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Should Bloggers be Helping Google Fix Their PageRank
System?
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:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728
Google announced the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own
blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/
And Microsoft added their support to the new tag in this post:
http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx
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:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797
Brian Turner's incisive article "New Nofollow Tag Cheers
Bloggers but Fails Blogs" discusses some of the potential abuses
of the new nofollow tag:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/new_nofollow_ta.html
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:
http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet
For an hilarious take on the new tag and how it will get
abused, be sure to take a look at Link Condom:
http://www.linkcondom.com
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
MORE RESOURCES updated Fri. October / 04 / 2024
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