As many people who visit this site and many of my other sites knows all of my blogs are do follow. I realize that some of you still might not know what that means. Well, it means that I started using plugins that would remove the nofollow tags from comments way back in October of 2006.
I became a “do follow” blogger in order to reward my regular visitors with a proper link back to their site.
You see, most blogging platforms have nofollow tags built in to the comment area so when you leave a comment on most blogs the nofollow tag that is placed in the link that you left when you signed the comment tells search engines like Google not to follow and index the link.
To heck with that I said. I’ve had a fairly loyal following of readers for quite a while now. Why shouldn’t I give them a link for their loyalty and for leaving fantastic comments that make me think, laugh or inform me of things I hadn’t thought of yet?
In October I started my following experience by using the comment plugger plugin which gave my commenters a link right under the post. Once this post has some comments you’ll see a link to the various people that have left a comment right below the post.
Then, in April, I added the do follow plugin to my site and started the Do Follow Blogroll so that we’d all know what other blogs were also do follow blogs.
I should have actually taken out the comment plugger plugin at that time because I’m actually giving two links every time someone comments! Oops! I forgot about the comment plugger. Perhaps by the time you read this post I’ll have removed that feature.
I don’t think I’ve ever really lacked for comments, but lately, as a result of the do follow blogroll being copied on a number of sites – in some instances in order of a sites page rank! – I’ve been getting all kinds of comments from other bloggers, business owners, business websites and so on who seem only to be leaving a very basic comment in order to get a back link.
So have a number of people on the do follow blogroll. One person told me this morning that someone left a comment on her site recently praising her for being a do follow blogger and then they proceeded to leave a long list of links!
Hello! Do follow blogs are not link directories!
Wait a minute ….
Why did I become a do follow blogger? To reward my regular loyal visitors. I can’t do that properly with the do follow plugin that I’m currently using because everyone gets a link that has had the nofollow tags removed. If people are using sites just to get links well … that doesn’t work does it!
Yeah … so maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling a little used and abused lately.
Hmmmm “I wonder what other do follow type plugins are out there?” I thought to myself.
So I did a search for do follow plugins and one of the first search results was Andy Beards Ultimate list of Nofollow and Dofollow plugins. I’d seen this list in the past of course, but at that time I couldn’t think of a reason why someone would want to use a do follow plugin that didn’t necessarily make all comment links follow.
Well after my experiences of the last few weeks having the same people leaving comments on nine of my husband and I’s blogs – many of which appeared to be pretty much the same comment each time, I’ve learned my lesson and I think I’m going to go back to rewarding only those who are loyal visitors and commenters.
I’m thinking of using the LinkyLove plugin which allows you to set it up so that someone must comment a certain amount of times before their links will follow. Seems a safer bet to me.
The default amount of comments someone would have to leave is set to 10. I may or may not leave it at that if I use this plugin. I’m not going to say of course because those that want to play the system will then know what magic number they must reach.
If the do follow bloggers on my blogroll begin using this it will be a little harder for me to verify if their site follows when I’m checking their sites to add to the blogroll but in an effort to prevent abuse I think I’d better allow my members to use whichever plugin they wish to use.
If I begin using the LinkyLove plugin this will of course be the change to my do follow policy that I referred to in the title of this post.
The final straw the broke the camels back and prompted this upcoming change is due to the fact that someone has now created a search engine to help people find do follow blogs. I can see this being abused and making it even easier to abuse those who only want to be nice to their loyal readers.
The reason that I haven’t begun to use this plugin already is because I’m still having CPU resource problems with my web host. I need to make sure that this plugin isn’t constantly calling the databases and using up a lot of valuable resources on my server.
Does anyone know if this is a light of heavy CPU resource usage plugin?
Does anyone already use the LinkyLove plugin? If you do have you had any problems? Is your site still fairly fast or has it slowed?
I’m sorry, I don’t have any experiences with do follow. As you know I’m quite new to WP and Blogger doesn’t have all this nice pluggins.
I learn a lot by reading your blog and your experience though – thanks for sharing and please keep up the good work and keep us posted!
Trish, I’m feeling what you’re saying. Just last week, I made the comment to some friends, I’m about to jump ship. I’m tired of the abusers too. I’d rather freely give link love to my readers in a post at this point, then have ever Tom, Joe and Harry who wants a link leave me a “following the do-follow list” kind of comment. No thanks!
I’m about to strip it off of all of my blogs as well. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’m leaning towards removal.
so many people are getting spam like comments that a lot of bloggers have removed the dofollows all together, this looks like an interesting option for those that have removed it and for those of us that want to prevent getting the spammy links. Great find! 🙂
That looks like an interesting plugin Trish. Maybe I could be a dofollow again with something like that. I want to reward my readers/commenter’s for coming to my site. I don’t want to promote some companies new product for free!
Great post, thanks!
heheehe – I know you’ve received your share of those type of comments! Me, too!
I’m going to check out that LinkyLove plugin – thanks for pointing it out to us.
Tricia.. if you find out more about this plug-in, I’d like to know. I don’t want another plug-in if it’s a resource hog 🙂 It sound good.
I’m sticking with the Do Follow plugin. All of my comments are moderated, so it doesn’t take me long to figure out who’s commenting just for the sake of throwing out a couple of links.
Then again, if somebody comments with a bunch of links, I sometimes gleefully strip out the links and post the comments anyway! 😉
I installed the Linky Love plugin several days ago as well as “No Follow Case by Case” (http://www.fob-marketing.de/marketing-blog-184-wordpress-nofollow-seo-plugin-nofollow-case-by-case.html) .
I really haven’t figured out how to use the Case by Case plugin yet. I’ll probably go back to do-follow later on down the line but right now I’m still smarting from some abuse…
great post thank u for sharing ill have 2 chek that out dont forget to come visit my blog… hahaha
Tricia, thanks for letting us know about this plug-in. I’m getting spammed, too, and that’s part of why I haven’t been real eager to add my other blogs to the list.
I messed up that link, sorry… 🙁
Here is the link No follow case by case…
I looked at it a little closer and you have to edit the person’s comment and add /dontfollow at the end of their URL… Editing is the thing I’m trying to get away from so I don’t know if I’ll use this one or not…
I haven’t really had any problems (maybe my blogs aren’t ppular enough), but this LinkyLove plugin sounds like a brilliant idea. Might look into it and switch to that if you have good results.
Keep us posted.
DOFOLLOW, dear!
Take a little more time for your weblog and just delete the “nice spammers”.
Any plugin which counts the number of the comments, does call to the DB on every comment (checks the comments on the users and writes one more in the table)
That is not considered to be HEAVY on DB usage.
Your right side-bar is much heavier.
Cheers, my dear 🙂
I agree with you, I am looking for a good way to have some alternative to yes or no. Something like case by case along with a certain number of links seems good. As does trackbacks being followed (assuming they are not spam – I approve/disapprove all of them too). My ideal solution would be one that has a count on any comment showing what number comment that is. It defaults to dofollow at whatever number I set – but I can make it follow early if the comment is really good (of the link is to something relevant). And that I can make the links in any particular comment nofollow even it the commenter is over the limit if I choose.
One nice tool I added recently is Top Commentators. http://www.pfadvice.com/wordpress-plugins/show-top-commentators/
OMG Trish I almost had an aneurysm getting my blog to work on this do-follow thing…of course I think my page thing is so low only a total idiot would spam me for the link! And I’m having a problem advertising on my blog as I’ve foolishly chosen cookies and coffee as my people ads, and two cool pet stores as my critter ads…and I’ve already spent $50 on the cookies and coffee. As I’ve made a grand total of $2.50 so far off the ads, I figure I might make the money back I’ve already spent before I die…maybe. God I’m stupid. I should have picked hemorrhoid cream and the delicious stylings of Brussells Sprouts Unlimited.
Renny Do follow is a nice way to reward your visitors – the ones who comment anyway by giving them a link that search engines will pick up and index. In other words a do follow blog might help contribute to a site gaining in page rank and the higher a sites page rank usually the more money they can earn with advertising if they choose to go that way. Also a sites PR kind of shows Googles level of trust in that site. So you always want higher PR. 🙂
Glad you can learn a few things over here. 🙂
Deb I’ll take a look at the email that you sent me and remove those blogs if you’d like. Are you sure you don’t want to try the linkylove plugin that I discussed in this post though? People would have had to comment on your site a certain number of times (10 is default) before they’d get a link that follows. It sounds like the PERFECT solution to me.
Let me know and if you still want me to remove those sites I’ll do it. NP.
Loretta – yes I knew there were some plugins that had a delayed effect but when I went looking and found this one listed on Andy’s site I thought it was perfect for our needs.
Someone would have to be pretty determined to spam a site in order to get enough comments in so that their links would follow. Whereas regular visitors would probably keep their follow links when the plugins activated because they’ve probably been reading a site and commenting for a while. Win Win.
Jules Right we get paid for promoting products and sites … we don’t usually do it for free so why should we do it in our comments? Not for someone that only visits once or twice no.
I was thinking since you and a few others decided to get off the list that I’d try to find a solution and this was the best I could come up with. This plugin pretty much guarantees that you’d have to be a regular visitor to have your links follow. It would also cut down on our PR leakage too.
Hey Amy. Did you try the plugin? If you did let me know if it seems to slow down your site at all?
Yes I get way too many spammy comments thanks to all the blogs we run! This plugin seems like the best solution.
I haven’t found out much more about this plugin Charlotte but I’m hoping it’s not a resource hog. It does sound like it’s the plugin we’ve all been looking for though doesn’t it?
Lisa I run 7 blogs and my husband runs 2 – generally since I’m the one with my email program open all day I’m the one to approve all the new comments. With 9 blogs on the do follow list you start to see who is abusing the do follow list and who isn’t. Frankly in the last two or three weeks the abuse has increased by 200%!
Now with this guy making a search engine that’s already listed all the do follow blogs he could find it’s only bound to get worse I had to find a solution or else become a nofollow blogger again. I like rewarding my visitors and don’t want to go back to being nofollow.
Anna I’m not sure that I like the case by case plugin. Basically all links are nofollow unless you add a tag to it. Too much work for someone maintaining 9 blogs (soon to be 16 active blogs). I like the linkylove one that i listed here in this post. All links will follow once someone has commented 10 times (you can adjust the amount of comments needed before it kicks in).
So if someone were to drop by and leave a spammy self promoting comment that had a bit to do with your post … you could keep the comment and link if you like. The link wouldn’t follow though. Now if they came by 10 times then their links would follow but I’m not sure the spammy people are going to come around that many times. They’d move on to easier sites first.
If your sites have been up and running for a while your loyal readers have probably left 10 or more comments already or else they are well on their way to reaching that number. Their links will follow.
We are do follow bloggers because we want to reward loyal visitors. This linkylove plugin seems to do just that.
Cass yes I figure any established site with decent PR is probably going through the ringer right about now and it’s probably only going to get worse. That’s why I went looking for a solution. Thanks for dropping by. 🙂
Owen I haven’t switched to the plugin yet because I was hoping someone would comment who is using it. I’m the one with the CPU resource problems – remember? 🙂 It does sound like it’s just what we need though.
My husband and I have 9 blogs on the list so we really notice the troublesome commenters.
Truden – oh I am a do follower and hope to stay that way. You see the problem is that I have 7 blogs on the do follow list and my husband has two. Since I’m home all day (due to illness) my emails pretty much always open so I’m the one approving, moderating or deleting all the comments.
Some of our blogs are fairly popular so they get a fair amount of comments each day. I can only spend so much time deleting or taking out spammy links. I needed a better solution.
Plus I run the do follow blogroll and people have been leaving it because they too have seen a HUGE increase in spammy self promoting comments. If I want to keep that going we need a plugin that rewards loyalty. The linkylove plugin seems to do just that.
As for CPU resources – I suppose it would check the database at the same time the comment is posting and making it’s own database call .. I just hope that going through a site with a lot of comments doesn’t slow things down too much. I’m really in trouble with my CPU resource problems.
John yes a plugin that combined the features of the linkylove plugin and the CasebyCase plugin would be good. Of course I think the linkylove would work well enough on it’s own … Sites using linkylove wouldn’t be a free ride anymore so spammy comments should decrease.
Karen you crack me up! You aren’t supposed to purchase your affiliate items! Well once maybe but not regularly ok? hey well at least you can tell your visitors that those cookies are really good since you’ve tried them!
You know … you’ve had the affiliate links up for what? A week or so? $2.50 isn’t too bad to make in a week. Especially if you continue to make that much week after week. Sure you’d like to make more but when you think about some affiliate programs that only make literally cents a week $2.50 begins to sound pretty darn good. Your post about the cookies and possibly where you’ve placed the badge/link must be good.
I remember that changing over to do follow almost killed you and your blog! I felt bad for you! Well unfortunately your site is typepad so you can’t use this plugin. Do they make additional addons for typepad? If they did it would be great if there was an easy do follow or do follow after so many comments like this one.
I’m going to wait and see how others feel about the linkylove plugin after they’ve tried it a bit, but I’m ready for a change. I took my dofollow badge off, but my blog is still dofollow & on the lists that have been perpetuated an ifinitum. I’m spending +/- half an hour a day stripping out urls & deleting almost-relevant comments from one-timers. Makes me crazy.
The last few plugins I’ve installed never showed up in my plugins file, but if I can figure out the rpoblem, I’m game for trying to regulate with a plugin.
Mahalo for searchign out a solution for all of us! 🙂
You know me… I’m trying to think of a plugin that will help us make dofollow work better. But I’m at the brainstorming phase to figure out the features.
Would people be interested in a plugin where we only dofolllow other bloggers who also dofollow? It’s possible to write!
I think LinkyLove plugin is ok, this plugin prevents spammers in someways.. time will come we can enjoy link loving without being abused by spammers… thanks to great plugin developers.
Hi, I have just discovered you blog (via the do-follow blogroll 😉 ) and I already love it. I also removed the no-follow tags on my blog, but I’m not bothered so much with people trying to abuse that. If i don’t like a comment, I just delete it. I see do-follow like a way of not only rewarding loyal readers, but also of attracting new readers who would eventually become loyal if they like what they see. If people are commenting on my blog only to get a link back, if the comment is pertinent, then I have no problem with that.
I think spam will be spam with or without do follow. The linkylove thing sounds like a good idea.
However I think this is the kind of thing that could easily drive one round the twist – trying to decide what someones motivations for posting a comment are. I’m inclined to let them have their link unless it is really obvious outright spam. I also tend to gravitate to the blogs of people who comment, and they’re likely to get a sidebar link from me in the long term if I like their blog. Generally I do. I have only found one or two blogs out there on the internet that I’ve utterly hated. 😉
Tricia,
I have been a do follower now for a couple of weeks and have noticed an increase of spam just the last few days.
Hopefully, the new pluig-in will not be a resource hound.
Did you change all of your RSS feeds btw?
Oh my, this is all way over my head and I apologize for being a new blogger, but I am very interested in following this train of thought. I am trying to learn what I can and I’m not very techno savvy, but I do understand the annoyance of spam. My sister, who is more experienced, was nice enough to set up my blog for me. At this point it is set up as dofollow and I am working on improving my page rank. But I certainly don’t want to do it by spamming as I look to those of you who are more experienced as people I can learn from. I have a vague idea of what a plug-in is and would like to follow this conversation more. I hope you do hear from people that have the linkylove plug in and can hopefully find an improved way of rewarding your frequent readers. I would like to become one of those as I find your information very helpful. Would you mind if I added you to my blogroll?
Hey Tricia–can I ask a dumb question? On the Do-Follow linkage–a while back Kat gave a link to a site that will actually show you all of your link backs. Pages and pages of link backs due to comments. But all of these links were directly to the post where the comment was left–every “specific” post I’ve ever seen has a PR0–so is there really much “love” in the link anyway, right? It would be something if it would give a link to the blog itself–if it were say a PR5 or so–but to a PR0 post–it doesn’t seem to be a huge help. Am I understanding the ‘link’ correctly??
Just a question–I’m not normally tech-savvy–and have a PR3 so no one really spams me–Thanks for you post though–I do want to look into the two plug-ins that were mentioned here.
Tricia, most hosting companies will complain about CPU and server overload once your blog become popular and visited.
You won’t have this problems with wordpress.com
Check what the prices are there for using your domain name and just move your blog to their servers.
I had to rent virtual dedicated server for my websites.
My previous hosting company clearly told me to move away.
Do not wait for them to tell you that.
Before it comes to that point they will cut your website server recourses and make it unusable.
I have no idea about CPU load on that plugin, but if you are still using wpcache then that shouldn’t be a problem anyway.
Lots of people with popular blogs are using Linklove, it is a good option, though I would tend to still delete junk comments.
I delete junk comments all the time, sometimes I don’t even ban the commenter from commenting again 🙂
By having a generally high quality of comments on your blog, you actively encourage better comments.
I have noticed an increase in comments too. Some have been interesting. I got a comment the other day about how cute the photo of my cat’s paws was, and I hadn’t uploaded the photo yet, I had just uploaded the post. It was the one time I put one before the other and I got this long comment about how cute the cat’s paws were. So I let it stay on my blog and put a follow up comment about the omniscient quality of the commenter.
By the way I tagged you for a Meme, hope you don’t mind. The link is attached to my name.
I am relatively new to all this and don’t have the amount of spam that the long time bloggers have, but I cannot stand people abusing a good thing. Having a plugin that requires a certain number of posts before links, sounds very reasonable to me. Nice post.
I intend to stick with dofollow. I strip out my fair share of URLs, though and delete many. But my real readers need to be rewarded.
The do-follow has it’s good points but also some bad ones. Myself, tend to think it’s still a good tool, although people try to profit from it. Especially for young of fresh started blogs, this plugin might attract interaction, and might be one of the first steps into creating a community.
That’s why i use it. Of course, there’s the other aspect you mentioned, trying to thank your already existing community. But, for a very big blog, might come a time where the incredible amount of spam will make you think if this worth it.
Unfortunately (or not), i haven’t quite reached that step with my blogs 🙂