Once again the spammers and link hunters are ruining things for the rest of us. This blog has been dofollow since I started it back in 2008, but these days it seems that spammers are getting smarter with their crafty comments and I have had an influx of what I call "drive by" commenters, those that only comment once to get some link juice for their keywords and mostly the "drive by's" leave useless comments.
Frankly, I'm tired of sitting here and trying to differentiate between the genuine comments and those others, so I found a better solution.
I have installed the No Follow Free plugin, which allows me to set the number of comments a person must have in order to get a dofollow link. I set the limit at 8.
So, this means that all my regular readers who have commented more than 8 times, and there are many of you, still have and will have your dofollow links.
All future commenters need to comment 8 times in order for their comment link to become dofollow, and in the meantime it will stay nofollow.
Respective numbers of comments will be displayed next to the commenters name.
I love dofollow, and do not want to change it, but this blog gets a lot of comments, and I am really tired of losing precious time trying to decipher who is a real commenter and who is not, so I feel this is the best compromise for everyone!
The No Follow Free plugin is fabulous, as it allows me to set parameters for making comments dofollow, like number of comments someone must have in order to get a dofollow link, parameters for registered users getting a dofollow link, a blacklist of emails list and also a nifty area where I can add certain words that if placed in the comment will make it nofollow.
Unacceptable Comments That Will Be Deleted
As always I reserve the right to delete any comments that I feel are not adding any value to my blog and all my readers, like..
"Great post" "thanks for this, keep it coming" "What a great read" "Wow, this is great, I'm subscribing right now" "you write great stuff, so glad to be here"...etc etc etc
It is always best for you to leave a useful contribution to any blog that you read and visit, the link juice is secondary to presenting yourself as an intelligent, interested and engaged contributor in the blogosphere, believe me you will get a lot more traffic and attention this way.
On a daily basis I get at least 10 of these types of comments and I usually delete them, as I think most bloggers do.
Follow Me on Twitter @: colleenlane
(9 comments)
“I have installed the No Follow Free plugin, which allows me to set the number of comments a person must have in order to get a dofollow link. I set the limit at 8.”
Set it at 20, or 40! We have ours set at 10 and it does not seem to deter spammers. When a spammer comes around 10 times (I have several in mind), we remove their url. Folks we respect have free rein on our blog.
Colleen recently posted..45th Annual Columbia Cup Hydroplane Races on the Columbia River
@ Colleen
LOL, I think I maybe too nice. It’s not the spammers I care about so much, usually Akismet catches them or I do, it’s those ones that seem so iffy and the comment is just close enough to make you wonder, is this person for real, now I won’t worry anymore. I agree, there is quite a few people that have free reign on this blog as well, u are one of those, thanks for all your contributions!
Follow Me on Twitter @: npxpcom
(9 comments)
I have had a similar plugin on my dofollow blog which will make a link dofollow after commenting for over 5 times atleast
Kamal Hasa recently posted..Comluv Not Working Solution
This seems to be a good policy….it should help keep the spammers at bay, somewhat!
@ Wedding
Let’s hope so
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(35 comments)
HAHA Mines higher then yours. lol
Still keep a close eye out. No follow is only half of it, you can still tick off other commenters by letting too many through.
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@ Dennis
LOL, of course not, I will moderate
Follow Me on Twitter @: lisanthemum
(7 comments)
And this is why I dread moderating my comments…I get a lot of those “iffy” ones too. I’ve gotten to where I wait a couple of weeks and then do my best to differentiate…and if it’s at LEAST on topic…I’ll let it slide. Definitely delete those GREAT BLOG posts LOL. I just might check out that plugin…I understand it doesn’t let the link juice go, but does it really deter these people?
@ Lisa
No, not really, spammers don’t know any of it, they just use automated software to post comments, the “iffies” those have to be moderated by hand, so regardless of nofollow or dofollow, u still gotta moderate, but, at least now, there is a lot less pressure for figuring out the iffies, cause at least their not getting any link juice.
Nice one JR. Most of the bloggers in the SEO & marketing industry (including me) face blog spammers constantly. And trust me, sometimes their posts make more sense than any of us normal readers’ posts! At least this will be a better measure than nofollowing comments alltogether
Follow Me on Twitter @: thekevintan
(8 comments)
That sounds like a great plugin for me to add to my blog JR. Drive by spammers are the worst!
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@ Kevin
It is a great option, if you want to stay dofollow and control how it is distributed
This method is great, I have started using it on my blogs and it’s cut the spam right down, Thank You!
Follow Me on Twitter @: AMater
(17 comments)
Kudos to you, JR! I have a temporary policy in place for the time being, but one thing I’ve learned is that no matter what, the spammers will continue spamming. I’m considering adding a capture form for comments, what do you think about this tactic?
Alan Mater – Work From Home recently posted..How to Increase Fan Numbers on Your Facebook Fan Page
@ Alan,
I’m with Dennis, I hate captchas on blog comments, they’re a pain, and it’s true that it really does not stop spammers so much.
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(35 comments)
Alan – if I may jump in here as well, captcha has no business being on comment forms. They only block auto-spam which Akismet takes care of nicely….they deter real commenters which you do not ant to do.
Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing recently posted..I Need a Button – Can You Make Me a Button
Having a comment policy is fairly imperative these days, although almost no one reads it. I’m surprised Dennis didn’t make the same suggestion to you that he made to me, that being to put a link to it above the comment area to hopefully catch people’s eyes. I don’t know it’s helped, but at least I tried.
As for those drive by comments, Askimet seems to learn how to discern most of those pretty quickly, so I’m left with little to do. But I think I go by the rule that if I’m not sure then I’m deleting it, and if you come back and ask about it, then I’ll apologize. Hasn’t ever happened, though.
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@ Mitch,
Yes I have been doing the same, re: deleting and seeing if the commenter complains, only happened to me once, and I apologized and had him recoment. so that works quite well.
Follow Me on Twitter @: webcreationUK
(1 comments)
Spammers will not go unfortunately, maybe some will vanish but most will come again. Sometimes, a better method is to make registration a must to post a comment, although you’ll get less numbers, the value will definitely increase, right?
@ Bogdan
That is true, but not something I am willing to do, that makes it harder for good reader to participate, I personally hate that when I see it on blogs.
There are so many spammers out there that abuse do follow, but its good to see that you did not get rid of it altogether and put a limit to how many posts you need before it can become do follow. I never knew you could do that before.
Follow Me on Twitter @: sonlinebiz
(1 comments)
I had my dofollow quota set to 10 comments but after one of my commenters complained, I decided to go easy and make it just 3. So after 3 Solid comments, dofollow is activated for every commenter on my blog. The good thing is that I’m using Link Love plug-in and as long as you comment with the same email address, your keyworded links will always be dofollow no matter what site you fill in
.
Of course once you then try to spam me, I automatically activate nofollow on your email address
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I prefer blocking emails to blocking the keywords.
Nigeria News recently posted..RT Briscoe Nigeria Vacancies- Company Treasurer
Just like any other form of blocking spammers this method has its downsides. Such as not many people will be willing to comment 8 times just for some dofollow links when even though the nofollow links dont get any link juice they still burn away what the others could gain. You will lose many valuable comments because of this. And you probably wont see me here again as I am very busy but I will try to come back. I would much rather install a captcha code also. They block most bots.
Follow Me on Twitter @: GrowMap
(2 comments)
Hi JR,
Do you know what field that plugin uses to count comments? Since I frequent KeywordLuv-enabled blogs I often use different combinations of words in the name field and that means I need 8 comments for each combination. In non-KeywordLuv blogs I comment as Gail or Gail Gardner or Gail from GrowMap and don’t always remember which one I used where.
I don’t know that using that plugin will get rid of spammers because even nofollow blogs get them. I have disabled Akismet and am still searching for a better way to handle spam. I tested a captcha and ran a survey but some had difficulty commenting while it was live so I’m back to the drawing board again.
Gail recently posted..DoFollow CommentLuv KeywordLuv Community
@ Gail,
I think it uses the email address. I am not targeting spammers so much, but the drive by commenters, that leave useless comments only once just to get the dofollow link, and this will work for them.
Follow Me on Twitter @: GrowMap
(2 comments)
Dennis, the reason I tested a captcha was to block bot spam which captcha does better than Akismet. Akismet has too many real commentators flagged as spammers and you have to wade through all that bot spam to find the real comments. Most of those never end up in the blog at all if you use a captcha.
Gail recently posted..TWTPoll- SI Captcha Anti-Spam WP Plugin
Akismet is a good software for managing the spam comments. But yet sometimes, I still come across some comments which are merely written only for the link juice. I simply delete them. It is always better to keep our blogs moderated.
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@ Joel
That’s for sure, gotta moderate.
I understand what you mean, my friends have complained about spammers, I saw another post that was talking about the same plugin or widget. I think it is a good way to deter the one stop shoppers. I just stumbled upon your blog, and I am new in the affiliate marketing and blog area. I have looked in the forums, but I have found the blogs to be more educational and interactive.
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@ Hillary
Welcome and thanks for commenting. Yes blogs are great. I will recommend that you check out the 5 Star Affiliate Marketing forums, full of great information for beginners.
I have been getting so much spam lately so I may try that plug in too.
Craig@Free Freebies recently posted..FREE Cheetos Mighty Zingers Coupon
I understand about spammers and agree with you, but drive bys? lol,What about ppl who found your blog via SE or External link and making them become apart of YOUR community otherwise you givem no *juice* as you called it. But in all honesty dofollow only affects google PR, Google, bing and yahoo still index them and give them the credit for the link. Just no PR. Theres my 2 cents worth. Have a great day.
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I think it’s a great way JR. I’m thinking about that plu-in also, since i’ve been getting so many spam lately…
Follow Me on Twitter @: KathyJani
(4 comments)
I think a lot of those drive by commentators will actually return at some point. Not all of them will, but some will. I think your policy of 8 approved comments it more than fair. It is your blog after all. You can do what you want. At least you are being honest about it. I have had a number of blogs that I have participated on in the past that started out dofollow, then one day switched to nofollow.
The nofollow doesn’t really deter spam. It is going to deter spam less and less over a period of time. It is evident that Google chooses to ignore nofollow for things other than PageRank and link reputation (A.K.A. anchor text). The spammers know that there is still some benefit to the nofollow links. You can tell that nofollow isn’t really a deterrent anymore because some comment spammers are voluntarily marking their own links as nofollow.
Kathy recently posted..Why Do Some Sites Use A Combination Of Nofollow and dofollow
“The spammers know that there is still some benefit to the nofollow links” I must disagree, for spammers nofollow links practically have no value. The only value the link has is if someone on the blog follows it, but they don’t care about that. All they care about is keyword ranking (anchor text).
Follow Me on Twitter @: AMater
(17 comments)
@Tim,
NoFollow links do have value when it comes to search engine rankings. The only thing they don’t help with is Page Rank as it won’t be passed through them.
Alan Mater – Work From Home recently posted..Q&A- Building Links to Your Website
Follow Me on Twitter @: webmaster_serve
(9 comments)
Installing nofollow plugin reduce spammers to a limit, personally i beleive spammers are out for links for trafiic purpose not just for backlink, anyway good luck and hope you will see a huge difference in the spamming world.
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The no follow free plugin has helped me quite a bit, I did set mine for 15 though just as a deterrent.
hillary bost recently posted..Rap Concert At VCU Raises Some Eyebrows
This method is great, I have started using it on my blogs and it’s cut the spam right down, Thank You!
Finally a method to stop the spamming! I look forward to seeing results.
Andy recently posted..Dating Chivalry
I think you are making a good decision and not being harsh about it. Thanks for still allowing keywords, that helps a lot. Much appreciated!
Sam
Using a no follow free plugin is good but I prefer the use of captcha. it works for me because spammers that use automated tools for their submission would just be creating an extrar work for you with their spam comments
Nigeria News recently posted..RT Briscoe Nigeria Vacancies- Company Treasurer
Good comment policy.I am emerging in blogging and very happy to read your comment policy.
Follow Me on Twitter @: Boomajoom
(23 comments)
Captcha, Akismet, and Bad Behavior all work pretty well. The risk of do-follow will always be spammers.
Follow Me on Twitter @: Netidnow
(1 comments)
yes, captcha is way much better to filter automated commenting. there will always be spammers even with filtering your links to nofollow..
Today it is running policy for blog commenting and most of the bloggers are on the same root on which you are traveling.
This is a great way to keep the spam level down and identify between the real commentators and spammers. I would suggest, if a comment makes sense to the blog post then an then only it should be get approved else all such spam comment should be pushed to hell.
Follow Me on Twitter @: Netidnow
(1 comments)
Well, what do you expect to get when you write really good articles? Spammers will always be there, with or without the commentluv plugin.
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