The Article Writer

Tuesday 17 Apr 2007

Are You A “Do Follow” Blogger?

When you write a comment on a WordPress (WP) blog, did you know that WP automatically adds “no follow” to the link so that search engines can’t index it? Well, that was news to me until I came across Tricia’s Musings a personal blog by a woman in Toronto whose tag line is, “A nurse, a wife, living the fun fun social life.”

Yes, I had thought that since I made my WP blogs user friendly, i.e. I did away with registration and I added Akismet to whack spam, that all of you wonderful commentators have been been getting your just desserts — a link back to your site. Boy, was I ever wrong.

Anyway, it turns out that there is a WP plug-in to get rid of “no follow” by the name of “do follow.” Yes, I installed it on all three of my WP blogs which take comments, so if you haven’t been the beneficiary of a comment on The Article Writer to date, you are now.

The following are some of the other blogs now encouraging comments as they have the “do follow” plug in installed:

*Endangered Spaces
Texas RV Travel blog
On the Horizon
CoolAdzine for Marketers
skeets stuff
Advertising for Success
Tricia’s Musings
Guitar Licks
Breath of Life Photography
Odd Planet

WebStyle
Celebrity Scoop
As the Garden Grows
By the Sea
PBriscoe.com

PJMommy.Com | Slacker Parenting At Its Finest!
Table for Five
Dont Fear the Truth
krissy.nu - life through eyes of Krissy, uncensored and unscripted
Army Mom:New Jersey

Thumbs up to Tricia too. For everyone — comment away!

BTW, you can download a copy of the “do follow” plug-in right here.

Matt | Linking Strategies, SEO Tools

43 Responses to “Are You A “Do Follow” Blogger?”

on 17 Apr 2007 at 12:27 pm SKEET

Aloha Matt and mahalo for the nod! Tricia operates the blogroll you see on my site. Couldn’t hurt to ask her to add you, kwim?

Hmmmmm! My info above(name, mail, website) is appearing in all caps no matter what I do. That’s a little strange.
on 17 Apr 2007 at 12:32 pm Matthew C. Keegan

Thanks for stopping by, Skeet. I sent Tricia a note last night about my step into the “do follow” group, therefore I am certain that she’ll be adding this blog before long.

I am not sure why some contact information is showing up in caps. No worries, I know that you and others are not yelling at me.

Have a good one!
on 17 Apr 2007 at 1:27 pm Tricia

Hello Matthew! Thanks for the write up and for becoming a do follower. It looks like you might have the do follow blogroll script in this post. If you do - and if you either link to this post (your own) or actually put the blogroll in your sidebar or on a separate page I’d be happy to add you to the Do Follow blogroll. I’m asking that you make the blogroll easily viewed by your readers as that will introduce others to the do follow movement and the blogroll.

Please let me know if you will do this, or if you actually need a copy of the blogroll code. And thanks again for your comment and your post.
on 17 Apr 2007 at 1:36 pm Matthew C. Keegan

Thanks for the information, Tricia. I just now got the javascript and am playing around with it in an attempt to make it work. So far, it isn’t showing up as planned, so I’ll have to try to make it work by doing something else. I appreciate it!
on 18 Apr 2007 at 7:15 am Lisa Vella

Matt,

Thanks for the information. I did not know any of that!

Have a great day!

Lisa
on 18 Apr 2007 at 7:21 am Matthew C. Keegan

Hi Lisa,

Yes, I had no idea — it seems that the movement to create “do follow” blogs is catching steam: the feed on my sidebar gets longer and longer all of the time. Soon, I’ll have to come up with a different way (or page) to list everyone.

Have a great day!

MattK
on 19 Apr 2007 at 12:37 am Cybercelt

Wow! Thanks for naming my blogs as do-follow blogs. I appreciate it. Tricia is extremely cool and this blog roll will be easier to follow than some I have seen.

We be cool…we be do follow…
on 19 Apr 2007 at 6:16 am Matthew C. Keegan

Hi Cybercelt — Very cool, indeed. So cool, that it is catching on and my list overfloweth! A good problem to have, right?
on 19 Apr 2007 at 7:52 am Marc

While not involved in this specific movement, I have been a dofollow blogger for some time now. I’m glad to see it catching on. We need to continue the good fight and make the search engines solve their own problems.
on 19 Apr 2007 at 7:56 am Matthew C. Keegan

Hi Marc,

Yes, there are bloggers such as yourself who have been providing “do follow” or “I follow” all along. I am just glad that the issue has been raised to help all bloggers remove an important hindrance to blogging.

Happy blogging!

MattK
on 19 Apr 2007 at 7:53 pm Brian J. hong

yay D-list go!
on 20 Apr 2007 at 4:05 pm Deborah

Thanks Matt! And thanks for the advice on my post for Do Follow to create a separate page for the incredibly growing list, and tip to put it on my sidebar.

I’ll be doing it asap!

Have a great weekend!
on 21 Apr 2007 at 9:31 pm Jim Legington

Hey Matt,

Thanks for Email Comment Responder Tip. I’m unable to view the Pic
at our comments. I uploaded and activaed the Plugin. We’re using the same WordPress Theme as You are using, was there a template that You
needed to upload as well? Thank You, I’m on board but I need to see
that Icon for the Email Comment Responder. Can You Tip me on that?
on 21 Apr 2007 at 11:01 pm Jim Legington

Hey Matt,

Thanks, that’s okay we just had a simple directory
error. The Upload has to be the folder inside the
Plugin folder. Still beginning to check it out.
Thanks again for the mention, looks like good one.
on 24 Apr 2007 at 8:00 am Mega Basilio

Great idea! I’m going to participate this movement!
on 25 Apr 2007 at 3:45 pm Jose Tudor

Hello Matt,

I’m glad to here that you discovered the dofollow plugin. I installed it on my blog a while back.

I appreciate thoughtful comments, so if I can reward the commenter with a link back to their blog I am more than happy to do it.

Take care,

Jose
on 25 Apr 2007 at 3:47 pm Matt

Good to hear from you, Jose. I trust you are well. I will be visiting your blog again soon — I enjoy your writing!

Happy blogging!
on 26 Apr 2007 at 10:12 am Ben Yoskovitz

I’m using a plugin called LinkLove which allows you to get rid of No Follow after X # of comments by someone. X is a variable you define - mine is set to 2 or 3 (I can’t remember!)

The idea is that you reward people who are more frequent commenters, the people that truly belong to your blog community.

Welcome to the crowd…
on 26 Apr 2007 at 11:11 am Matt

Thanks for that information, Ben. I hadn’t heard about the LinkLove plug-in before, but it sounds like a great way to reward people who are faithful to a site while encouraging hit and run commentators to move on.
on 28 Apr 2007 at 5:50 pm Cade

Thanks for your post. I have seen some benefit from do-follow lists. How have the do-follows benefit your website?
on 29 Apr 2007 at 6:47 am Matt

Hi Cade. The “do follow” list has brought additional traffic to my site and more comments. I think there is a curiosity about the list which causes people to click on the various blogs featured (I know that I do it). As far as long term, sustainable traffic I cannot say. Hopefully, when someone does visit my blog that they’ll see something that they like and return once again.
on 06 Jun 2007 at 8:01 pm Terence Chang

After reading your post, I have decided to join the “You comment, I follow” community. As you mentioned above, I am curious person, so I click the links you list here.

I personally believe you can always learn something from someone.

Good articles. Good blog. Good Job!
on 07 Jun 2007 at 6:20 am Matt

Hi, Terence. Welcome to the “No Follow” community! I appreciate the BUMPzee add too; I have done likewise. I will see you around the blogosphere!
on 28 Aug 2007 at 12:35 am Small Business Web Design (Singapore)

Hi, I didn’t know about such movement before.

I guess being taught the “traditional” online marketing way, giving too much “link love” is bad for Page Rank, isn’t it?

My 2 cents.

Sherman
on 28 Aug 2007 at 6:40 am Matt

Hi Sherman.

Some people believe that you can “leak” PageRank with “Do Follow” or with any number of other one way outbound link strategies. I can’t say for certain what they effect will be because we haven’t had a PageRank update exported to the Google toolbar in 4 months.

I believe my PageRank will improve with the next update, but if it doesn’t then I many wonder if PageRank can leak.
on 29 Aug 2007 at 11:36 pm Small Business Web Design (Singapore)

Hi Matt,

Yes it’d be interesting to find that out, if you don’t mind sharing it the next time you update your PageRank.

Sherman
on 04 Sep 2007 at 6:31 pm Andrew

Hi Everyone,
Yes I have heard that the DoFollow plugins cause PageRank to leak, BUT if you are posted on blogs that have DoFollow installed, then you benefit from their blog. So its a win-lose situation, you either have to decide to track down sites which share their PageRank, and benefit from it, but to make your blog more entertaining and increase your following, you have to allow dofollow to occur, and thus leak some PageRank.

BTW my blog also has Lucia’s Linky Love plugin installed to only give regular commenters the benefits of dofollow. At the moment the comment count is set to low, so feel free to post up some comments, and try and earn the top commenters spot to grab some ‘Linky Love’.
on 05 Sep 2007 at 7:02 am Matt

Thanks for the “Lucia Linky Love” plug-in tip. I’ll have to take a look at it to see how it meshes with this blog, Andrew.

PageRank leakage is a concern for some, but seeing that Google hasn’t exported an update to the toolbar in many months, I wonder if this issue is to become moot?
on 04 Oct 2007 at 1:56 pm The Foo

Not sure what the definition of PR leakage is but i can kind of puzzle it together. David Airey (http://www.davidairey.com/google-search-ranking-penalty-david-airey/) saw his google rank drop on some words.
I am not sure whether it was due to this or not. As google does not deny it, you just wonder what it actually going on. I am not sure how much it is true with one of the commentors above saying that too much link love causes your PR to drop. I have heard so many different version of good and bad of dofollow, not sure which one to believe.

To me, someone commenting should get link love — i’ve since installed the lucia linky love plugin on my blog. I guess the spammers spoil it for the rest of us.
on 04 Oct 2007 at 1:57 pm The Foo

BTW: your do follow plugin on your post doesn’t work — their website is down.
on 04 Oct 2007 at 4:07 pm Matt

Hi Foo! Yes there have been some changes with Google, but as usual they are fairly secretive at least until a new PageRank update is released or when Matt Cutt decides to make a comment on that subject.

Thanks for the information about the plug-in; let’s hope that their site being down is only a temporary problem.

Are You A “Do Follow” Blogger?

43 Responses to “Are You A “Do Follow” Blogger?”

43 Responses to “Are You A “Do Follow” Blogger?”

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