Using rel=”nofollow” On Links

When you have been leaving comments on blog posts in search of backlinks. Some of you may have noticed the rel=”nofollow” attribute. If you wondering what it is then I hope to give you a better understanding of it’s uses and what it does.

The nofollow relation was introduced by search engines to stop spammers adding there link to there website from every comment they leave on blogs. It is thought that Google and other major search engines think of links to a website as votes. All the nofollow relation does is make sure that search engines don’t register them links as votes. The attribute in my opinion has many advantages and disadvantages, but I beleive it has more advantages if it is not misused by webmasters. Here are some advantages and disadvantages.

For

• It gives the websites with organically found links a better chance of ranking high in the search engines.
• It will eliminate spammers from ranking highly because they have bombarded blogs with there links.
• Gives webmasters the opportunity the opportunity to give the websites a link.

Against

• If misused it takes a vote away from a link from a comment that adds value to a blog.
• May decrease a websites ranking if it is misused.
• May be a good website that get’s penalized for having to many nofollow relations, due to bad practice by another webmaster.

Overall

I am currently with the nofollow attribute if it is used correctly. I think that if you own a blog that allows people to post comments, you should moderate them. By moderating the comments you should then be able to seperate the spam from the comments that help you. You should then decided which link to give the nofollow relation. I would also like to add that I totally disagree with wordpress and other web 2.0 CMS systems that add the nofollow attribute to every comment. That is not what the relation is supposed to be used for.