Search engine and web leader Google have announced their efforts to cut down on the amount of spam seen on blog comments. A problem that afflicts and annoys many bloggers, it's also a major issue for Google and other search engines. The logic behind the spam is that as Google indexes the web, a link from one site to another is a "virtual" vote; websites who spam their URL's on blog comments found that they could boost their place in search listings in quite a simple manner. Google hopes to put an end to it by removing the incentive of improved ranking.
Users are advised to add "
rel="nofollow"" to URL's which can be entered by users (see read more for an example). When Google's robot indexes websites, on seeing this it will ignore the link. Google have worked with major blog service providers (including Blogger, Spaces, LiveJournal, WordPress and more) to get this code implemented in upcoming versions of their software. Google recommend that the code not only be added to comments page on blogs, but to any page (e.g. guest book) that allows users to enter URL's.
For this initiative to truly work, Google needed backing from the major search engines which it appears to have recieved. Google noted that it wished to "thank MSN Search and Yahoo! for supporting this initiative". One would hope spammers get the message fast yet can't but wonder what the next method/target will be.
View: Google Blog / Announcement
Q: How does a link change?
A: Any link that a user can create on your site automatically gets a new "nofollow" attribute. So if a blog spammer previously added a comment like
Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.
That comment would be transformed to
Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.
(
ed - remove * to make code work).
News source:
Neowin
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