Blog link value?

Has there been a consensus?

[dickbaker]

I spent the better part of today finding blogs related to my niche, writing some relevant content and including a link to a page for which I'm trying to improve ranking.

All of the comments were nofollow, although the blogs and even the comments pages had PR of 4, 5 or even 8.

Has anyone arrived at a conclusion that blog links have value, even if PR isn't passed? Is Google viewing the links as trust?

I know this topic has been covered a zillion times, but I have yet to read any definitive answers.

[AutoTerminal]

I am doing the same thing. I do not know if it is worth because as I see, the effort has a little effect to my ranking. When you try to link to the pages that link to your site "link:sitename.com" in google search engine, i got less records even i kept on commenting.

[dickbaker]

AutoTerminal, as you may or may not already know, the link: operator in Google shows you only a fraction of the links to your site. Doing a link: search on Yahoo gives you far more, but even Yahoo doesn't show all of them.

I find blog links on Yahoo, so I know that Google must be aware of them. The question is whether Google regards those links as something of value that can affect rankings.

[wheel]

If the links are nofollowed, the official party propoganda from Google is that it does not count for PR or linkjuice or trust. I assume they treat it as if the link is basically not there.

If the reply is good enough and on a well trafficked blog you can actually get some direct traffic from the post. I get a bit from this stuff myself, though not very much.

In other words, it's my untested belief that nofollow blog comments provide little or nothing from a ranking perspective and little in terms of traffic.

Not all blogs are nofollow though. The ones that aren't nofollowed though are very closely monitored so comments like 'I like your blog, very interesting' tend to get deleted.

[Lord Majestic]

I assume they treat it as if the link is basically not there.

nofollow does not stop them from showing such link in link: command list. IMO the main issue with nofollow links from blogs is that if such links suddenly appear in large quantity (probably in relation to other links) then it would look like spamming for backlinks.

[malcolmcroucher]

[url] [googleblog.blogspot.com...] [/url]

This link deals with the no follow devised by google.

Regards

Malcolm

[Lord Majestic]

the fact that google doesn't list a lot of the links that will pop up in the yahoo backlink search suggests to me that they feel they have little or no value.

No, it means that they don't want you or other people to know what they know. Yahoo shows a small sample too.

[AutoTerminal]

Can you tell us what is the difference with comment spam and a legitimate comment with link.

[Quadrille]

Can you tell us what is the difference with comment spam and a legitimate comment with link.

Depends on the rules of the blog; if the link is genuinely helpful to the discussion, then it should be acceptable.

If it's only helpful to you, then it's spam.

But the reality may be rather different.

[Lord Majestic]

From search engine point of view blog spam would be indicated by a large (as compared to natural link acquisition patterns for that site) number of nofollow marked links leading to the same place, especially so if same anchor text it used.

[AutoTerminal]

I check the source of the blogspot, wordpress and typepad. They are all using nofollow. Is that means commenting with back link are no longer useful today?

[franklevert]

In my book, a link is a link. Google won't be the king of the web forever and algorithms could change anytime so who knows...maybe your blog comment will be worth gold in 2 years. :) My advice would be to keep posting blog comments if you get traffic back from it or if other users start interacting with you.

[adwatson]

My impression was that G treated a nofollowed link as plain text - i.e. no anchor tag at all. Yahoo and MSN still follow it. So there may be some benefit there, but if you're goal is ranking in google, it's a waste of time.

[menton]

Why don't you create a blog and write articles for it instead of spending your time finding nofollow links? You can then link from this blog to your site and create a useful resource at the same time.

[jimbeetle]

My impression was that G treated a nofollowed link as plain text - i.e. no anchor tag at all.

There's been a bit of confusion on Google's part in addressing nofollow, from being completely dropped from the link graph and not even being used for discovery, to being included in backlinks Google shows so Webmasters have a better idea of who's linking to their sites.

Only the Goog knows for sure.

As for the value of blog links, I've found from the handful of niche-specific blog communities I participate in that while a nofollow link from a blog might only bring some incremental traffic, it can also draw an additional "real" link or two. I think the secret is to be an active participant, commenting in at least a somewhat intelligent way, and only dropping a link when it adds true value to the conversation. It can be time consuming, but does fill the void between innings of a Yankees-Red Sox game.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Just in case any of you have missed this one, there's a similar topic about getting links from blogs [webmasterworld.com] that raises a number of points.