as you know, a lot of people don’t agree with this logic.
To be honest, i don’t want a link from a site owner who is manipulative anyways…
I completely agree that this ‘bait and switch’ is frustrating — well said.
I think nofollow and page rank are overrated. If you are blogger and you just want to impart your knowledge, you do not need those things. Right?
Yeah, the nofollow approach is backfiring on google big time! Basically everybody is using nofollow for their links making bubbles of strongly interconnected pages that don’t link to anything! And it is all Google’s doing for encouraging this. I expect Google to penalize excessive use of nofollow soon.
We only have the spammers to blame for this. It seems that since spam bot technology became available to anyone who was curious enough about it, we started seeing these measures put in place. The problem is that it punishes the average, honest webmaster trying to get a few links back to his/her site.
There is always someone ruining it for others.
In some cases I can see a webmaster getting overrun with spam because there are fewer and fewer dofollow sites every day. The ones left are bearing the full brunt of these bots. On a positive note, there are some very effective measures you can put in place that will virtually eliminate spam before it gets to your comments section.
Steve´s last blog post..Start an Appliance Repair Business
This is really a big problem. I mean, these spammers have nothing else to do. But there are add ons available that can detect no follow blogs.
Yeah especially the social bookmarking services are really hypocritical with their policies. They use all possible tricks to make you believe they are still dofollow but aren’t. The same goes for bloggers, although I can understand that sometimes they don’t realize what they’ll have to deal with when they turn no-follow off.
Its a tricky sitation, ive only just started reading about dofollow and nofollow, i changed a few of my websites over to dofollow and i have noticed an increase in comments. I think its a little bit of give and take on both the webmaster and the commenter regarding if a site should choose dofollow or nofollow, and i think its definately the choice for the webmaster to make if they want to go back to nofollow.
With regards to spam i find askimet does a pretty good job catching anything dodgy but the sheer volume i get on some sites is insane.
mmalink´s last blog post..Cage Side – 2
I agree it is up to the site owner in regards to switching but most just use it as a plot to get comments and traffic to their site with intentions of changing to no follow down the road. Thanks for the comment
Hey, this “bait and switch” blog tactic really exists?
I was just musing on whether such an evil thing exists or not while out taking my evening constitutional. out of curiosity i googled “nofollow + bait and switch” lo and behold i found this! there is nothing new under the sun
Yes you are right… When I am searching do follow blog in Google then I found that there are so many no follow blogs…….
Nayan´s last blog post..GEO Targeting
I noticed this trend almost immediately when I started doing SEO on my sites. Some of the offenders are very well known sites.
Our site is do follow, and we get a lot of blatantly spammy comments. Does it bother me? Not really. We just delete them and move on. Some of the others are kind of spammy (i.e., ‘Nice post!’), but we appreciate the traffic and the comments, and we know that they’re just trying to increase backlinks to their sites (just like almost everyone else).
We’re do follow because we know it will draw traffic to the site, and we don’t have much of an issue with moderating the comments. I hope we don’t switch to no follow in the future, because I think it’s a little lame to use do follow to get popular and then give it up when you don’t want as much traffic.
dave´s last blog post..Cupcake Scavenger Hunt!
I know this all to well. In fact, i don’t even use those old custom searches that sites put up anymore, the majority turn out to be nofollow. To be completely honest, when i comment on blogs I am thinking about the backlink(i can’t help it) but i’m also thinking about what i am saying, and how i am contributing to the post. After all, it’s your rep. that’s on the line..
Josiah´s last blog post..Dragonball Z
I’ve recently started working in online marketing, so I just learned about follow and no follow blogs. I knew there were spammers on the internet and the like, but I never realized how corrupt some sites can get when it comes to online marketing.
People just trying to build up page rank then selling their domain, pay per post on blogs, and fake sites trying to get paid links.
I’ll comment on any blog that I think is relevant to my site or that I have something to add, whether or not it has followed links. But I’m sure my boss would prefer I sought out the followed links (which are difficult to find).
Its funny how you have a post on nofollows/dofollows and every is just customising their anchor text and leaving ‘meaningful’ comments just to further their own ends. LOL
Commenting is worth doing on all kinds of blogs. Apart from contributing to the discussion, you are also developing your own thoughts about the subjects you comment on. The ideas you express can be collated and expanded into articles or blog posts. So, it’s all “grist for the mill” as they say …
Matt@offline marketing blog´s last blog ..Advanced operators for keyword selection
Hello. Thanks for sharing information about this controversial topic Do Follow Today No Follow Tomorrow. And thank you very much for allowing DoFollow comments here.
Can you say INMAN news. They totally shut there down. They dont even give no follow links anymore
Mike In Dallas Real Estate´s last blog ..How to find a home quickly in Dallas Fort Worth Texas
@ Mike I am surprised that Inman news was a do follow blog to begin with. How is the Dallas Real Estate market Mike? Inventory is way down here in Tampa and homes selling again which is good.
Comments on this entry are closed.