You Can't Trust People to Use Nofollow Links

Here's a quick comment that is somewhat unrelated, but inspired by this post about tailrank blocking PayPerPost bloggers. The reason what I have to say is somewhat unrelated is because it's not about PayPerPost. It's about using nofollow links. Kevin states that most of the links in that post were nofollow and that the PayPerPost bloggers can avoid getting banned on TailRank by making their paid links nofollow. I think it's admirable that Kevin is trying to make good use of nofollow, but I fear it's an exercise in futility.

I almost never use nofollow links.  I just go with the default in the editor and hope the crawler or index service sorts everything out.  As a little test, I used no follow links in my last post.  It really wasn't that difficult, but it definitely took extra effort.  Given that I'm a technical guy, albeit a lazy one, and even I don't regularly use nofollow links, I think the chances of getting the regular blogger to use them are slim.

Oh well, at least I'll try to be responsible from here on out.  I don't do PayPerPost, I just want to play friendly for TailRank and any other crawlers.

technorati tags:web, tailrank, nofollow

Comments

[Kevin Burton]

I think the issue is an important one fro publishers too. We can just block PPP spammers so that's not an issue. What IS an issue is the percentage of bloggers that don't realize they're spamming and are about to get blocked.

Of course PPP knows what they're doing and just want to spam...

[Paul Dix]

I agree that PPP knows what they're doing. What I'm unsure about is the bloggers they recruit. I'm sure they're not the technical cream of the crop, but they know they're getting paid to shill. I have to assume they know it's disingenuous on some level.