nofollow? My own thoughts – including a possible big media angle on this

Last Tuesday Google, MSN, Yahoo! and an unprecedented group of blog toolset providers announced a solution that aims to prevent comment spam.

Will it definitely work? Will there be unintended consequences? Those are the kinds of hard questions that sometimes keep people from trying difficult things in the first place. On that score – I applaud this. It’s difficult get developers to agree on the simplest things and the cooperation is truly impressive.

Simply put – “nofollow” will allow site maintainers, like myself, to decide whether some links are worthy of getting a PageRank (search engine) boost, or not. We can do that by adding an attribute to links users post in our comments, but truth be told, we can do this to any other links we put on our sites as well.

Anil Dash thinks this is a good thing. Shelley Powers worries about its effect on conversation. John Battelle, someone who is still undecided, worries about the same thing. The Register declares this contributes to “the Balkanized web”.

I’m not sure I’d go that far. In fact, I don’t know exactly what to think yet. I do know a few things:

1. This doesn’t change any of my habits when posting comments on other sites. Not a whit. When I post a link in conversation, I do it to be read by the folks reading that thread – I value the conversation – not the PageRank boost. So you elitists who look down on that practice can stuff it.

2. Robert Scoble is right – the idea of using “nofollow” to link to things I disagree with or want to slam is… enticing. I’m not saying it’s right – but it sure is interesting. For example, if I wanted to tell you about a hate site that I think is downright evil, but don’t want to give it any “google juice” – I can now do so. You can see how this can be abused though right?

3. I can see one or more large media companies decide to use nofollow as the default for external links. I think education and monitoring will help to dissuade, but not eliminate, this from happening. PageRank isn’t an entitlement. And big media has more of it than you my fellow bloggers. This is a new tool for them to influence it – if they decide to. I hope not. I could be wrong.

We’ll just have to see how all this plays out.

One thought on “nofollow? My own thoughts – including a possible big media angle on this

  1. “When I post a link in conversation, I do it to be read by the folks reading that thread – I value the conversation – not the PageRank boost.”

    Yeah, that’s exactly my take on it too. Google ranking never occurred to me until now, in regards to posting a link to something in someone’s comments. I naturally meant the link as a reference for the participants of that conversation.
    Often, it’s just a shortcut around saying “I heard this person said blah blah blah yadda yadda” and having to type out everything I read somewhere else, when it’s already written somewhere else.

    I’m sure there are those people who are totally obsessed with Google ranking that they find reasons to post links in comment threads.
    And I do sometimes get spam… where people will post on-topic comments with related commercial links.

    The thing is, “withholding” Google rank, by linking to a site one doesn’t like, doesn’t make sense really. The person is linking to the site anyway – anyone who visits that site can access the link, after all. It seems like having Google ignore that is nothing more than compromising Google’s integrity. And that applies also if big media sites use nofollow.
    In my opinion, the people who use Google’s search are the ones who are going to miss out.
    If anyone has anything to lose here, it’s Google, and the people who use Google.

    I think there is a difference between choosing to block your site entirely from Google, and choosing to block links from your site from Google.
    If anyone should see Google rank as an entitlement, it should be Google.
    It seems a bit off-kilter, I guess.
    And much more abusable.

    That said, it makes no difference in my life as a blogger or web site owner. I’m only seeing an effect as a searcher and web site viewer.
    And I have no intentions or desire to implement nofollow as any default, and I have no intention of using it in my blogging generally. Not because I think it’s detrimental though… I really just can’t be bothered to police Google rank. If someone wants me to police Google rank, they’re going to have to pay me to do it. haha!!

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