BigDave - 2:36 am on Jan 19, 2005 (gmt 0)

I like the way livejournal is implementing it. A comment from someone on your friends list will not have the nofollow, but if they are not on your friends list it will have the nofollow.

I really don't buy the "it's admitting they can't fix it" argument, though you could certainly take it that way. Why can't this be another tool for them to use in addition to trying to deal with it algorithmically?

There sure are problems with just ignoring comments in a blanket fashion, though that really was the only option up till now. This might allow them to follow links that they would have otherwise had to ignore. They can still ignore comments in blogs that do not implement this.

It seems that the only differences that will happen are that it will make it so that some site owners will feel like they can do something to fight back, and that it will cause a small percentage of the comment spammers to avoid those sites that implement this kludge.

I don't see it helping the search engines all that much.