Aren’t you tired of receiving hundreds of comments, most of them spam? When I talk to bloggers, the majority of it complains of the time spent for comment moderation. I know I spend quite some time deleting the ‘We have special discounts on Viagra’, ‘Rent your favorite DVD’ comments. Although for some people it doesn’t seem a big deal, for me it is. That’s why I decided to write a blog post about comment spamming and nofollow link attribute.

Why Nofollow Link Attribute Was Needed

Not only that bloggers wasted their time deleting and moderating comments, but once a spam comment approved, it will take advantage of the link juice benefits without contribution with useful information for the blog writer or the other readers. And while most bloggers like writing, no one likes to work and others spread their links and get a share of the pie.

Nofollow link attribute was developed by a Google team in an attempt to stop Blogger spamdexing. After it was released in 2005, nofollow link attribute was soon adopted by other search engines.

What does Nofollow link attribute do? First of all, it lets search engine spiders follow the link, but it doesn’t take advantage of the link juice benefits. If Google spiders see this message before a link, they will stop following it, while Yahoo! spiders will follow it, but this fact does not change the ranking score. So, nofollow link attribute does not ‘shut the door’ for promoting your own business or blog – in case you add pertinent comments – but you will not profit from someone else’s work for getting a better rank. And that’s a fair deal, isn’t it?

Use Captcha to Filter Spam

You can also filter comments by introducing captcha spam filter.  Captcha or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart is used to separate computers from humans. By correctly typing a text generated automatically, a server admits that the user is human, thus decreasing chances of delivering spam content.

I recommend you to uncheck the box where it says: ‘Comments are automatically approved’, because you never know what people (or computers) are capable of posting on your own site. This little trick helps you to eliminate pornography related messages or any kind of information you don’t want your site to be associated with.

Whether you choose to use nofollow link attribute or captcha, you are a step ahead spammers.