Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Here is the dilemma that i have been thinking about:
This new tag is great for people who blog and have guestbooks etc. It will without a doubt fix the problem of comment spam however i think it creates another problem for people actively involved with linking and who uphold a plausible and moral linking strategy. Now webmasters can just add this tag into your link that you have exchanged with them and now this link means nothing to the SE's. I think this makes the task of "Keeping ones house in order" just that much more difficult and at the same time, if used by many of your link partners, ones rankings may drop.
As Brett said, this is like google admitting that their algos are out.
I think this parallels the same way that microsoft keep coming out with quick fixes (all the service packs) and just a few months down the line a new problem emerges.
Seeing how this is the linking forum, i would love to know your attitudes towards this. Could you see possible problems emerging from this? Any benefits?
Could there have been another way around this?
Please no Google bashing or any other SE for that matter.
Think outside the proverbial box
Any benefits?
Not for my websites no!
This is going to be very* hard at keeping track but now we will have to be looking at the code every time you check your links.
Whats more of a B*tch I will have to go back through ALL my links on ALL my websites in a week or so to see if they have this tag. grrr.
and now that Blog spam is out the window then I guess my inbox will be getting MORE spam.
But on the upside all my competition that has blog spam will go down a little :)
It only took maybe 5 minutes, as there were other checks already in place.
My question is, when you find a link partner using this, do the same back, or just delete them as unethical sneaks? :P
Oh, waaahhh...
Seriously now, if you are manually checking links now, then yes, you're going to have to spend a couple of extra seconds to check for the "nofollow" attribute. And since you're doing it manually, you probably don't have a lot of links to check.
But if you are using some software to do the checking, then you can't possibly suggest that the software won't be updated to look for the new attribute.
> My question is, when you find a link partner using this, do the same back, or just delete them as unethical sneaks?
If someone is "giving you the shaft," then why supply your visitors with a link to someone unethical, whether or not you use "nofollow?"
Oh, waaahhh...
grow up comes to mind?
Yes i do have many websites to check, and yes i do have many(1000's) of links to check and yes it will take a couple of seconds everytime. and yes, i do it manually.
Well time is money.
And then you go on to say:
>>link that you have exchanged with them
I don't know about the "morality" part but playing clean involves not exchanging links for SE popularity purposes.
> time is money.
...and...
> Yes i do have many websites to check, and yes i do have many(1000's) of links to check and yes it will take a couple of seconds everytime. and yes, i do it manually.
...I'm really curious as to why you don't use an automated solution. If you have only 2000 links to check, and each takes two seconds, you've already spent (wasted?) over an hour of your time; over the course of a year, with checks done once a week, that's just shy of 2.5 days spent manually checking.
(Ack! I just checked: 3000 links @ 3 seconds, once a week = 5.4 days/year!)
Couldn't that time be better spent working on, say, your ad campaign or garnering (honest) reciprocal links, while the software does the "dirty work" in the background?
The thinking behind this seems to be that the nofollow tag will prevent wiki's etc from being spammed and I think that in the very short-term it will work. However, I think that this approach is ultimately doomed (and in the not to distant future), here is what I think will happen:
In the next 6 months, Search Engine competition is really going to heat up. Somebody is going to notice that these Wiki's with the 'nofollow' tags actually have the best links (they will be free of spam after all). They will introduce these links (with nofollow tags) into their algorithm and hey presto their results have improved dramatically. All prior agreements will be forgotten because of this simple logic.
Even now many of the sites that are using this tag have the best quality links.
I just can't see this working.
The thinking behind this seems to be that the nofollow tag will prevent wiki's etc from being spammed and I think that in the very short-term it will work. However, I think that this approach is ultimately doomed (and in the not to distant future), here is what I think will happen:In the next 6 months, Search Engine competition is really going to heat up. Somebody is going to notice that these Wiki's with the 'nofollow' tags actually have the best links (they will be free of spam after all). They will introduce these links (with nofollow tags) into their algorithm and hey presto their results have improved dramatically. All prior agreements will be forgotten because of this simple logic.
I don't think this will happen, because automated link spam will always go on as long as there is a certain return. As long as the links still exist, there is an outside chance that some people will look at them. After all, regular spam has a lot less than a one percent success rate, and we get enough of that.
Im looking into it.
>> If you have only 2000 links to check
And i said this when?
>> (Ack! I just checked: 3000 links @ 3 seconds, once a week = 5.4 days/year!)
That was great im glad you worked it out...
> And i said this when?
You did not say it directly, but you certainly implied it when you said...
> and yes i do have many(1000's) of links to check
...in message 6, above.
Given that you used a plural, that would imply a minimum of 2000 and that's why I said "only 2000" (and then offered the time calculation of 3000 links). You can re-read the sentence as, "If you have a minimum of only 2000 links to check [...]"
I also chose the number 2000 to work with, as that was the smallest number that fits the conditions you set out. For all I know, you are hand-checking 10,000 links and spending weeks doing it.
[edited by: eelixduppy at 9:09 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2009]
