Will you implement the new "nofollow" link attribute?

[rogerd]

Blogs are getting all of the attention in the announcement about the new "nofollow" link attribute [webmasterworld.com], but forum software is also susceptible to automated and manual spamming for links.

Any early thoughts? Disable SE following for all member-posted links? Maybe allow regular linking for mods & senior members?

My recent experience has been no automated spam and relatively little spam that looked PR-oriented. Mostly, it seems to be people promoting clicks to their site, free ipod morons, etc. These clowns don't care about PR and will continue to post away, I'm sure.

[edited by: rogerd at 1:13 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2005]

[chadmg]

I just came in to post the exact same question rogerd. I'll certainly implement this. I was implementing this before by myself with a 302 redirect. But this is a better method (if and when it works) and it stops any of that 302 redirect page stealing. The only problem is that I was already setting the rel attribute in my outside links to rel="external" and then using javascript I would set these links to have a target="_blank" to be XHTML Strict compatible. I'll just have to change my javascript to also look for links with rel="nofollow".

You're right rogerd, forums will always have a problem with people placing links just for the traffic from people who click on them. With full moderation I can remove outright advertising links and the people who place them. But I think it might cut down on trouble to just let spammers know that they won't be getting PR from the links so they shouldn't even bother.

[vkaryl]

I as well, chadmg. I will do a bit more research, but ultimately I am leaning toward implementing it.

[rogerd]

The effectiveness of this as a preventer for automated forum spamming depends on widespread adoption. If just a fraction of forums implement it, then spammers will still spam every forum they can and not worry about the portion of forums where the links don't count.

And, of course, abandoned, unmoderated forums are the best targets, and they won't be updating their software.

I think other tools, like preventing automated registration, are the best defense against mass spam. Individual link droppers won't be put off much by the nofollow tag except, perhaps, for those professional link hunters who use forums as a way to score some easy links.

[jasonlambert]

I think other tools, like preventing automated
registration, are the best defense against mass spam.

Definatly agree.

Note that the only real way to stop automated registration (all but the absolutly most determined) is to require email confirmation on your forum, anything else (eg, adding extra forum fields) can be got around easily.

Jason

[moltar]

No way I will implement it on any site. The attribute is completely ambiguous. It will just add some weight to my html and won't help anything. IMO it won't stop spam either. But then again, I don't get spam :)

[lorenzinho2]

I think we're going to implement them. We have a user tool that is occasionally abused by link spammers and it seems to me that this is exactly the type of situation that Google would like Webmasters to use the "nofollow" attribute.

And if that's what G wants, we're certainly going to give it to them.

In the back of my mind, I can't help thinking that eventually, sites that allow user generated links that choose NOT to use the "no follow" tag will end up on some sort of a list that is shared between G, Y, and MSN.

Doesn't sound like a list we want to be on.

[Rosalind]

I still get bots looking for formmail.pl and its variants every week, and there can't be that many unpatched versions of that around any more. So I have no illusions that the nofollow tag will stem the tide of people spamming for links. It's good that the search engines have found a way to lessen the impact of this activity, but while there are any sites that don't implement the nofollow tag or some other cloaking for user-submitted links it's going to be business as usual.

[wheel]

I'm still undecided. I've got two sites that get spammed, yet my intention has always been that if someone in the industry wanted to do the work and post a sane ontopic comment that I'd give them a link. It just hasn't happened yet - all I get is spam.

[rogerd]

I think one cool use for the tag in forums may be to control spidering of irrelevant content. A typical forum page contains a LOT of links - various editing and posting links, profile action links, etc. Most of these are not good things to have spidered. While the are controllable in some cases with robots.txt commands, in other cases that won't work.

For example, if you have a link like, showpost.php?post=1234, you probably want that spidered. On that same page, though, you might have a link like showpost.php?post=1234&param1=xx&param2=yy, which you don't want spidered. Modifiying the template to add the rel=nofollow attribute to those links you don't want spidered should work fine.