Comment and Trackback Policy -
DoFollow Now Active

I’ve implemented DoFollow for both comments and trackbacks. Note: I’ve changed this back. The relentless spam was unbelievable, and if I want to give good, PageRank-giving links to another blog, I will do so within a post.

This means that if you leave comments on my blog or link to posts, the Googlebot will see and follow those links. It is a default of WordPress to have “nofollow” attributes in the links for commentator’s blog URLs, any URLs within the comment, and any links back to the post (this is known as a trackback). Originally, the nofollow attribute was designed to deter spammers, but that has failed. Other methods for blocking spam, such as Akisment and Bad Behavior, plus moderating all comments, are much better.

In order to encourage comments and trackbacks, I want you to get some link love and Google juice from me. I don’t really care about PageRank, but I know many people do, so for what it’s worth, Better Blogging with Michael Martine has a current PageRank of 6. A link from my blog to yours is a good thing for you, but it’s a good thing for me, too. When you leave a comment or link to my posts, Googlebot will essentially view those links as me linking to you.

Unacceptable Comments and Trackbacks

This post is the permanent home of my comment/trackback policy. Comments and trackbacks will deleted for any of the following reasons:

• Insulting and name-calling
• Profanity, such as swearing or sexual remarks
• Do not contribute any value to the post or to the other comments (short comments like “nice site, thanks!”, etc.)
• Contains links to made-for-AdSense sites, splogs, or sites about illegal or adult subjects.
• Contains links to sites whose content is automated, if I judge such automation to provide no original value to my readers.
• Any reason I feel like, really, but the first four are the biggies

Basically, if your comment is furthering the discussion by adding new information or asking a question, it will stay. If your trackback builds on the post’s topic or challenges it in a civil manner, it will be allowed to stay. The more you do this, the more you are rewarded with outbound links from my blog to yours. We both get link love. Everybody wins.

If you’re interested in doing this yourself, here are the plugins I’m using for this: Semiologic’s comments dofollow and Turk Hit Box’s Dofollow Trackbacks. There are others, of course, and a quick search will turn them up.

Comment Moderation

As a final barrier to spam or inappropriate comments (including paid comments), all comments and trackbacks are moderated. I check and approve comments and trackbacks throughout the day. If you’ve left a comment and it hasn’t appeared, yet, please trust that I’ll get to it as soon as I can.

Technorati Tags: comment spam, trackback spam, nofollow, dofollow, dofollow plugin