Comments on: Four Years Later – Nofollow has not Stopped Spam

By: Digg Goes Nofollow – Keeps Pushing Framed URLs

Digg Goes Nofollow – Keeps Pushing Framed URLs — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:01:31 +0000

[...] Nofollow doesn’t stop spam – this isn’t even up for debate. We’ve seen this attribute floating around for years and I can promise you that the bots who drop constant loads of link trash do not seem to care about the status of their links. The fact is that the worst spammers are automating their efforts or hiring people who get paid by quantity. The last thing on an annoying spammers mind is how the link will be received or what effect it will have – such concerns are irrelevant to the link spammers who crank out thousands of hyperlinks in a day or week. [...]

By: Nofollow does not Conserve Pagerank

Nofollow does not Conserve Pagerank — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:15:07 +0000

[...] course, this had close to zero impact on fighting spam – smart webmasters just focused their time on finding links that weren’t nofollowed, and the [...]

By: Danilo Stern-Sapad

Danilo Stern-Sapad — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:08:21 +0000

There are some benefits to nofollow but I think installing something like Akismet on your blog is far more effective in deterring spammers. I think the main issue right now is that popular websites that rely on crowdsourcing such as Wikipedia are too greedy to remove the nofollows from their content, which means their sources/references rank lower than Wikipedia’s articles, which are often verbatim copies of the original source–which you will notice if the original source is actually cited.

By: Kalyan at Directory Submission Service

Kalyan at Directory Submission Service — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:05:27 +0000

Hey John.. I agree with you that nofollow is no answer to spam but it works a bit too. I know several web directory owners they they just approve some spam web sites because if they reject those web sites, they will be submitted again again by the spam bots. So the directory owners simply approve those spam sites but add nofollow. And they are relived from seeing those sites again and again in their control panel ! Smart ?! Aren’t they ?

By: John at Website Building biz

John at Website Building biz — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:26:52 +0000

Yeah, I needed that rant as some domains just “unsourced” tens of thousands of words I’ve written by nofollowing the attribution/identification links. Feeling a lot less frustrated though, there’s still a big internet out there with people willing to trade real links for real content

Traffic up, traffic down, just means its time to work on making the traffic go up again! As long as each cycle results in better positioning than the last one, the trend stays up.

By: Steve | Trade Show Guru

Steve | Trade Show Guru — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:12:04 +0000

hey John,
You took the words right out of my mouth with your rant. Ditto here. No follow is not the answer to spam. I do follow. And I agree with you about seeing wiki et.al. everywhere. I use wiki regularly and know where to find them. I’d rather see the other results.
Steve, aka the fellow-ranter trade show guru
PS. Good rant!