{"id":7668,"date":"2005-01-20T06:50:39","date_gmt":"2005-01-20T13:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/01\/20\/more-nofollow-musings.html"},"modified":"2005-01-20T06:50:39","modified_gmt":"2005-01-20T13:50:39","slug":"more_nofollow_m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/20\/more_nofollow_m.html","title":{"rendered":"More nofollow<\/em> musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the critiques re nofollow <\/em>is that there are so many unprotected blogs out there<\/a>. <\/p>\n

However, the development may not be all good news. Commenting on the announcement Jason Duke, director at SEO company Strange Logic, said: “I speak with professional link spammers daily and most of them are laughing heartily at this announcement. The reality, as they see it, is that this is a PR exercise by the search engines so they are seen to be doing something to combat the problem.<\/p>\n

“They know that for this to work people will have to download and install a new version of their blog software and that the majority of blogs out there are started with the best intentions but then left to rot – and gather link spam.”<\/p>\n

Duke added: “I expect to see a huge increase in blog and forum spam rather than a reduction over the coming months.”<\/p>\n

SEO companies, btw, are “Search Engine Optimization” firms, consultants that assist other companies in improving their search engine rankings. If that sounds related to what comment spammers try to do … well, it is (though, of course, SEOs can be quite legal).<\/p>\n

The question I’d have here, though, how many abandoned blogs are there out there? And, more importantly, how many of them are hosted services, rather than hosted on an individual’s domain? In the cases where a blog is hosted by a service, not only are there monthly charges to discourage just abandoning the thing, but the hosting service can, I imagine, impose the needed changes unless specifically opted out of. The same might be true for “blog hosting” hosts like Blogspot. Since it is in these hosting companies interest to reduce the load burden of comment spam, I can see them taking such steps in the future, as part of their user agreements.<\/p>\n

The sites that seem most vulnerable are ones that are downloaded blogging packages on regular hosts. I have no idea what proportion of blogs fall into that category (or, more importantly, what proportion of abandoned blogs), but I don’t expect it’s the majority, or even a plurality. Most folks who start then abandon blogs do so, I suspect, on on “free” systems, and the hosts of those will, as noted, have an incentive to push for anything that reduces comment spam.<\/p>\n

Will there remain some sites that are unprotected, the proverbial broken window on the street? Sure. Will that provide enough of a boost (especially given that such sites are not likely to have high PR to begin with, and thus not give high PR in return) to link spammers to make the effort of marking their territory worthwhile? That remains to be seen. Certainly nothing’s going to change in the short run, but I suspect that SEO types like Mr Duke above are protesting a bit too loudly at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the critiques re nofollow is that there are so many unprotected blogs out there. However, the development may not be all good news. Commenting on the announcement Jason…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-spam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7678,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/19\/more_on_the_goo.html","url_meta":{"origin":7668,"position":0},"title":"More on the Google nofollow tag","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 19-Jan-05 7:53am","format":false,"excerpt":"A bit of a backlash this morning on the announcement of the new rel=\"nofollow\" tag that Google et al. are going to be implementing. Most of the critiques are referenced...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging - Technical"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging - Technical","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogging-technical"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7676,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/19\/hmmmm_what_does.html","url_meta":{"origin":7668,"position":1},"title":"Hmmmm … what does nofollow actually do?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 19-Jan-05 9:41am","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's what Google says: From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=\"nofollow\") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. Here's...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7681,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/18\/it_doesnt_work.html","url_meta":{"origin":7668,"position":2},"title":"IT DOESN’T WORK ANY MORE! DO YOU FINALLY GET IT!?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 18-Jan-05 5:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"(The above is a message to comment spammers.) Comment spammers do their evil and f\u0153tid thing in order garner high Google pageranks for their sites. MT long ago set up...","rel":"","context":"In "Spam"","block_context":{"text":"Spam","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/computer-security\/spam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7672,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/19\/more_nofollow_t.html","url_meta":{"origin":7668,"position":3},"title":"More nofollow thoughts","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 19-Jan-05 2:28pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An extension of my post from this morning. As I read various objections to the nofollow tag, aside from the \"It won't actually instantly end all comment spamming\" (which nobody...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging - Technical"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging - Technical","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogging-technical"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9795,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/11\/01\/blog_verification_trackba.html","url_meta":{"origin":7668,"position":4},"title":"“Blog Verification” trackback spam","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-Nov-06 6:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"Posted as a public service announcement ... So I've been noticing more and more trackback spam with a random number and the words \"Blog Verification.\" It's getting now so that...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6705,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/30\/spam_spam_spam.html","url_meta":{"origin":7668,"position":5},"title":"Spam, spam, spam, spam …","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 30-Jul-04 8:40am","format":false,"excerpt":"The blog spammers continue to get more clever in their attempts to bump up the Google PageRank of their sites. 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