Comments & Links
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I believe that bloggers are sociable and supportive of one another, which is at the core of the social/community nature of Web 2.0 platforms such as blogging. So in my mind, the “nofollow” tag being added onto comment links on blogs only serves to undermine and devalue real people’s efforts and participation.
Its no wonder that such a tag was introduced by a Search Engine giant, because the worst threat that exists for the search industry is the growth of online social communities where real people make referrals and suggestions to one another about where to find online content rather than search indexes populated by algorithmic scripts using numeric formulas of fuzzy math.
Don’t get me wrong, I think search engines serve a useful purpose and that they do it very well. However, I’ll take the recommendations of my peers over some spider-bot any day.
For this reason I refuse to include the “nofollow” tag in links on this blog. If and when users take the time to add a relevant link to one of my pages using the free links plugin I offer at the bottom of each page, or include their own site link when posting a comment to one of my topics, I see it as a simple, common courtesy to acknowledge their time and participation in the discussion by NOT penalizing their link with a “nofollow” tag.
I also make a habit of visiting the sites and blogs that users link to from here, and if I find them useful or entertaining I give them a “thumbs up”-”nod”-”mention” on the various social networks I belong to as well. Again, if someone takes the time to publish something that informs or entertains me, I think its just common courtesy to share that with others.
I do all of this with the hope (not expectation) that others are doing the same. Some of the best web sites and blogs I’ve ever discovered and visited came from recommendations made to me by friends at Stumble Upon, Blue Dot, Delicious and other social networks I belong to, not from Google or Yahoo, and hopefully someday someone else will feel the same way after visiting one of my sites based on another real person’s recommendation.
Now, my policy on allowed and not-allowed links:
Its very simple, don’t SPAM my blog with crappy comments or submit off-topic links and we’ll get along just fine :)
Seriously, all I ask is that if you post a comment it is on-topic and useful, not simply a “good piece” blurb posted strictly for the sake of getting you a backlink.
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