Part 1 in this series explored the introduction of nofollow, its failure at stopping web spam, and rhetorically asked why a good webmaster should use the nofollow attribute. In the second part below, I dig deeper: Google is full of smart people, they must have known that nofollow wouldn’t work at stopping webspam. So what was the real reason for its introduction?
Matt Cutts is a guy who works at google and is, “well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam [wikipedia]. If you have a question for Google he is your man. He breaks down google policies and is the ‘human’ voice to an often faceless corporation. Here is Matt’s thoughts on using nofollow (emphasis mine):
What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. [source]
Editorial is an interesting word to use. According to wikipedia, “An editorial is a statement or article by a news organization (generally a newspaper) that expresses an opinion rather than attempting to simply report news, as the latter should ideally be done without bias.” Logic dictates that an opinion contains bias, and that an editorial (being a specific kind of opinion) must also contain bias.
Nofollow was introduced not to stop web spam, but to stop the tide of biased linking, or linking by people with opinions (bloggers) who run web sites.
I am Google’s big problem. My website has no discernable theme — its about stuff, from monkeys to icons, to random thoughts… whatever comes in my head that I think people would read and find interesting. MaxPower is an editorial site. I contains my bias. It exudes (via the links I create) my bias. All this isn’t the problem for google… the problem is that (for whatever reason) people like my bias. They link to me. All these links to MaxPower give it a high PageRank so when I link to something I give it a lot of ‘votes’. In a way, I channel blogging bias through this website and direct it willy nilly, consequences be damned. And I’m not alone, there are 1000’s of blogs like mine. Every blog is an editorial. Every blog is biased. Matt Cutts runs a blog that is biased. We all have editorial websites — whats wrong with that?
By using nofollow, blogs differentiate themselves from Newspapers, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and anything else that contains facts without “bias.” Nofollow gives Google a way to better distinguish important information from biased information. This gives Google a method for discounting (penalising) some links over others to make sure that when a user types in a search phrase in Google’s search engine they get the results that google wants them to get.
There is a big problem with this logic, bias is everywhere. We all know that newspapers, wherever you are in the world, lean left or right. TV news networks are constantly being accused of bias. PBS is biased (so they say). Who do you trust? Let Google help you. Don’t trust blogs.
Don’t trust blogs because there are too many of them. The number of pages written by biased authors on the web is getting out of hand and Google, instead of doing something internally, sold webmasters a bill of goods claiming that nofollow would help against web spam. It would be good for website owners. It isn’t good. By discounting the millions (billions?) of biased blog pages, Google has stacked the deck to make sure that the “right” results come up. The “right” answers are found at Universities, encyclopedias, newspapers, and other media organizations. Google has ‘biased’ their search results, and users of the nofollow attribute are helping.
If you run a website with no comment spam, why would you discount your links? Why help Google penalize fellow bloggers?
As I mentioned in part 1 of this nofollow examination, I have been writing this post for quite awhile. Since I started, the discussion regarding nofollow has heated up. Exciting times. People are taking notice. Dylan Tweney argues in Google’s Embarrassing Mistake that nofollow has been a complete failure and that it has reduced the value of comments on blogs by removing editorial votes. Its a very good read and it builds on the ideas of Michael Hampton at homelandstupidity who argued over a year ago that:
If your blog software inserts nofollow, then in order for you to give another blog Google juice, you have to go out of your way to link to them without nofollow, such as in your blogroll. It is no longer enough that your reader left an insightful comment or a trackback to his blog with more information. Now, as far as Google juice is concerned, it is as if all of your readers were never there and you had received no comments or trackbacks at all. [source]
Jeremy Zawodny (Yahoo’s official TroubleMaker!) builds on both of these biased editorial opinions suggesting that, “The ‘psychology of linking’ did change in a fairly obvious way after nofollow started.”
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. [source]
In this I agree, lets turn off nofollow and let the search engines work it out. At the very least, lets give blogmasters the option of turning nofollow off without having to resort to hacking code or installing 3rd party plugins. In the next article in this series, part 3, I will examine Google’s use of nofollow for affiliate linking as well as explain how to turn nofollow off.
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04 Jun 06
10:37 am
I have mixed feelings about the whole topic. The linking via comments in part keeps the hierarchy of the blogamid intact. On the other hand, comments SHOULD be made in comments sections unless you have a whole article to write about it on your own in your own blog. Too often people make a practice out of making posts that cite original content from elsewhere and then make a small pseudo-comment about the issue.
So in some places people do rightfully deserve to have links coming back to them for good comments. But on the upper tiers of the blogamid where people are leaving useless little notes as comments in an attempt to get a free ride on the coat tails of popular bloggers it’s a different situation.
Perhaps there should be a plugin for WP that allows bloggers such as yourself to rate (only on a positive scale) blog comments you think deserve credit (even if they may be in disagreement with your thesis). Once a visiting blogger reaches a certain level of rating points they can be featured in a blogroll-like list of regular contributors, have their no-follow links toggled off, or something to that effect. Perhaps have it done on a per-comment basis so that you recieve links back for useful contributions in a post. Or maybe just have something to do it manually without ratings.
As an aside, this quote struck a nerve:
I have yet to understand the whole blogrolling thing but mostly because a good deal of the time they seem pretty shady to me. I’m not talking about short ones like yours or my list of “people I actually know.” I’m referring to those huuuuge blogrolls that are automated to generate traffic amongst groups of people that don’t even know each other. I see on all these blogs, gigantic blogrolls followed by banners from blogexplosion, and a ton of other traffic generating services I can’t even remember the names of. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. So how do these things get sorted out?
I don’t get much traffic to my blog and I rarely get comments and yet I get incoming links from places I’ve never even heard of with no references to anything in my actual site but rather just some automated list in a sidebar drawing from technorati or god knows where else. I don’t care for this type of promotion. I rather have no incoming links aside from ones based on good content that I’ve written.
I have rather uncompromising principles (which could be part of why I have very few visitors, lol) and I’m not about to turn off no-follow on the comments but I feel people should get credit where credit is due and I’ll find alternative ways of linking to or otherwise promoting their worthy content. Under no circumstances could I see myself taking part in a traffic-generating chain-letter-like scheme. Then again, I’m conflicted about blogging in general since most of it I consider to be (in its current state) a poor medium for worthwhile information but I’m hoping to stick with it long enough to see things change. In the mean time, things are going to remain tough no matter what we choose to do. Things will remain a linkfest full of redundant content spread out amongst a small handful of topics. People that don’t play by typical blogger rules will continue to fly under the radar most of the time.
Damn the man! Jā
13 Aug 06
4:36 pm
I also have recently removed nofollow tag from my blog to reward my members with backlinks. They actually particapte to increase content my site. If you have comment moderation on your website, then there is no need for nofollow.
15 Oct 06
1:51 pm
Well, having no follow on comments for blog replies will put posters off posting, afterall, the main reason they post is for the link back to their page. Without anything in it for them, less chance of them replying to your blog posts.
30 Oct 06
11:41 am
I’m here because I’m researching best practice for my new site which will include a blog (built with MODx). After following a multitude of links to get here through the pros and cons of the nofollow issue, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve harvested enough info about it (thanks!) to decide on adopting the no nofollow approach when I do get things live. I think with careful policing it should be possible to keep on top of any comment spam or otherwise. I agree with dsw; rewarding people for augmenting your content is quite laudable. When it comes down to it, it’s always possible to insert your own nofollow for the possibly illegitimate and prune judiciously for the definately dodgy.
14 Jan 07
12:16 pm
[...] Addendum: MaxPower explores and explains the NoFollow failure in more detail. I particularly like this line: If you run a website with no comment spam, why would you discount your links? Why help Google penalize fellow bloggers? [...]
18 May 07
8:06 pm
This is tricky. The surprising thing is, wikipedia going nofollow. makes you feel, why shd one contribute to the whole stuff.
there must be a different solution to the problem of spamming with links, nofollow is not the one.
26 May 07
2:18 pm
but if your page have high PR nofollow probably will prevent leak PR, maybe
13 Jul 07
11:23 am
Yeah! Im looking for do follow websites, to get more links for my blog:
O Sacramento da Eucaristia
22 Jul 07
1:27 am
yeah… those stupid wiki’s!
wonder what happen if we all use nofollow to them?
Have a good one.
24 Mar 08
2:55 pm
I love how so many of the names here are the titles or the keywords they want there site to be ranked, I of course follow lead.
It doesn’t put posters off posting. Many blogs with no comments have no indication that there no follow until you post a comment.
Nofollow hurts the whole community. If spamming is becoming a problem then individual methods should be used against the spammers not the whole webmaster community.