With much sadness, I must deactivate LinkLove
For those of you who don’t know about LinkLove, it’s a wonderful plugin for WordPress by Andrew Timberlake which automatically disables the nofollow attribute in links for people who’ve left at least ten links. I absolutely love the plugin and strongly believe in rewarding positive contributions to my blog but recently I’ve decided to deactivate the tool for a number of reasons.
First, I’m getting slammed with keyword spammers. These are people who constantly post comments using names like “Car Sales” and “Dog Treats” in hopes of generating back links from my website to theirs. In theory I don’t really mind but this week it’s become a significant issue so I’ve elected to deactivate the plugin for a while to see if it helps calm the keyword spam a little.
My second reason for deactivating the plugin is that I’m getting ready to make a few significant changes around the site. A lot of you may have noticed that my blog’s changed looks significantly over the past several months. This wasn’t an accident, I’ve been trying different design elements and marketing combinations to determine what designs and content works best for me. After a long period of experimentation, I’ve finally determined what I need from thisismyurl.com and so I’ve started programming a new theme in earnest to help build a better online presence.
What does nofollow mean?
When a person creates a link from one website to another, it’s voting for the second site and telling Google that site A believes site B to be of equal or greater value to the web. That’s great for people like me who post links to other websites because it helps Google know which websites I have faith in but the problem comes in that when people post comments on websites, they can promote their own content regardless of how I feel about it. That’s where the nofollow tag comes in. In effect, it tells Google that while I’m willing to link to the other site I don’t want to ‘vote’ for it.
The process of voting for a website gets more complicated when you take PageRank into account. Effectively, when I ‘vote’ for a website, I’m telling Google that I trust the website enough that I’m willing to stake my reputation (my PageRank) on the content of their website and that Google should transfer part of my reputation to them. Again, this is wonderful for websites that I truly support and read but not good at all for websites that I don’t actually read or support (such as those people who keyword bomb my site).
Is my website now only nofollow?
Not at all, in fact I believe my decision to turn off the fantastic LinkLove plugin will be beneficial to all my regular readers because it’ll cut down on spam comments but more importantly it’ll give me the time I need to start really focusing on helping others build their online reputations by reviewing and promoting websites I love to read.
If you’d still like a free, nofollow dofollow quality link from thisismyurl.com to your website there are a few easy ways to earn it:
- Invite me to be a guest writer on your website. Boy do I love writing and this can be a win-win for you! With the new design almost finished, I’ve included a special area for posting links to articles I’ve written around the web. These are prime, dofollow quality links that will be used to help promote websites I love to work with.
- Offer to be a guest writer on my website. I know it might not always seem like it but I do appreciate that I don’t know everything, so why not help me out? Contribute an article to the website and earn a strong link back to your site.
- Send me a Pingback by posting a link to my content on your website. Next time you’re writing an article, why not take a look to see if there’s anything here on thisismyurl.com that you could use to support your article? Pingbacks happen when your blog posts a story with a link to a story on my website and will always appear nofollow free.
- Sponsor the site by placing a 125×125px banner on the site, it’s a great way to help show your support as well as increase links back to your website.
- Do something amazing on your website and tell me about it on Twitter. When I retweet it’ll appear here on the site as well as travel out to over 1,000 followers.
Frankly Chris, it’s a inappropriate measure to deactivate a plugin when you promised to offer a PR5 link and other link love. There are many of us who have offered our comments and have not spammed you and should be given the link love we have earned. You might consider not approving those who are spamming as opposed to disapproving those of us who have been faithful and loyal to you.
Joe’s last blog post..Colleen Lane: Cool And Composed
This is depressing :(. Spam comes even if you’ll deactivate the plugin.
The only thing will help you is “comment moderation”.
OR
Atleast you should help your regular reader n commenters by linking back to them in your blogroll.
Dave’s last blog post..View Twitter (tweets) updates from Microsoft Excel
Dear Chris, you can moderate comment, if found spam comment then not approve but if you post all comment with nofollow then who comes your site and weste own time for posting comment. its your decision…
thx
Chris I have no problems with decision. You do what you have to do. Thanks for the opportunity and thanks for your advice both on this site and by email. I look forward to continuing to learn much more hear.
Chris, I agree spammers are an annoying lot and you are right to take action against it. The bottom line is, this is your domain and you can do anything you want. I like your win-win idea to give something back to your users. I’d just comment on the keyword spam. If the “Car Sales” or “Dog Treats” come to the site and see “Make Money Online” they may assume it is OK to use keywords although you asked all of us not to do it.
Chris, In my humble opinion – No matter what, you would always get spammy comments. Even if you talked about making it NOFOLLOW here in this post, spammers (people using KEYWORDS as anchor) not gonna read this post before spamming (Unless you plan to make them read your comment policy before posting every comment.
It’s in a way injustice to regular people and commentators to your blog, and that would probably save your comment moderation efforts in return of no faith of your readers in you. I am sure you must have gained loyal readership and retained it until now, through the PR5 link post to begin with.
Abhijeet’s last blog post..Uniblue’s Registry Booster Helps Improving System Performance and Stability
Although disappointed Chris, I’ll still continue to comment and visit often. I still think you should punish those who spam you, while rewarding those of us who contribute regularly. Personally, I’m subscribed to a dozen or so blogs. I’ve picked blogs I can learned something from, develop a relationship with the blog owner, and continue building links. That is (or the original reason) why I’m here. :)
Joe’s last blog post..Colleen Lane: Cool And Composed
Chris,I like reading your posts plus notification on twitter helps to keep up. The nofollow is understandable but as Joe above mentioned a bit disappointing, a thought how long will the “do follow” go for did cross my mind as good things, such as pr5, often do not last long.
Well, I truly understand that this is only way out (or the way you prefer it to be, Chris). Still you offer many ways for your readers to obtain a PR5 link, which is more than many other blogowners.
@Joe Placing a lot of relevant comments on a blog is not really what I call “to have earned” a high PR backlink ;)
Casper @mymoneyblog.info’s last blog post..Urgent Update For Blog Owners
Hay Chris, I don’t blame you for making this decision. The truth is that almost immediately after you posted on “how to get a PR 5 link” he number of cmments on each post exploded.
Obviously its great to have a lot of reader interaction but if most of them are just drive-by comments trying to grab an easy link there’s not much value in them.
Mike Collins’s last blog post..What’s In Your RSS Reader?
Thanks Christ for the support and mailing me your comment , i am also agree with your dicition, if in future any way to post comment in dofollow, then happly with all..
thx
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