Search engine and web leader Google have announced their efforts to cut down on the amount of spam seen on blog comments. A problem that afflicts and annoys many bloggers, it's also a major issue for Google and other search engines. The logic behind the spam is that as Google indexes the web, a link from one site to another is a "virtual" vote; websites who spam their URL's on blog comments found that they could boost their place in search listings in quite a simple manner. Google hopes to put an end to it by removing the incentive of improved ranking.
Users are advised to add "rel="nofollow"" to URL's which can be entered by users (see read more for an example). When Google's robot indexes websites, on seeing this it will ignore the link. Google have worked with major blog service providers (including Blogger, Spaces, LiveJournal, WordPress and more) to get this code implemented in upcoming versions of their software. Google recommend that the code not only be added to comments page on blogs, but to any page (e.g. guest book) that allows users to enter URL's.
For this initiative to truly work, Google needed backing from the major search engines which it appears to have recieved. Google noted that it wished to "thank MSN Search and Yahoo! for supporting this initiative". One would hope spammers get the message fast yet can't but wonder what the next method/target will be.
View: Google Blog / Announcement
Users are advised to add "rel="nofollow"" to URL's which can be entered by users (see read more for an example). When Google's robot indexes websites, on seeing this it will ignore the link. Google have worked with major blog service providers (including Blogger, Spaces, LiveJournal, WordPress and more) to get this code implemented in upcoming versions of their software. Google recommend that the code not only be added to comments page on blogs, but to any page (e.g. guest book) that allows users to enter URL's.
For this initiative to truly work, Google needed backing from the major search engines which it appears to have recieved. Google noted that it wished to "thank MSN Search and Yahoo! for supporting this initiative". One would hope spammers get the message fast yet can't but wonder what the next method/target will be.
View: Google Blog / Announcement
Q: How does a link change?
A: Any link that a user can create on your site automatically gets a new "nofollow" attribute. So if a blog spammer previously added a comment like
Visit my <*a href="http://www.example.com/">discount pharmaceuticals<*/a> site.
That comment would be transformed to
Visit my <*a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">discount pharmaceuticals<*/a> site.
(ed - remove * to make code work).
and if you would've read the article correctly you would understand that it is talking about links put on a blog by a user, not the webmaster. Just like you would type an URL here in the comment box ie HTML and CSS references. But with the nofollow in the rel attribute Google wouldn't not display www.neowin.net as one of the sites when searching for "HTML" or "CSS" or "references".
Last edited by 21023 on 19 Jan 2005 - 12:57
QUOTE
rel can be used to specify the relationship of the target of the link to the current page.
and if you would've read the article correctly you would understand that it is talking about links put on a blog by a user, not the webmaster. Just like you would type an URL here in the comment box ie HTML and CSS references. But with the nofollow in the rel attribute Google wouldn't not display www.neowin.net as one of the sites when searching for "HTML" or "CSS" or "references".
Shut the hell up, your response is unfounded. I was not looking for someone to flame me when I posted a genuine question about META tags, like how IE6's image toolbar can be disabled with the incomplient GALLERYIMG="no" (like this) or disabled with the complient <META HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar" CONTENT="no">. I checked w3schools.com first and it said that the only valid values for rel= are:
alternate
designates
stylesheet
start
next
prev
contents
index
glossary
copyright
chapter
section
subsection
appendix
help
bookmark
I don't see nofollow in the list, and as w3schools is from the W3C, they are right and your "doghtml" site is wrong.
Why don't you read the article again? It's not the user that would add rel="nofollow" to it, they wouldn't add it themselves otherwise their spamming wouldn't work would it? it's up to the script to automatically put it into the tag like BBCode automatically converts to HTML. You are wrong.
It would seem that you have a hard time to admit when you are being outsmarted
check W3C again to read the following :
and my remark about reading the article correctly was about your META question. As you said a user that enters an url with [*URL="http://myspam"]bargains[/*URL] on a blog or forum is converted by a script. The article thus states that the script should be altered to add the rel="nofollow". As a browser doesn't recognise this as a predefined link-type it will ignore this relationship. A Google bot however does know what this link-type means and act appropriately.
See there was no reason to ask about the META tag if you read it correctly.
God bless capitalism.
With the nofollow tag, I guess this would no longer hold true.
The Indian Blogger
A full code listing is available here.
HTH,
Amit.
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