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Information simply about GoogleShould Bloggers be Serving Google Fix Their PageRank System?
by:
Linda Bruton
By now, most bloggers have detected
the announcement that the Big 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in keep of a new tag that wish purportedly
combat comment spam. The new tag is a nofollow attribute that can be additional to links. Once
additional to links in comment tags, the search engines wish ignore them.
An fantabulous discussion of this new tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728
Google declared
the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/
And Microsoft additional their keep to the new tag in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx
At 1st blush, thing
that can help cut down the comment spam that most bloggers are daily subjected to would-be seem to be a nice thing. It can be pretty displeasing
to access your diary in the morning and find 50 junk comments with links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your diary has any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage polluting your site every day. Fighting the spread of comment spam has become a necessity.
But after 1st cheering the proactiveness of the search engines, many a bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don't like what they see. You can see a sampling of their thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797
Brian Turner's incisive article "New Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs" discusses several of the potential abuses of the new nofollow tag:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/new_nofollow_ta.html
And Jim Pryke's article "Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet" does it really clean that not only wish this NOT finish comment spam. But it wish actually hurt bloggers as a community:
http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet
For an humorous take on the new tag and how it wish get abused, be sure to take a look at Link Condom: http://www.linkcondom.com
I have to agree with these bloggers that the nofollow tag won't even as put a dent in the problem of comment spam. You have to realize that the comment spammers who cause the most problems are the ones who use automatic bots to spread their spam onto every diary they find. The fact that they find a diary mistreatment the nofollow tag won't finish the bot from posting. If you have a popular blog, you'll still wake up every morning to find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You'll still have to spend the time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.
You see, the problem to bloggers isn't that those comment links pass PR. It's the fact that those spam posts do your diary look like garbage. Whether the links pass PR or not isn't the big issue for bloggers. It's the time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and the detraction to their sites. The nofollow tag won't do a thing simply about that problem. You'll still have the problems, even as if you use the tag.
Think simply about this: how effective have email filters been in stopping email spam? As most of us know, they've hardly done any nice at all. Email spam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers actually don't care if several of their emails are blocked. They simply send more of it to compensate. The same wish be true of the automatic comment spam bots.
The fact of the matter is, there are already more better tools in most blogging code to fight comment spam AND save the time and effort of the blogger at the same time. There are already a number of plugins for WordPress, Mobile Type, and different blogs. There wish beyond any doubt be more in the future. These tools are already more effective at fighting comment spam than this nofollow tag wish ever be.
What is unfortunate is that the folk the nofollow tag wish actually hurt is bloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have see and commented in each other's blogs. And these comments have additional value. Once
I write an article for my blog, I love it once
different bloggers take the time to add their insights on the topic I'm discussing. These comments add content to my site and continue the discussion. This is one of the reasons blogs are so easy to grow into topic-specific information-rich sites that are popular with readers. Unlike static sites, they offer two-way communication between reader and blogger. They become communities.
When being adds this kind of value to my blog, I am more than happy to give them a link to their diary that passes PR. That wish help them build the audience
of their own blog, grow the community even as larger, and add to the richness of the discussion. These are exactly the kinds of links that any webmaster should want on their site!
Adding a nofollow tag to comments can only quash this discussion. It can only discourage commenters with the most to contribute from taking the time to add to the discussion. After all, if the time I spend on another diary doesn't contribute to the growth of the blogging community as a whole or aid in the visibility of my own blog, am I going to spend as more time and effort doing it?
Anything that decreases the open flow of discussion presently
enjoyed in the blogging community is a bad deal for bloggers.
The question that should be asked is this: why is comment spam so profitable? After all, if it weren't profitable, so many a folk wouldn't be going to such ridiculous lengths to do it.
The answer to this is apparently Google's link-heavy PageRank algorithmic program that forces webmasters to get every link they can to get their site's indexed and ranked. Most webmasters cognize that in order to get hierarchal in Google, they had better have a ton of links to their site.
That's the problem with PageRank as an algorithm. It encourages artificial linking between sites that no longer has any connectedness some to the goal of providing nice resources to visitors. Do we actually believe that most reciprocal link directories provide a resource to our visitors? Not likely! If websites are real estate, reciprocal link directories are the slums, the seedy bars and tattoo parlors on the edges of polite society.
Whole businesses have sprung up as a reaction to PageRank. I'm talking simply about the link auction and link commerce sites. Under the PageRank system, sites aren't being hierarchal by who provides the better content, but by who has the deepest pockets to buy the most links. Or, in the case of comment spammers, whoever wants to spread their bots all over the cyberspace spamming blogs. This system has over time all inclined
the natural linking between sites that once dominated the cyberspace - the really thing that Google's PageRank system is supposed to reward.
Ironically, blogs are one of the few places left on the web wherever
linking is actually simply about providing nice content to visitors and bountied value provided on different sites. Bloggers as a group are the most likely to link to sites because of the content value to their visitors. Their links are really likely to be really topic specific. You don't find that on different sites. These are the kinds of links that I would-be assume Google would-be want to encourage through their PageRank system, not those junky reciprocal link directories or purchased links.
It would-be seem to me that the only effective way to cut down on comment spam and all the artificial linking techniques Google purportedly
wants to thwart is not by fashioning life harder for bloggers - the really folk who link in the most relevant fashion. But at taking a second look at their own PageRank system and whether it is actually serving the quality
of their own search engine and the whole web in 2005.
Just simply about the author:
For more tips and ideas on how to do money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else)
http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com
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