When leaving comments, you need to realize that the blogger is offering a “dofollow link”, but they are not necessarily offering the “dofollow link of your dreams”.

Bloggers like polite conversation and having commenters address each other as “Tools” tends to make the comment look a bit hostile.

Even when the SEO term doesn’t force people addressing you to call you a tool, bloggers hate seeing SEO terms in the “name”. Many will strip the links, edit the name or report you to AKISMET. Some don’t mind that SEO terms. They will permit it to appear.

This is a risk for you.

After all, if one blogger reports you as spam, this affects your Akismet rating at all blogs.

If you feel you absolutely must leave an seo term as a name, leave your name too. (For example: Andy — internet marketing tool” is less likely to go to Akismet than just “internet marketing tool”.) Also, before you start dropping seo terms in the “name” visit a few times and notice whether or not you are seeing seo terms in the “name”.

If you don’t see any, don’t leave any! (Or risk the consequences.)

I enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work.

Blatant spam is a cut and dry case, but how do you feel about people (with legitimate comments) entering their desired anchor text in the name box? Then at least they wouldn’t have the need to enter another link in the message.

All the best,
Andy

My point remains – it’s a lot of work, so clearly you would be better off taking do follow off your blogs – at least, 8 of them. There is nothing wrong with doing that if it’s not working for you. The fact is do follow blogs are being targeted, and do follow blogs on any kind of list are going to have some real issues with this. I have seen bloggers struggle with this and then take it off, and all of them feel a lot better because of it.

I know you run the list, but if you’re viewing *any* comments with suspicion then something not good is going on here.

I wasn’t yelling at you – I was trying to tell you how I felt. If I were yelling, you would have seen caps. I can only think that we both feel a bit defensive on this issue – me because I don’t like being called a spammer but I want to leave the link so people can find my blog – I spend so much time writing what I feel are good comments and so many people follow them to my blog and become readers, and that’s what every blogger really wants, right? – you because you genuinely don’t want to offend genuine commenters but you’re having such an issue with the spamming you want to let others know what is going on.

Lucia, I am a big fan of your plugin because it makes it easier for everyone. I’ve got no problem visiting a site several times because that’s what I usually do anyway though it might take me a while seeing as I read so many blogs. If I like a blog, I’m going to comment there.

I like your blogs, Tricia. I’m sorry the spammers are targeting you but honestly after reading what that buy blog comments guy said about targeting do follow blogs and having lists of them to comment on, it isn’t surprising that your comment spam has risen lately. When I read through his site I thought two things- that’s one more good reason to leave a link at the bottom of your post, because he says he won’t do that, the only link he will leave is the one where the name is – and that’s why I will never join a text based do follow list, because I don’t want that kind of traffic coming to me.

I’m going to have to seriously rethink how I leave comments if Akismet is going to keep putting me in the spam bucket. ;( Thanks for pulling me out of there, I do appreciate it. You put a lot of work into your blogs, anyone looking at them can see that. I’ll do my best to remember which ones are yours and not leave a link in them..

Snoskred

I know this because I just wrote “Lucia’s Linky Love” and observed very mysterious things about “dofollows” and “nofollows” in the comment text. I also know the mechanics of stripping them out, and I know why things can behave inconsistently in comment text.

While I was coding and testing “Lucia’s Linky Love” (my new plugin), I noticed this “nofollow” “dofollow” defaults behaved inconsistently in different versions of Wordpress. Why? I do not know.
However, in some versions of wordpress “nofollow” was automatically added to urls in comments. Worse, sometimes the no follow was added if the blogger actually wrote the full html, but not if they just plopped the url in and let Wordpress turn it into a link. (Or vice versa– I can’t remember which. When I noticed this feature, I had to add a line of code to make sure I got out what I wanted out and left in what I wanted in in the four versions of WP I tested! )

Also, some dofollow plugins strip that auto-added no follow out of comment text; some only strip it out of the author name. Plus, things behaved inconsistently. (This is actually because Wordpress is inconsistent. I coded to enforce consistency when I was able to figure out what various versions of WP do. Otherwise, well… who knows?)

Anyway, quite often, the individual blogger has no cluewhat happens to follows in text and doesn’t control that. So, if a visitor accuses the blogger of adding or deleting “follows” in the text of the comment, that’s probably not a fair accusation. WP does that.

Of course, if a person leaving comments accuse me of adding a nofollow, I can explain in detail. Also, I’ll check and fix my plugin if that’s the problem. I can do this because I wrote the darn thing! But visitors hurling accusations about adding do follows in comment text is unfair because that’s actually a Wordpress/ dofollow plugin problem.

Oh.. obviously, you should all get my plugin. It’s better.

I won’t be posting any more blog posts about this stuff. I’ll just do what I do on MY blogs and that’s it.

I’ve never altered a link to make it nofollow. You’ve left quite a few links on my sites and some you have made no follow yourself. If you didn’t do it then maybe wordpress makes the links nofollow when a certain amount of links are in a comment. I don’t know – I don’t think it does, but I know I did not make your links no follow. I don’t do that.

I did try to make a few links in comments (NOT YOURS) nofollow and I managed to screw up the link! So yeah – I don’t do that.

I either leave it, delete it or delete the comment. I don’t bother editing.

One reason why I don’t want people to put extra links in their posts, particular a sign off link is because those comments often end up going into my askismet folder (that’s a spam folder). I fish them out. Many bloggers do not – they just delete whatever their akismet folder caught, often without looking through it at all.

I don’t blame them, if they get a lot of spam it can take a lot of time to go through and retrieve real comments from the spam pile.

I’m trying to do you and anyone else who adds extra links to their comments a favor – not necessarily on my site, but on others because most Wordpress blogs are set to put comments with more than one link either into moderation or spam.

I can understand how you got into the habit of adding your signature line if you visit a lot of blogspot blogs and must leave your comment via your blogger signin. I’d probably want to do that too if a comment section was closed to registered members, but only if it was closed to registered members.

However, the blogs that are on my do follow list must not require registration. I do not add them to the list if they do.

It doesn’t make any sense at all for do follow blogs, especially on blogspot where the person will never get a link to their site if they have to sign in through blogger and the link thats left for them is to their profile page.

So if you are following the blogs on my do follow list you should be able to leave your link when you fill out the comment form.

If you made your signature link no follow I wouldn’t mind it as much – but it’s not nofollow. Still I’d probably have to keep fishing it out of my spam folder as I do now. You’re complaining that I take out your signature link, but I could just leave your whole comment in my spam folder where I find it almost every time you leave a comment. Fishing through my spam folder to find real comments is a waste of time, but I do it because I don’t like to miss real comments.

The other reason I don’t want a whole bunch of extra links – especially duplicates if someone has already used that link when setting up their comment is because each outgoing link takes away from my site. I have to combat that by having more internal links or request that people do not add extra links within their comments.

I also think that most people who have managed to change their blogs to do follow are aware that when visiting a site and looking at comments that have been left by others that you could click on the name they’ve left to get to the site. Yes there might be a few people out there that haven’t clued into that, but I don’t think there are so many that extra links need to be put in comments.

I am not the only blogger who is upset with extra links and comment spam. Many just delete or mark as spam comments that have extra links – even if the comment is valid.

Your comments might also be ending up in my Akismet spam folder because others are marking your comments as spam. Once you are on Akismets list of spam comments it’s hard to get out of that penalty box – I’m actually doing you a favor every time I tell akismet that your comment isn’t spam.

I’m speaking out about comment spam and extra links on my blogs because I’ve seen so many other bloggers getting frustrated and just deleting the comments completely.

I’m speaking out to let anyone who might be doing things that tick off other bloggers (not just myself) that their comment are more than likely being deleted on other blogs.

I’m actually trying to help those of you who’s comments might be viewed with suspicion by other bloggers. Take my advice or don’t. I’m trying to help – not hurt.

Yes it does take me a lot of time to go through the comments on all of our blogs and no I’m not editing each comment. If it got to that point I’d just close my comments! LOL

I run the do follow list it would be pretty silly of me to suddenly make my blogs nofollow. LOL

I will however be changing my do follow plugin soon. Only regular visitors that have left a certain amount of comments in the past will have do follow. Others will get dofollow links once they’ve visited enough times. I’m pretty sure you’ve left enough comments that this won’t affect you should you care to continue visiting my sites.

Ok so do you understand now why I don’t like extra links?

If I didn’t go searching for comments in my spam folder most of your comments would never make it onto my sites. I’ve actually been doing you a favor all along and yet you are pretty much yelling at me here. I can stop retrieving your comments if you’d like and leave them in the spam folder where they end up most of the time.

I’m feeling a little upset and insulted too. I’ve explained this a few times in comments on my posts. (not always to you but others)