Should Bloggers be Helping
Google Fix Their PageRank System?
by: Linda J Bruton
By now, most bloggers have heard the announcement that the Big 3 search engines
- Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in support of a new tag that will
supposedly combat comment spam. The new tag is a nofollow attribute that can be
added to links. When added to links in comment tags, the search engines will
ignore them.
An excellent 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 announced the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog:
http://www.google.com/googleblog/
And Microsoft added their support to the new tag in this post:
http://blogs.msdn.com/nofollow_tags.aspx
At first blush, anything that can help cut down the comment spam that most
bloggers are daily subjected to would seem to be a good thing. It can be pretty
upsetting to access your blog in the morning and find 50 junk comments with
links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your blog 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 first cheering the proactiveness of the search engines, many bloggers
have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don't like what they see. You
can read 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 some of the potential abuses of the new nofollow tag:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news.html
And Jim Pryke's article "Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet"
makes it very clear that not only will this NOT stop comment spam. But it will
actually hurt bloggers as a community:
http://netinstitute.com/plummet
For an hilarious take on the new tag and how it will 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 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 automated bots to spread their
spam onto every blog they find. The fact that they find a blog using the
nofollow tag won't stop 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 make your blog 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 about that problem. You'll still have the problems, even if you
use the tag.
Think about this: how effective have email filters been in stopping email spam?
As most of us know, they've hardly done any good at all. Email spam becomes a
bigger problem every day. Spammers really don't care if some of their emails are
blocked. They just send more of it to compensate. The same will be true of the
automated comment spam bots.
The fact of the matter is, there are already much better tools in most blogging
software 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, Moveable
Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly be more in the future. These tools
are already more effective at fighting comment spam than this nofollow tag will
ever be.
What is unfortunate is that the people the nofollow tag will really hurt is
bloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have read and commented in each
other's blogs. And these comments have added value. When I write an article for
my blog, I love it when other 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 someone adds this kind of value to my blog, I am more than happy to give
them a link to their blog that passes PR. That will help them build the
readership of their own blog, grow the community even 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 blog 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 much time and effort doing it?
Anything that decreases the open flow of discussion currently 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 people wouldn't be going to such
ridiculous lengths to do it.
The answer to this is obviously Google's link-heavy PageRank algorithm that
forces webmasters to get every link they can to get their site's indexed and
ranked. Most webmasters know that in order to get ranked 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 relevance whatsoever to the goal of
providing good resources to visitors. Do we really 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 about the
link auction and link selling sites. Under the PageRank system, sites aren't
being ranked by who provides the best 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 internet spamming blogs. This system has
over time totally skewed the natural linking between sites that once dominated
the internet - the very thing that Google's PageRank system is supposed to
reward.
Ironically, blogs are one of the few places left on the web where linking is
actually about providing good content to visitors and rewarding value provided
on other sites. Bloggers as a group are the most likely to link to sites because
of the content value to their visitors. Their links are very likely to be very
topic specific. You don't find that on other sites. These are the kinds of links
that I would assume Google would want to encourage through their PageRank
system, not those junky reciprocal link directories or purchased links.
It would 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 making life harder for bloggers - the very people who link in the most
relevant fashion. But at taking a second look at their own PageRank system and
whether it is really serving the usefulness of their own search engine and the
whole web in 2005.
About The Author
For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why
Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else)
http://www.whymarketersshouldblog.com/
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