Think Twice Before Making Your Blog a Dofollow
My job as comment moderator on this blog is getting harder everyday. Since I made this blog a dofollow a couple of month back, I am getting twice as spam comments everyday since then the reason is when you turn on your blog as dofollow your comments links become a great source to get back links from your site since they now have dofollow links.
I will tell how it can affect your ranking in adverse way if you turn your blog to a dofollow;
Lots of spammer start targeting your blog leaving spam comments to get back links from your blog. If a spammy website links to your blog then it’s not a big deal because you don’t have control on incoming links but it is very important that you should take care whom you are linking from your blog.
If by mistake you approve a dofollow comment link which is pointing to a spammy site or to malicious content then you can be in trouble, as Google might reduce your search rankings as you are linking to a spammy website and it can be worse than that if they ban your site completely for indexing in their search engine.
You can see in the figure above the rising trend of spam comments. On 5th feb, 2011 I got 328 spam comments in a day. My main concern is that anti-spam plugin Akismat is missing spam comments, it missed out 149 spam comments in in last 60 days which is sad and alarming.
The second thing is before approving a comment I need to check the site it is linking to, but still there are chances that I may approve a comment which is pointing to a spammy site or to malicious content site.
These are the few risk involve in making a blog dofollow. The only benefit in turning your blog to a dofollow is that it promote discussion on your blog and you get some new visitors coming from various source looking for dofollow blog and leaving comments on your posts.
To know more about dofollow and nofollow read following;
- How Do I Check For No-Follow And Do-Follow Blog
- How to Find Out If a Link is “DoFollow” or “NoFollow”?
- List of Do Follow Blogs
Although I have seen the rise in spam comments since I did it, I have NEVER regretted my decision to turn my blogs into do-follow.
Hey Shanker,
That really concerns me as well.I have not been paying attention to that. You are giving me a wake up call.If do-follow option can bring more traffic,I’ll prefer spending time checking all comments before approval.
instead, I have seen a lot of blogs which are still accepting each and every comment without deleting them on the top position
Shanker you have really introduced the anatomy of blogging and how much it is difficult to manage the blog and that I have found the answer why I am feeling hesitation to start my blog.
I set my blog to dofollow at one point and it attracted too many spammers with one sentence comments. I had enough so I took it out
Hi Bakshi,
It is nice to see that your blog is now an dofollow blog, why not use GASP is the best plugin for spam it will reduce your time of comment moderation.
Thanks for Sharing the Information
-Imran
It is good to use dofollow. It helps the fellow bloggers to grow.
Its really a matter of concern for all do follow blogs. What you think would it be a good idea to revert back?
Will see to it anubhav, but i am paying very high attentions in approving comments. tough job in hand you know;
Hi Shanker, first of all, I would like to tell you that I really liked your sites new look. Really cool.
Nd coming to dofollow point, I think dofollow has many great advantages compared to only one disadvantage of spam which can be managed, though it consumes some valuable time.
Yes , it works great if you can manage spammers, but only two or three spam comments approval can run you in trouble;
I agree with what Rajesh said, there are more advantages compared to disadvantages
i cannot pay much attention to these spam issues ..but he figure you told are really alarming for all o us…
i agree with you…spam comment moderation is a time consuming task
quite issues have to be sorted out when you make blog Do-Follow…the main one is spamming..taking care of spam is really a tedious task..
I agree with you shankar, Do follow comments really help alot in ranking of our website. But to take care of the spam comments really drives me nuts as it takes heel lot of time.
yes…turning your blog to do-follow, does bring you a lot more traffic..and with it the spam.. but I think Akismet still does a pretty good job… it reduces your job to minimum… and you can always turn back to no-follow when you think you can’t take it anymore
With a little bit of tweak on your blog you should not worry about Spam Comments.For example put a powerful Captcha protection and moderate comments manually.If you take these steps you will find that the number of spam comments has reduced enormously.
Yeah, I completely agree with your above information.Everyone wanna a do follow back link back to their site or blog.Because it help in SERP.More relevant link you have for your site/blog more the chance to get benefit.You shared really top experience related to do follow blog…
think twice?? I say never make your blog do-follow. You have to do more work as the overhead attached to checking and removing all the spam increases. And I would rather suggest you to spend those efforts on better content for your sites. You can increase the traffic to your site the traditional way and that traffic will be genuine readers of your blog not the temporary one’s who are visiting you for the do-follow links on offer.
As a blog owner myself I totally understand your problem. I think the main problem with comment spam is that a lot of it is automated using programs to submit comments almost cutting out the human element to the commenting action entirely. Whilst filters like Akismat will help and block out the majority of the automated commenting there’s always going to be some that slip through, have you looked at your email inbox and seen how badly the spam filters on the email work in some cases?
From the other point of view I do understand the benefits of being dofollow too as I see it giving the commenter a bonus for commenting on the website which is important to promote a return and further interaction.
I agree with you.But see every thing have a good and bad effect,so are the blogs. You always need to put an eye on it.
Considering that you are already an established and successful blogger with a blog that receives a lot of traffic, why would you need to make the comments Dofollow? I can understand if you were newer and wanted to attract more comments, but it seems that you have a big enough following without needing to use Dofollow as a traffic attraction tool.
The Top Commentators plugin is probably enough to attract new people looking for a solid backlink.
- Andrew
Yes do follow is exploited by many black hatters in a way to build backlinks! But thanks for the plugins like Akismet which does the job so well!
Shanker, if you install the GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin you will see a dramatic reduction in the amount of spam. It will block all the bots! I’ve been using it for months and I love it.
As people will attack your blog like a honey bee to a flower.
So, I have to think twice then before making my blog do-follow. What I want to ask: is making blog dofollow affects SERP? and, what motivates you to make your blog dofollow? It’s just my curiosity. I just need to convince myself. looking forward to reading your reply, at your convenience of course. thanks.
Dofollow will really attracts commenters and spammers alike..we need a thorough moderation effort to block those spammers from our site.
Hi Shanker,
nice post. I was just contemplating on making my blog do follow. I think I’ll give it a go anyway. If I get too much spam I’ll revert it.
Thanks for this timely post..i was thinking about these spamming issue for previous many days but could,nt found any way BTU thanks to you for bringing this nice info
Do-follow comments are very helpful for ranking as well as traffic for sites and blogs. This types of comment s are attractive for top commentator.
ouh, Thanks for sharing, i’ll think twice right now
This is surely an eye opener. I would really be paying more attention on filtering those who are adding comments on my site. Thanks a lot.
What will be the problem for you if u go with No-follow only to the comments?