The I Follow Movement is Like Family Guy only Evil, and how I am Fighting It
Ranty time!
You may have seen the following buttons like the one to the right on a number of sites on the internet. It is for The I Follow Movement, what The I Follow Movement does is remove the “Nofollow” from links within comments, so that Google recognises that link and helps them get indexed in Google. It’s rather popular with SEO Types, they go to a famous blog, comment, link to a certain article on their blog, with a phrase that they want, bonus they get a free precious, precious linkback.
Which is why I hate it.
You see, my blog was featured on a fairly prominent website recently, which resorted in a lot of traffic and google juice coming my way. As a result, I had a few comments from people who probably wouldn’t comment. Did any of these commenters know anything about me? No. Have any of these degenerates been back since? No. Did the comments they leave links to off topic articles that were so far removed, that it makes the cutaway scenes in Family Guy seem relevant? You bet you arse they do!
The type of comments I’m talking about are below. I’m not talking about occasionally posting comments with links related to the blog (because I do that), or when – from Friday’s Post – Jacob shows me a link about getting Mario Strikers Dirt Cheap and Ryan linking to a Wikipedia Article about Red Rover. I’m talking about these sort of comments.
What a great article! I like the idea about Digital Condoms. It reminds me of the time that I made money using Adsense!
Oh, how funny talking about not stealing! Do you know what is a steal? My Technorati Tag Generator!
Oh how interesting your article about getting beer money with Text Link Ads. I wonder if people with a foot fetish in wheelchairs who proposition men on the street to take their shoes and off could use these tips?
You getting my drift?
The comments above are worst than spam, because it does nothing to contribute. The people who leave comments like the ones below have got no soul, as they have no interest in blogging, only in their blog. Surprise surprise, the people who leave these sorts of comments have those dry blogs that try and get a cheap buck. They also think they’re some kind of Billy Big Bollocks because somebody clicked on an adsense ad once in 1987.
Anyway, I did have the “Dofollow Plugin”, but I’ve changed to something that rewards my 100 million regular readers, rather than the aforementioned William Large Testicles.
LinkLove Plugin basically looks to see who have commented 10 times or more, and then if they have, they remove the nofollow from the links. So Ryan and Jacob get Google’s love, people who called “Web 2.0 Technology Review Crap” won’t.
I’ve also designed a logo! Anybody who has similar linky love like mine can use it.
What do you think?
Comments: 10 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
I like the new logo, but don’t get the whole nofollow thing; and will never, no matter how many times you explain it to me.
Somehow you are right with this. I also have the Do Follow Plugin installed. But now as I know about the LinkLove Plugin I am thinking about a change.
There are some comments from time to time, which are exactly how you decribe them. Until now I manually deleted the URLs in them, but the more comments will hopefully come, the more work this would be.
Some of them don’t even think about what they are writing, I guess the write it one time and than copy and paste it through several blogs.
Recently I had a comment saying something like, that this post I wrote would have some very good information and it my bog would be a good source for the commenters visitors as well.
But come on, she was english speaking, with an english website. I bet more than 99% of her visitors don’t even understand what I write, and most probably she also didn’t, as my blog is in german language.
My comment probably isn’t too relevant, to be honest..
Those comments you singled out in your post sort of remind me of the “Lucy Liu-bot” dialogue from that episode of Futurama, for reasons I can’t quite explain.
I hope you’ve seen it, otherwise you’ll have no idea what I’m taking about. Even if you have seen it, it’s probably just how my brain works
Paddy: Basically, no follow means that google doesn’t find your site, do follow does.
If your site is found via a do follow link, then whatever text is used to link to it is used to find it. Say your WordPress Theme, google will more likely find doingword.com if people search for the words “Paddy Ryan”.
What a section of bloggers are doing is commenting on a number of blogs with names like “Web 2.0 Technologies” and linking to a huge amount of articles, because google will find their links if they’re dofollow links.
Makes sense?
Torsten: Yeah, there actually does seem to be a bit of a “Do Follow” backlash, largely due to the targetted spam (which is worse than spam) from individuals like you’ve mentioned. I personally think it’s worse than spam.
HB: Yes, it really isn’t, but you’re a regular, you’re allowed
I have seen the episode, so know exactly what you’re talking about. I guess it does, a little.
awesome button
i wonder if ive commented 10 times?
Great idea! You know what else is also a great idea? Those great new toys for the iPod!
Wow, what an easy turnaround!
You’ve worked hard to get your blogging status, congrats with it – seriously, it’s more of a commitment than marriage!
But I guess not quite so bad, I mean, your blog doesn’t get jealous if you go commenting on other blogs, and other people comment on your blog, but you don’t like randoms, but for the regulars it seems fine. It’s just like one massive swingers party!
That cracks me up….love the button…can I steal it? LOL j/k I am a follower of the dofollow idea, but this one seems great if you’ve just received a spike in traffic. I don’t have that worry just yet.
Well, no matter what you do you will get spammers. I have the dofollow plugin installed on my blog and for the most part I’m getting good, related comments (maybe because my audience is webmasters/bloggers and they would know about the topics I am writing about). The linkjuice plugin seems good too and it would probably be a good way to weed out the genuine commenters from those that just want links (But you may lose comments in the process).
Funny rant. I will leave this one comment and be done with your blog. You miss the whole point of the do follow movement which is to reward those who contribute good content to your entry. However, if you are such a scrooge about spreading any link love then stick to your guns. Anyway, thanks for the link condom.
My blog now follows links. At first I thought nofollow was a good idea but I have changed my mind on that. After a long time procrastinating I have seen the importance of “dofollow” and making sure everything stays connected and links don’t get broken. I will follow comments on my blog, http://www.reallyreally.net I hope more people adopt these principals. Regards Bree.