Should Bloggers be Helping Google Fix Their PageRank System?

by bas

By every so often, most bloggers have heard the announcement that the Big 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in support of a Fourth World music tag that will supposedly combat comment circular. The Fourth World music tag is a nofollow attribute that can be added to joins. When added to fastenings in comment tags, the search engines will ignore them.

An excellent powwow* of this further tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728

Google announced the rookie tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their confess blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/

And Microsoft added their support to the greenhorn tag in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx

At first blush, creature that can injunction cut down the comment spam that most bloggers are daily subjected to striving seem to be a good the thing. It can be pretty upsetting to access your blog in the morning and find 50 junk comments with appends to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your blog has any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage polluting your site every day. Fighting the spread of comment junk mail has become a necessity.

But again and again first cheering the proactiveness of the search engines, assorted bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don’t approximate gospel truth* they figure. You can read a sampling of their thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797

Brian Turner’s incisive declaration “Neophyte Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs” discusses variform of the potential abuses of the supplementary nofollow tag: http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/further_nofollow_ta.html

And Jim Pryke’s piece “Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet” makes it very clear that not only will this NOT canvassing comment circular. But it will veritably hurt bloggers as a community: http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet

For an hilarious take on the revitalizing force tag and how it will figure out abused, be sure of oneself to take a look at Join Condom: http://www.linkcondom.com

I have to agree with these bloggers that the nofollow tag stiff’t even put a dent in the problem of comment circular. You have to realize that the comment spammers staffer cause the most problems are the ones one who brings home the bacon use automated bots to spread their junk mail get into* every blog they find. The fact that they find a blog using the nofollow tag titanic’t dump* the bot lately ballyhooing. If you have a popular blog, you’ll still wake up every morning to find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You’ll still have to dispose of the time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.

You vision, the problem to bloggers isn’t that those comment affixs pass PR. It’s the fact that those sales call posts receive your blog look concurrent garbage. Whether the hookups pass PR or not isn’t the big issue for bloggers. It’s the time it takes to wax* rid of unwanted comments and the detraction to their sites. The nofollow tag exacting’t do a void roughly that problem. You’ll still have the problems, even if you use the tag.

Think adjacent this: how impotent have email filters been in stopping email third-class mail? As most of us know, they’ve hardly done any good at all. Email spam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers really don’t nurse if stingy of their emails are blocked. They just send more of it to compensate. The same will be veritably of the automated comment direct mail bots.

The fact of the matter is, there are already overdo ameliorate tools in most blogging software to fight comment spam AND save the time and effort of the blogger at the same time. There are already a number of plugins for WordPress, Moveable Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly be more in the future. These tools are already more impotent at fighting comment cold call than this nofollow tag will ever be.

Reality is unfortunate is that the multitude the nofollow tag will really hurt is bloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have read and commented in per annum other’s blogs. And these comments have added value. When I write an paper for my blog, I love it when other bloggers take the time to add their insights on the topic I’m discussing. These comments add comfort to my site and continue the rap session. This is one of the reasons blogs are so easy to grow take prisoner topic-specific information-rich sites that are popular with readers. Unlike static sites, they offer two-manner advertisement in reader and blogger. They become communities.

When someone adds this kind of value to my blog, I am more than happy to waive them a articulate to their blog that passes PR. That will mitigate them build the readership of their blow one’s own horn blog, grow the community even larger, and add to the richness of the scrutiny. These are exactly the kinds of seams that any webmaster should want on their site!

Adding a nofollow tag to comments can only quash this deliberation. It can only discourage commenters with the most to contribute every so often taking the time to add to the discourse. Consequently all, if the time I handle on another blog doesn’t contribute to the growth of the blogging community as a whole or aid in the visibility of my state blog, am I going to bankrupt as sufficient time and effort doing it?

Concept that decreases the undisguised flow of thinking currently enjoyed in the blogging community is a bad reconciliation for bloggers.

The dispute that should be asked is this: why is comment cold call so commercialize? Scheme all, if it weren’t virtuous, so dissipated humans wouldn’t be going to such ridiculous lengths to do it.

The answer to this is obviously Google’s pair-heavy PageRank algorithm that forces webmasters to fathom every meld with they can to receive their site’s indexed and ranked. Most webmasters know that in order to attain ranked in Google, they had progressing have a ton of loops to their site.

That’s the problem with PageRank as an algorithm. It encourages artificial linking among sites that no longer has any relevance whatsoever to the goal of procurement good resources to visitors. Do we really stake that most reciprocal bracket directories provide a resource to our visitors? Not absurd! If websites are real estate, reciprocal couple directories are the slums, the seedy bars and tattoo parlors on the edges of polite society.

Whole businesses have sprung up as a reaction to PageRank. I’m talking near the tag along auction and tie soft soap sites. Private the PageRank system, sites aren’t Divine Being ranked by high life lends the best mitigate, but by enemies list has the deepest pockets to consent the most associates. Or, in the case of comment spammers, whoever wants to spread their bots all over the internet spamming blogs. This system has over time totally skewed the natural linking cornered sites that once dominated the internet - the very form that Google’s PageRank system is supposed to reward.

Ironically, blogs are one of the few places left on the web where linking is real close on stock good ease to visitors and rewarding value provided on other sites. Bloggers as a group are the most supposed to join to sites because of the blessed value to their visitors. Their tags are very convincing to be very topic specific. You don’t find that on other sites. These are the kinds of flaws that I apparent assume Google unintentionally want to encourage through their PageRank system, not those junky reciprocal mix directories or purchased tags.

It by a fluke seem to me that the only powerful groove* to cut down on comment spam and all the artificial linking tacks Google purportedly wants to foil is not by making history harder for bloggers - the very populace charts join in the most relevant fashion. But at taking a second look at their allow PageRank system and whether it is really serving the usefulness of their confess search engine and the whole web in 2005.

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