nofollow support added?

Alright, i should have tested this before asking. Which i’ve done now by adding a new comment to my site with a link to https://www.remarpro.com.

In the page source the link has the nofollow tag then. So it seems that the nofollow support is now default for comment links.

But i think this should be an option, not the default – there might be folks out there who simply want their contributors comments to be “honoured” by Google & Co. What do you think?

I believe that a plugin is being worked on.
My view is that is should be the default – not making it so could leave this open to exploitation for those that do not know, and those that do not know will care not about the attribute, pagerank and everything else.

Like I said though, I believe someone is working on a toggle plugin for this.

I like the fact that it is on by default. How do I know if someone commenting is just commenting for the pagerank (which makes it pretty much comment spam)? If someone’s site turns out to be very good, I add them to my links list and blog about it.

A simple plugin can disable it or add more options to it.

It will at least cut some of the incentive to comment spam. It is just a tool to combat it, just like all the other tools we are using. By itself it might not mean much, but all together we are giving spammers a much harder time comment spamming WordPress blogs.

That is what matters most.

What matters most is allowing the end-user to be in control of their publishing. The nature of the web is defined by linking. Spammers, obviously, take advantage of this to the detriment of nearly all. However, there are quite a few tools available to help take care of this.

I am satisfied with how they handle spam on my blogs, and I would _not_ want linking from comments to be turned off by default.

OtherMichael: As I understand it, ‘no-follow’ is purely an instruction to the Googlebot. It’s not visible to readers unless they view source, and it in no way stops them leaving links or clicking on them. It doesn’t even stop you sharing your PageRank by linking to them, if you so choose. A lot of the anti-no-follow hysteria seems to be caused by this basic misunderstanding.

I doubt that this will ever be offered out of the box as an option that can be set via a switch in your Admin Panel. You will have to depend on a plugin to change the “rel=nofollow” to whatever state you want it to be.

I vote for either optional or a documented way to turn it off:

https://developedtraffic.com/2005/01/22/wordpress-and-the-google-link-attribute/

I’m just worried about the continued “feature-creep” of WordPress for options that have no way of being turned off — like autoformatting. I am already frustrated with the lack of control that WordPress gives me over my posts, and am worried that it will get worse, not better. When WordPress hits 2.0 I wouldn’t be surprised to see a dancing paperclip to try to help me write my blog entries — and the only way to turn it off will be a plugin! ??

The dancing paperclip will be in an optional plugin. The default will be no dancing paperclip. There will be check boxes for the styles of dance and whether the paperclip will solo dance or perform a pas de deux.

What, no option to change the dancing paperclip to the dog, or even that ‘perfesser’ guy!? Really Ryan, the devs need to start talking to us.

Okay, okay. We’ll add those too. You can also choose sex. Male, female, MTF, FTM, and so on. Pas de deux couples can be mixed and matched as desired. You can choose whether the dancing duo are an old married couple celebrating their golden anniversary, young lovers, or strangers whose eyes suddenly meet across the dance floor. As their hands come together in an electric touch, they will say to each other, “Click Advanced Editing to see more options”. We’ll call the plugin, SimClip.

Yet another example of how coders and users view the same product in different ways.

Update: And, following the logic of some of the above posts, then why are comments part of the core code? There are third-party code suppliers for comments, a la HaloScan.

More of a difference between how users and power-users view things. nofollow is an echo-chamber discussion.

You will have to depend on a plugin to change the “rel=nofollow” to whatever state you want it to be.

Which is exactly as it should be. Unless the user fully understands the arguments and feels strongly enough to seek out a plugin, they have no business switching off no-follow. That will only help out the spammers. Just because your spam protection is working great at the moment doesn’t mean it won’t let the occasional spam through in the future; why are you so keen on giving the spammers their pagerank? Or are you just worried your own PR is going to take a hit if everyone implements no-follow?

I disagree.

Bear in mind that PageRank is named after its creator, Google founder Larry Page. It does NOT mean “how a page ranks” and is only one part of the Google algorithm (ranking formula). You can’t even get a site into Google unless there is at least one link to it, and that one link won’t make it rank well.

I’m not understanding why, if no bloggers can link properly to other blogs, and all those blogs then suffer in ranking, this is considered a good thing. And all this over not finding a solution to comment spam. It’s like crippling your ability to receive email just because some people send spam email.

‘Tis okay with me, though. Ya pays your money and takes yer choice. I just won’t be installing crippled software either for me or my clients.