WordPress SEO Comments and rel=nofollow article updated March 2014. Google no longer honors the nofollow tag! Instead of protecting the PR/link benefit it used to conserve for non nofollow links, it now DELETES the PR/link benefit! Stupid move by Google as it again forces webmasters to look for alternatives to nofollow to protect PR/link benefit like using javascript when linking to sites we do not wish to promote! My SEO advice is do not use rel=”nofollow” on any website if you care about search engine optimization. To get around this WordPress SEO issue I created a SEO WordPress Theme that instead of using normal links to link to comment authors URLs it uses form button links (Google ignores them, no […]
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Manual WordPress Comment SPAM
Have you had any problems with spammers yet?? Just wondering – I implemented this on my blog a few minutes ago. Thanks for the tip!
(I think it’s actually kind of rude to keep that attribute in there. Commenters are bloggers a favour by participating in our blogs, the least we could do is give them a followable linkback. Abuse might be more of a problem with high profile blogs but stil…)
Manual WordPress Comment SPAM
Manual WordPress Comment SPAM Techniques
Hey Megan,
Difficult to say as this blog had the highest SPAM rate of all sites I own put together and then the others don’t come close (have quite a few WordPress Blogs as well). When I made this post Akismet had caught almost 4,000 SPAM comments, now it’s at 6,067 so 2,000 SPAM comments in 3 months!!
Relatively speaking that’s an increase, but it could be because the site is more popular since adding free WordPress themes with AdSense and SEO optimisation included. So the increase could be due to popularity.
I have noticed one spammer to my blogs, presumably owns gameburn.org (that’s the SPAMMED link) and daily I’m finding thought out SPAM that at first got through. Turned out he/she has been copying content from other sources (forums) and posting it as comments for backlinks.
Looks like all the posts are getting filtered now, so Akismet has learned this poster is a spammer.
Had the posts just been to this blog I might have believed it was targeted since I removed the nofollow, but it’s on other blogs with the nofollow still part of comments. So though SPAM might have increased I’ve not noticed SPAM that’s not automated which was my only concern at trying this. Still early days though.
David Law
Manual WordPress Comment SPAM Techniques
Dofollow WordPress Plugins
I’m going to install the “dofollow” plugin: do you think it would be nice to start a “dofollow campaign” for all the blogs of the world? I wasn’t aware of this trick before, thanks.
WordPress Comment Plugins
I’ve had some good luck with both Akismet and Spam Karma, but Spam still sneaks through from time to time. I keep my comments moderated, so nothing hits the site without approval.
Akismet WordPress Plugin Recommended
Akismet does do a great job of filtering spam. I find that it works very well on my WordPress sites.
I’ve given up on Akismet for Drupal sites however. It really slows down the commenting process for visitors. I assume this is due to how it is implemented in Drupal.
I’ll try Bad Behaviour on your advice. I get so much spam caught by Akismet that I’ve given up going through it all looking for false spam.
I’m just looking into removing rel=nofollow from my blog. Part of blogsphere is supporting other blogs, and I think that rel=nofollow throws the baby out with the bathwater, and does nothing to reduce spam.
Akismet WordPress Plugin Recommended
Akismet WordPress Plugin Broken
thanx for this post, since my Akismet stopped, i’m getting much spam!
Akismet and SPAM Karma WordPress Plugins
Hi David,
thanks for this very precise explanation for the various possibilities to effectively fight spam. We have had our share of spam and I have therefore just installed the updated version of spam karma which i found to be the perfect companion to akismet. Hopfully this will reduce the amount of spam we have experienced on our blog drastically, as it is very timeconsuming to clean out the comments-section by hand.
Thanks again,
Steve Riehler
Akismet and SPAM Karma WordPress Plugins
WordPress Dofollow Blogs
Thanks for the post, I believe in moderation and filtering and not penalizing good commentors because of a few bad apples.
Just a note: If you’re using WordPress 2.1.2, removing nofollow is a little different.
Find the file…
/wp-includes/comment-template.php
and around line #48 make the same changes you have posted above to turn your WordPress blog into dofollow.
Cheers !!!
WordPress Dofollow Blogs
Dofollow WordPress Plugin
Hy Dave, thanks a lot: at the end I found this dofollow plugin semiologic.com/software/dofollow/ and I have installed it!
Akismet and Bad Behavior WordPress Plugins
Nice post. I’m running Akismet on my site but lately I’ve been having 1 or 2 spam comments slip through per day and marking them as spam is messing up the RSS feed for my readers (it ends up showing everything in the feed as new) so I’ve been looking for something to augment it.
The “Bad Behavior” plugin you mentioned sounds like exactly what I want but the link is dead. Do you happen to have a copy you could post?
Akismet and Bad Behavior WordPress Plugins
Bad Behavior WordPress Plugin
It’s working now http://bad-behavior.ioerror.us/download/
David
WordPress SEO
I like WordPress SEO, it’s my kind of thing. I have my own blog on it.