Posted 28 April 2007, by Aaron
Over the past few months I’ve witnessed a quiet movement gain momentum and transform into a full-blown revolution. I talk of course, of the DoFollow movement.
By default, WordPress adds the “rel=nofollow” command to all links in comments. In fact, most blogging software does the same thing and the intentions are good - to prevent those nasty spammers from leaving spammy comments.
However, it doesn’t stop comment spam in any sense really, and besides, with good moderation and effective use of plugins like Askimet, spam can be controlled reasonably well anyway. Therefore in essence, all nofollow does is prevent link love and Google juice being shared amongst your loyal readers and commentators. Which is not really in the spirit of things, is it?
So what can we conscientious bloggers do about the situation? Well luckily there are quite a few plugins that remove the nofollow command.
- DoFollow Plugin (Semiologic) - This is the one that started it all, and the one I’ve installed. Plain and simple, it removes all nofollows from comments and trackbacks.
- DoFollow (Kimmo Suominen) - This adds the ability to remove the nofollow once the comment reaches a certain age - ie after 2 days.
- Link Love - This removes the nofollow once the commenter has posted a specific number of time - ie after 5 comments.
These look like the best plugins to me, but there are more. I recommend having a read of Andy Beard’s ultimate list of DoFollow plugins.
If this movement continues gaining momentum, I can see WordPress removing the nofollow command by default before long. Until then though, you need a way to separate your Google juice sharing, link loving blog from all the miserable non-sharing blogs out there.
Randa Clay had a moment of genius when she created the first ‘official’ DoFollow badge.
The I Follow badge is available in various colours from her site.
Randa’s badge is great, but if you are after something a little smaller and more discreet then Asgeir Hoem has created his own set of badges also available in various colour combinations.
The DoFollow revolution continues to gain speed, and the number of bloggers following the movement has increased from a few dozen to many hundreds (if not more). I would love to link to them all and share the link love, but I suspect you might find it a somewhat boring read. Therefore I’m listing below just a handful of DoFollow advocates I’ve come across recently:
The DoFollow movement is all about thanking you for contributing to my site. Another way of doing it is just saying “thanks”. So Asgeir, Tara and David - thanks for the recent comments.
Related articles:
Tags:Blogging, DoFollow, Google, Plugins, Spam, WordPress
I added one of the Do Follow plugins a little while a go and have definitely seen an upturn in commenters. Its a win win situation, more comments on your blog and in turn you commentors get more links
I just installed the plugin but… won’t this be a threat to google? Since they base their search from links? Another is… ooh nevermind.
Tara - I’m glad you’ve noticed a positive effect from the DoFollow plugin. I must admit I’m a little wary - I don’t want to see pointless comments that don’t really contribute to the discussion. But for newish blogs like ours I think it’s a good incentive to kick-start a little life into the site.
Nietzsche - I’ve seen a few people express concerns about how DoFollow can affect SEO adversely. But generally I see more support for DoFollow than against it.
hi Aaron,
i’ll install the plugin right away.
i don’t think you should be concerned about too many comments… after all you always have that moderation power as the blog admin…
ps: congrats! i’ve seen you’ve increased your goolge ranking!
webee
[is a design blog]
It’s crazy, I was just thinking about this the other day. What’s the point of the link if we use nofollow? Granted a reader could still check out the commenter’s site, but I agree that sharing the link love is a big part of what it’s all about. I’m stoked to hear more people are feeling like it’s time to rid ourselves of the nofollow! Count me in. 
Good on you, Aaron.
Thanks for the mention again!
Hey!!
I installed the plugin last week and I have found your blog via the “Ifollo” movement, I like it, clean and interesting content!
Nice to read you!
Regards
[...] If you comment on my site and add your url, with this plugin installed, search engine spiders will follow the link to your site. What does that mean? Well, it means that the all-important Googlebot will count it as a link to your site from a PR3 site. What does that mean? Well, you (hopefully) will turn up on more Google searches. Better explained here. [...]
[...] to share some of the SEO benefits that Google can give through those links. Having read the article by Milienzo calling for more bloggers to join the “revolution” I have decided to try out the plugin [...]
Well I have now joined the revolution, thanks for this article, I have been meaning to get around to changing over to Do Follow and this was just the kick in the butt I needed. 
Justin, David and Frucomerci - Apologies for missing your comments the other day, bit poor of me to be replying five days later… but many thanks for the kind words Frucomerci, and welcome to the site
Stevie - Welcome to the revolution. Glad to be of butt-kicking assistance.
[...] such as comments and trackbacks. But support for disabling the NoFollow tag is growing - with many highly-regarded blogs promoting the movement or implementing the change. Andy Beard has even set up a [...]
Welcome aboard! The Dofollow community on Bumpzee is a good ‘un!
The Do Follow Movement is a noble one and I wholly support it.
Thanks for the article. I’ve also joined the DoFollow movement.
Thanks for the comment Steven. Good to see you aboard.
Its a nice concept, but it also leads to increased ’spam’ with comments like ‘Good Job’ or ‘Nice blog’ that are not actually relevant to the post, but are just there because the poster saw a ‘DoFollow’ badge on the blog and wanted a backlink.
I suppose you could call this a double edged sword, it’d definitely get your more comments, but also increase your moderation work.
I have installed dofollow plugin for my video blog(China Tour video blog) and a member of Dofollow community on Bumpzee.
bluefrogX - I know what you mean - Just look at the message below yours Thing is though even though this is a blatant attempt to pass keyword relevancy through the link it wont work because DoFollow is only applied to regular and frequent commenters.
I do shout about DoFollow a lot less these days and I’ve considered removing it altogether, but I still like to give some reward for my regular community.
Thanks a lot for useful info! I’m going to install the same thing on my blog.
I applaud any and all blogs that have gone out of their way to support the DoFollow/IFollow movement. Personally, I think that using nofollow is just a lazy moderation tool. Spammers will always find a way around automated spam blocking methods. The best moderation is human moderation.
Yeah I like the do follow also. I check my comments before they get posted anyway.
I fully support the DoFollow Movement. Personally, I think every blogger should do it, and just keep a close eye on what people say on their sites. It should be at the bloggers full discretion as to what is approved for their site and not.
IMO - If something is blatantly spam, then simply delete the comment. If somebody drops a link, but still contributes something positive to the page… then it should be up to the blogger to keep it or not.
Anyways. I’m proud to be part of the DoFollow Movement!
We all blog because we wanted opinions and suggestions right? So i really not into nofollow link. Its little off although it has its purpose.
Glad to see so much support for the dofollow movement, but don’t you think google will just find some new way to undermine it? It seems pretty clear that they don’t want people linkbuilding by commenting on blogs, or they wouldn’t have implented nofollow in the first place.
[...] by Aaron, Milienzo.com from his words about Joining the DoFollow Revolution. You did it [...]
Truly inspiring! Joining the movement just now, and lets all spread the link love all over again.
Dude, love the do follow picture for the article.
As i noticed today, this thread is being nofollowed.
What’s wrong Aaron? Leaving this movement already? If yes, why so? If not, what’s with this nofollow re-attributing?
Djarot - You’re right, I have uninstalled the ‘dofollow’ plugin - I need to update this post and perhaps blog about it too. The reason I uninstalled it was that this blog had become a target for comment spam. I can only really answer comments two or three times a week these days and I was spending most of that time reading comments by blatant spammers who just wanted a link back, and were not contributing to discussion in any way.
I still think dofollow is a good thing for a certain type of blog/blogger and it can help encourage comments. However this site now generates a fair amount of traffic and at the same time I can’t afford the time to look after it as much as I’d like to. The end result is that dofollow was causing more work for me than it was worth.
I WILL update this post soon though, and blog about my decision to turn ‘nofollow’ back on.
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Tara
29 April 2007, 6:50 pm