LinkLove better than DoFollow Plugin?
I am torn between using the DoFollow or LinkLove plugin, I will go for the one that will add the most value to readers, as well as this site.
By default, the “no follow” attribute was in place to combat spammers. If my understanding is correct, it serves as condom to prevent your page rank (pr) juice from being licked by strangers or unwanted and opportunist commenters, i.e. visitors who leave a “thanks” or “nice post” comments.
DoFollow, who are being used by bloggers like Pixlehead, Jeffro, Jhay and Maki, intends to deactivate this and allow commenters to be rewarded by the PR of the host blog.
However, if the “no follow” attribute is turned-off, some believe Google may take it against a blog and have its PR juice devalued for having so many outbound links (?!)
LinkLove, on the other hand, attempts to reward commenters of the pr juice only after earning it. i.e, meeting the minimum number of comments. *Bloggers like David and Todd use this plugin.
To get a grasp of what I am musing about, you can read the discussion at Search Engine Journal.
update (11/04/07):
- Dexter explained the difference of a dofollow from a nofollow blog.
*update (11/05/07):
- Potential abuses when no follow is disabled by Chris
- another plugin option: Lucia’s Linky Love
update (11/08/07): I am trying Lucia’s Linky Love and it looks like more user friendly.
Good point. I’m currently reviewing the plugins you mentioned and re-thinking if it still worth keeping on my blog.
Google has been rather harsh these days.
awww i’ll research on this one also..right now my robots meta tag is using the index,follow tag…
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Thank you for informing me about the possible consequences of that dofollow plugin I just installed. Installing that plugin was really tempting… I thought I could splurge some PR to my readers but I will be looking for some feedback about dofollow.
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I was actually asking the same question since February 2007. I still haven’t decided even up to now. I’m still using the DoFollow plugin, though—the plugin I was using before I asked the question we all would like to know.
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@ Amy and Maki– Let me know your inputs as well, but I have used LinkLove for the meantime.
@ Aja– visited your posts and got some answers on the topic itself. Thanks
FYI, I have been using dofollow on my blog since it started in august and also putting links to people’s blogs with top commentators and a blogroll. I still got a PR5 from google so I don’t think it has much effect on PR leakage (unless I was supposed to get a pr7 instead!)
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Hi Andy,
I’m enjoying your CommentLuv plugin.
Regarding the PR juice, almost all are trying to figure what caused Google to downgrade the PR of some of the A-list blogs. The abuse of the link exchanges is the common suspect.
But I may agree that you’re blog should have a PR 7, don’t you think?
PR was the last thing on my mind when I created the blog, my last blog got up to PR5 but it was such a bind trying to stay on top of Google and writing about only one subject (affiliate site) so this time around I wanted to make a blog for me to write about things I enjoy without worrying about PR and I got up to 5 after 2 months!
PR7 is my next goal!, everyone was saying google doesn’t matter and I agree but getting a 5 makes me want to get it higher now (silly I know!), all I can do is more of what I’m doing now and not worry about it.
great posts you have here, I subscribed to your feed…
Andy Bailey’s last blog post..Stumbled - Stumbleupon Widget for Wordpress 2.2
Thanks for linking to me. Interesting conversation your having here. I too thought about using LinkLove in combination with the Do-Follow plugin but I thought that at least one link to back to their own site was enough. No need for two.
As far as PR goes, I don’t really care all that much but it is nice to have something better than 0. This latest round of PR updates pushed me from a 0 all the way up to a 4 and thats with 286 posts and 561 comments which means there are far more outgoing links on my blog than their are incoming and my PR jumped up.
Go with whatever you feel comfortable with. Both seem to have benefits for your readers.
I use the LinkLove plugin. I find that a lot of first comments from users are junk where they write the equivalent of “nice site” and I don’t want to reward those.
Another alternative you might want to look in to is leaving comments as nofollow, but install a top commenters plugin that removes the nofollow in a special list of commenters.
I had never thought of that, that is to say, that Google would penalize a blog for using the Do Follow pluggin.
I am giving serious thought to using the LinkLove Pluggin, which seems like a great way to promote quality comments as well as more comments.
In that case, you would want to install the DO FOLLOW - CASE BY CASE mod which allows you to pick and choose which ones you want to remove the no follow code.
@ Jeffro– Thank you for the insights “re: but I thought that at least one link to back to their own site was enough. No need for two”.
@ Marios– I have activated LinkLove (with pre determined default of 3), since the options (to remove the “no follow”) was in terms of # comments, unlike in dofollow, options were in # of days. I disabled temporarily, the top commenters plugin, until i figure out how to widgetize this or found a newer version that is widgets ready.
@Pixelhead– thank you for the mention in your new post
@Andy and all– I subscribed to your feeds, too
I think I’ll give the LinkLove plugin a try. I agree with the principle on how it works. Commentators should earn the love that they get. Thanks for sharing!
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@ Jaypee, it also protect your blog from possible “DoFollow” abuses
I have finally decided to remove the Dofollow plugin and install the LInklove plugin this saturday.
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@ Maki– If you find it difficult to customize linklove, you can also try Lucias Linky Love
I’m using the DoFollow Plugin and since I’m moderating the comments, no spam will get through… nor poor comments for that matter.
If a visitor has left you a good comment, it would be nice to give him a link back even if it’s only one comment!
I don’t think that Google is taking in consideration the total number of outgoing links to decide a penalty - it’s rather the number of outgoing links on a certain page that counts, so keeping it small and you would be safe…
Cheers,
Nick
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“I don’t think that Google is taking in consideration the total number of outgoing links to decide a penalty - it’s rather the number of outgoing links on a certain page that counts, so keeping it small and you would be safe…”
Thank you Nicusor for this info.. and for the visit.
On moderating comments (of regular visitors)I find it, for lack of better term, offending to them.
I have an option turned on, so I don’t have to moderate comments for already approved comments’ authors.
Look for “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” under Options -> Discussions.
Cheers!
Nick
P.S. You mistyped my name above
nicusor’s last blog post..Not Another Search Engine?
Ohh… am so sorry, have I have it corrected
I’ve been using “NoFollow Case by Case” for quite a while now, it seems to work pretty well. I like the idea of only rewarding repeat commenters though. It would encourage people to stay on your site longer.
@ ADAC– Lucia’s Linky Love is like the LinkLove plugin but far more easier to use, specially to a non geek like me.