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
Google announced the new
tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog
And Microsoft
added their support to the new tag in this post
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
Brian Turner's incisive article "New
Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs" discusses
some of the potential abuses of the new nofollow tag
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.
For an hilarious take on the new tag and how it
will get abused, be sure to take a look at Link
Condom
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.
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
