[wp-trac] Re: [WordPress Trac] #3842: Eliminate rel="nofollow"

[WordPress Trac]

#3842: Eliminate rel="nofollow"
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 Reporter:  markjaquith                            |        Owner:  anonymous
     Type:  enhancement                            |       Status:  new      
 Priority:  low                                    |    Milestone:  2.2      
Component:  Administration                         |      Version:  2.1.1    
 Severity:  normal                                 |   Resolution:           
 Keywords:  nofollow spam rel comments trackbacks  |  
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Comment (by Otto42):

 I've always found the nofollow argument interesting. The arguments
 basically boil down to this:

 Arguments for nofollow:
  * It helps prevent comment spam
  * It lets search engines like Google distinguish between intentional
 links and unintentional ones, thus lowering blog PageRank's (since blogs
 tend to use a lot of inter-blog linking).

 Arguments against nofollow:
  * It does not help prevent comment spam
  * It lets search engines like Google distinguish between intentional
 links and unintentional ones, thus lowering blog PageRank's (since blogs
 tend to use a lot of inter-blog linking).

 See the fun there? What's interesting to me about this is that the
 arguments disagree on whether or not it helps prevent spam, but absolutely
 agree on the overall effect it has with regard to blog's PageRank.

 Think of it like this: If I were to go and comment on a blog and leave a
 link to my own blog (like everybody does), then without nofollow, that
 link is now enhancing my own PageRank.

 The question is: Should it do so? Obviously people disagree on this topic,
 because it's not a technical question.

 Personally, I think that nofollow helps overall, because the alternative
 is for Google and other search engines to segregate blogs into a separate
 blogsearch, so as to eliminate blogs with high PageRank taking over
 virtually all of their top search results. Google started to do this
 (blogsearch.google.com) but never really seemed to complete it. Probably
 because it became unnecessary.

 Still, pulling the nofollow rel all together into one filter instead of
 having it in 3 or 4 places would make sense regardless of whether it's
 enabled by default or not.

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3842#comment:9>
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