Yes a lot of speculation, but there is definite reason for a lot of the speculation.
Barry Welford
· 5 months ago
Given the complexities here, perhaps the Michael Gray Comments Blocked policy is the best. At least the link-love then gets distributed to known links within the blog post content. :)
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
In many ways that is worse
Imagine a resource post with 30 external links in the content, and only 10-20 (I haven't counted) internal navigation links
Then you also have internal links blocked by robots.txt
That being said, there is still a lot about dangling pages, robots.txt, and even the new nofollow evaporation that hasn't been covered, I am just trying to work out how I can do it without delving into things that might be better remain confidential.
I think the primary reason Michael stated was time... there are ways to handle that, kill all the spam dead without using Akismet, and still provide a medium for users to comment.
Who (long-term) gets more links, the controversial blogger where the only way to comment on what he says is by linking, or the controversial blogger who has a community where people can comment, maybe get a link if they are a regular.
Also note the emphasis I place on the marketing aspects of comments - it can be part of the lead acquisition process, offering free bonuses etc. When leads see blog posts with 2000 comments during a product launch there is a significant social proof benefit. I am a marketer, not an SEO - the ideal of not being able to engage an audience feels alien to me, and I also want to leverage engagement.
There are different ways to handle SEO if you don't have comments.
Jodie
· 5 months ago
Oh my! My head is spinning after reading all of that. But with the new changes, people are still unsure how and what they need to change. You have done a great job breaking down the comment aspect of this (something I never really considered... and now I need to figure out if I want to change my WP comments back to "no follow" again.
This is the first time I have been to your site and I'm happy I followed it from twitter! Cheers! Jodie
Stefan
· 5 months ago
It's still difficult to predict how the future will be. Even though its been a long time since Google changed it we haven't known about it for more than a couple of weeks.
At the moment I'm letting everything be just as it were. In the future I think comments will move to a different page than the post.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
There are existing solution, for years even to have your comments on a different page for various reasons, but that doesn't add internal linking.
Some of the concepts I discussed I have been thinking about for 6-12 months, as this blog has always been dofollow and will return to that soon. A method of bringing more traffic to a blog, and also highlighing an individual comment is a good thing - "win/win" but only after other factors are considered first.
seomakaleleri
· 5 months ago
You allright I think. I am student in Turkey and connect with university's wireless but I can't enter my websites...
Vlad Zablotskyy
· 5 months ago
I have gotten used to Disqus. I can't tell if it filters out many comments. But it certainly is a c0oncern for blogs like yours, when in the past it was not unusual to receive dozens of comments withing an hour of publishing a post.
I might be mistaken but I think their spam system relies on "collective intelligence" and I did have some comments made by bloggers who commented dozens of times flagged and put into moderation.
Look forward to test Vladomir's plugin as well but I am afraid that it may conflict with WP Super Cache plugin - which requires rewrite rules to be begin with.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
I am going to have a play around with it on other sites to start with.
Static pages served from disk can actually be faster than what I am currently using, because often they are served from the disk cache, which on Linux is highly optimized.
I don't like the collective intelligence of Disqus, but the big problem is that any comments that end up unapproved or spam seem to not get back to the WordPress database. If I switch off Disqus now, I lose half of my comments for the last month - maybe 500 comments, plus it won't retain the threading. The biggest issue is actually one Lucia highlighted in an email to me... it is something Disqus have to fix, no option.
Vladimir Prelovac
· 5 months ago
@Andy What I made is an experiment and had fun doing it. It does bring in 300 more visitors every day on my site, increased my index by over 600%, increased the site's total page rank and provides more information in the comment page about the author's recent comments across the site.
My opinion is it would work on any site regardless it's page rank. Btw. majority of mine does not come from the theme release as you can see from any link diagnostic tool - footer links carry little to none significance, perhaps even negative connotation regarding passing PR juice. In my opinion huge amount of lowq links can harm your PR (not the rankings) http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/more-links-les...
@Vlad It works with WP super cache
Vlad Zablotskyy
· 5 months ago
Vladimir, Sorry for misspelling your name.
Look forward to test your pluig on my blogs.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
It is a great experiment, it is why I linked to it as I know it is the direction I want to take with comments and have done since well before Google's changes. There was a lot more to cover than in a comment.
Your link profile is not just WP themes, but your link profile is significantly different to most plugin developers, even successful ones. I haven't noticed any significant PageRank distribution swings for theme developers, other than those selling links. PageRank isn't everything, but it is what gets pages indexed and selected as contenders to
With the amount of juice you have coming into the site, you probably have the potential to have 50-100K pages in the primary index, and many more in whatever might be looked on as Google's current variant of the supplemental. More pages in the index ultimately gives you a little more PageRank to play with, either to get more pages indexed, or focus it on specific pages, but it is a balancing act.
Don't count on pages staying in the index unless a human review at some distant time in the future determines that the pages have substantial value.
The value is similar to adding a translation plugin (if the pages are indexed) - you can get more pages in the index, and they might even drive more traffic. I have one that adds 30 languages, though using it I only ever managed to get around 9x the number of pages indexed.
More interesting would be gains in ranking on the rest of the site, even with the pages noindexed, on a site with a large number of existing nofollowed comments. The primary benefit of using your plugin should be conserving juice and focusing it on specific landing pages that need it, not the incidental increase in long tail traffic.
It is much easier to make a tag page unique and valuable to a searcher than a comment page - just look at Crunchbase.
Vladimir Prelovac
· 5 months ago
Btw - I do agree it is a partial solution. Though I am a big fan of automated solutions and all of my SEO plugins lean into that direction, I would be more careful about implementing this as an instant solution on a site like Mashable with probably 100,000 comments. In this case probably some extra features would need to be implemented, like you are suggesting in your article.
At the end of the day I think SEO or not, the purpose of comments is to engage into discussion and create faithful readers and I think that any plugin that can improve this engagement will be beneficial for the blog owner.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
On Mashable you would probably hit the same problem I face on this site, the Disqus sync with WordPress seems to be broken thus it would be difficult to roll back, and you lose threading info.
Plus they really need to concentrate efforts in other directions, such as achieving indented listings on results they already have.
Wayne Smallman
· 5 months ago
It seems that each month brings with it yet more byzantine and circuitous traps & snares from Google.
For those late to SEO party, this kind of thing has to be extremely off-putting and intimidating.
You could easily look at these measures as an admission by Google that they have taken a very hostile stance regarding blogs and bloggers in general.
Google are, on the whole, utterly clueless when it comes to social media. They can't figure out whether it's an aid or a hindrance.
The more complicated they make their algorithms, the more irrelevant they become and the more relevant and appealing social media becomes, as a route to qualified traffic.
I say qualified, because search traffic is qualified. In the same sense, a social media website like Digg or Mixx send traffic from articles within specific categories. So we're just replacing one kind of specificity with another.
The big difference is, the former would appear more like a Royal Marine assault course, while the latter is more an over-50s jog through the fields...
NCOAProcessing
· 5 months ago
My opinion is it would work on any site regardless it's page rank. Btw. majority of mine does not come from the theme release as you can see from any link diagnostic tool - footer links carry little to none significance.
How to create a website? With website builders like www.site2you.com or make it by programmist, designer and so on?
Phanio
· 5 months ago
I like comments - I sometimes get more informaiton or better explaination from comments than from the original posts. I hope that comments stay - counted or not.
george
· 5 months ago
It is funny though that everyone is looking for a solution after Cutts said in public that Google has changed the way it handles no follow...
What is more Cutts said that they've changed the way they handle it for quite some time now but it is known in the seo industry for a few weeks
It will be nice to see how will wordpress.com will handle the changes at their .wordpress.com blogs since they were the ones that implemented the no follow at the comments when Google suggested it....
It can be an attempt from Cutts side to mess with us :P
Lee
· 5 months ago
Shouldn't we be concentrating on the user experience a bit more? Sometimes I think we all get so carried away with every snippet of SEO that we forget the original purpose of our blogs.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
you can certainly improve the user experience in this way, and if people leave good cooments, they will be found in search results more frequently.
Kris @ make money online
· 5 months ago
Andy here is a link which explains my reaction to the post~ http://blaahblaahblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/... for some reason when reading I could not grasp the concepts. I think I will read it again hopefully getting a better grasp of the concetps which you were trying to convey.
wii controller
· 5 months ago
This is the first time I have been to your site and I'm happy I followed it from twitter! Cheers! thanks...........
Sourav Sen
· 5 months ago
Hello Andy Its a nice post but can you write one post about the comment system in blogger platform.
Thanks
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
Sorry I gave up with the comment system on blogger yers ago - there are lots of alternatives you can use.
Nick Stamoulis
· 5 months ago
I think the power of commenting is only going to get stronger as times goes on. I think we will also see variations on the commenting.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
We will all have Google wave at the bottom of blog posts soon
I Love SEO
· 5 months ago
One unique SEO opportunity is coming up from this whole no follow do follow mess. If you set up some supplementary sites to your main site, and make them dofollow blogs, you can get tons of comments and traffic simply from people looking to get dofollow links. Those sites can still help you main site both by sending traffic, and because the links from them to your main site would be superior in that they would be in the content, not the comments section.
Eric @ Motorcycle Paint
· 5 months ago
RE: The Future Of Commenting And Aggregation. Isn't this monolithic approach a dangerous step toward cyber hegemony by those who control the delivery platforms? I thought diversity is the underpin of the blog economy.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
There is nothing stopping you owning your own delivery platform - I could do most of what I suggested already using WordPress. Ultimately this approach gives more freedom and control over access.
borntobeaseo
· 5 months ago
A very well written article with handy information. I’m already looking forward for more.
jsinkeywest
· 5 months ago
I actually tried that plugin SeoSupercomments looked pretty cool but was something that I thought may freak people out so I switched it back. I thought Disqus came do follow out of the box ? Anyway I just keep my do follow and keep plugin away. nice post Stumbled
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
Disqus has some major problems
The Supercomments probably needs some tweaking in UI to make people understand exactly what is going on.
Trish
· 5 months ago
I don't think doing away with comments altogether is going to benefit the internet community. How do you propose to re-write the rules for comment URLs? I have also been confused by the fact that some blogs reject meaningful comments and instead accept spam. Is this due to some glitch in Wordpress?
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
I get comments caught by Akismet all the time (the spam plugin most commonly used on WordPress)
With whatever I propose, comments would still appear with articles, just like pingbacks / trackbacks, or a bit like extended tweets, and could also reflect the conversations happening elsewhere better.
1floridawaterfront1
· 5 months ago
Holy crap my brain just turned to mush trying to keep up with all this. Andy, glad there are smart guys like yourself out there keeping up with what works and why - and then trying to relay it to the rest of us.
echoadmin
· 5 months ago
Great post. Very interesting and informative article with good Seo tricks for wordpress comments.
seoimage
· 5 months ago
I think Google is attributing user input in communities to have some weight and utilizing comments as a ranking algo. So there's plenty of reason to want a nofollow comment link.
The only solution I have seen work requires users to login and the comment link links to a user profile rather than from the comment. Of couse it will greatly cut sdown on comment from people who stumble in.
Doug Champigny
· 4 months ago
Wow - an amazing amount of information for one post, Andy - Thanks!
PC Fix It
· 4 months ago
Wow. I regard myself as a knowledgeable techy and it still took me a bit to comprehend your breakdown of the changes. Thanks for doing that. The original mess would have been even more to wrap my brain around on a relaxing Sunday.
Keith Stancil
· 4 months ago
Thanks for the great info. I find myself confused with all of the conflicting info thrown at me in regards to how Google ranks pages. I am going to Twitter now to follow you.
Neil T
· 4 months ago
Good amount of information to process here. Some valid ideas and suggestions on commenting in the future. I've ran into a lot of Wordpress blogs with broken comment boxes. Not sure what the issue is there. I think v2.7 had an issue with logins that might have caused some of that.
tracytoler
· 4 months ago
That stuff does blow my mind. I feel link juice being squeezed from my brain. Hoping that everyone can just post relative content and let their voice be heard. Thanks for the WP insite.
Aviz
· 4 months ago
well i can say only we must have to be very careful using any plug in , an other thing i would like to add is this wordpress is updating on monthly bases since last 3 months im getting mess that wordpress new update come and have to update. this also disturb some features i think . Regards
AndyBeard
· 3 months ago
The update speed isn't the problem, lots of updates are good but they should separate security from feature implementation.
julianb
· 4 months ago
Gosh - Just when you think you are begining to understand all this, along comes this post a lot of food for thought here and it's going to need a re-read at a slightly earlier hour. Very interesting reading. Thank you, my mind is blown!
maryanna_kornienko
· 4 months ago
I have a question :-) If the PR of site is 0! Is there any principled difference to be "dofollow" or "nofollow". Does it change something?
AndyBeard
· 4 months ago
That is only visible PageRank which is only updated every 3 months, and even if it displays zero, might just indicate a number less than 0.5.
In addition there are other factors such as anchor text and possibly domain authority.
Acnepreview
· 4 months ago
Wow! it is a great option to live comment, what are you think about this subject.
My opinion is it would work on any site regardless it's page rank. Btw. majority of mine does not come from the theme release as you can see from any link diagnostic tool - footer links carry little to none significance. Thanks for info.
marine_insurance
· 4 months ago
Can't we just go back to the old JavaScript sculpting? It worked ...
:-)
aminamin
· 4 months ago
Site of the best sites. Allow me to convey some of the content of the forums owners spiritual on this link. http://www.malak-rouhi.com/vb/ Atab you success, prosperity and excellence
howtogettaller
· 4 months ago
I really feel that this link juice benefits your site always. And it adds credibility to your site also.
The comments here were just as instructive as your post :)
ubudaccommodation
· 3 months ago
so now google will not recognize if we comment at blog that use do follow, as back link ?
junjavier
· 3 months ago
yes speculation, all are speculation but there is no harm in commenting even though google wont follow it still other people can see your url on the post
All Comments
Imagine a resource post with 30 external links in the content, and only 10-20 (I haven't counted) internal navigation links
Then you also have internal links blocked by robots.txt
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /noindex/
Disallow: /privacy-policy/
Disallow: /subscribe/
Disallow: /terms-of-service/
Disallow: /information/comment-policy/
Disallow: /faq/
Disallow: /contact-form/
Disallow: /advertising/
Disallow: /information/licensing-information/
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /iframes/
That being said, there is still a lot about dangling pages, robots.txt, and even the new nofollow evaporation that hasn't been covered, I am just trying to work out how I can do it without delving into things that might be better remain confidential.
I think the primary reason Michael stated was time... there are ways to handle that, kill all the spam dead without using Akismet, and still provide a medium for users to comment.
Who (long-term) gets more links, the controversial blogger where the only way to comment on what he says is by linking, or the controversial blogger who has a community where people can comment, maybe get a link if they are a regular.
Also note the emphasis I place on the marketing aspects of comments - it can be part of the lead acquisition process, offering free bonuses etc. When leads see blog posts with 2000 comments during a product launch there is a significant social proof benefit.
I am a marketer, not an SEO - the ideal of not being able to engage an audience feels alien to me, and I also want to leverage engagement.
There are different ways to handle SEO if you don't have comments.
This is the first time I have been to your site and I'm happy I followed it from twitter! Cheers! Jodie
At the moment I'm letting everything be just as it were. In the future I think comments will move to a different page than the post.
Some of the concepts I discussed I have been thinking about for 6-12 months, as this blog has always been dofollow and will return to that soon.
A method of bringing more traffic to a blog, and also highlighing an individual comment is a good thing - "win/win" but only after other factors are considered first.
I might be mistaken but I think their spam system relies on "collective intelligence" and I did have some comments made by bloggers who commented dozens of times flagged and put into moderation.
Look forward to test Vladomir's plugin as well but I am afraid that it may conflict with WP Super Cache plugin - which requires rewrite rules to be begin with.
Static pages served from disk can actually be faster than what I am currently using, because often they are served from the disk cache, which on Linux is highly optimized.
I don't like the collective intelligence of Disqus, but the big problem is that any comments that end up unapproved or spam seem to not get back to the WordPress database.
If I switch off Disqus now, I lose half of my comments for the last month - maybe 500 comments, plus it won't retain the threading.
The biggest issue is actually one Lucia highlighted in an email to me... it is something Disqus have to fix, no option.
My opinion is it would work on any site regardless it's page rank. Btw. majority of mine does not come from the theme release as you can see from any link diagnostic tool - footer links carry little to none significance, perhaps even negative connotation regarding passing PR juice. In my opinion huge amount of lowq links can harm your PR (not the rankings) http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/more-links-les...
@Vlad It works with WP super cache
Look forward to test your pluig on my blogs.
There was a lot more to cover than in a comment.
Your link profile is not just WP themes, but your link profile is significantly different to most plugin developers, even successful ones.
I haven't noticed any significant PageRank distribution swings for theme developers, other than those selling links. PageRank isn't everything, but it is what gets pages indexed and selected as contenders to
With the amount of juice you have coming into the site, you probably have the potential to have 50-100K pages in the primary index, and many more in whatever might be looked on as Google's current variant of the supplemental.
More pages in the index ultimately gives you a little more PageRank to play with, either to get more pages indexed, or focus it on specific pages, but it is a balancing act.
Don't count on pages staying in the index unless a human review at some distant time in the future determines that the pages have substantial value.
The value is similar to adding a translation plugin (if the pages are indexed) - you can get more pages in the index, and they might even drive more traffic. I have one that adds 30 languages, though using it I only ever managed to get around 9x the number of pages indexed.
More interesting would be gains in ranking on the rest of the site, even with the pages noindexed, on a site with a large number of existing nofollowed comments. The primary benefit of using your plugin should be conserving juice and focusing it on specific landing pages that need it, not the incidental increase in long tail traffic.
It is much easier to make a tag page unique and valuable to a searcher than a comment page - just look at Crunchbase.
At the end of the day I think SEO or not, the purpose of comments is to engage into discussion and create faithful readers and I think that any plugin that can improve this engagement will be beneficial for the blog owner.
Plus they really need to concentrate efforts in other directions, such as achieving indented listings on results they already have.
For those late to SEO party, this kind of thing has to be extremely off-putting and intimidating.
You could easily look at these measures as an admission by Google that they have taken a very hostile stance regarding blogs and bloggers in general.
Google are, on the whole, utterly clueless when it comes to social media. They can't figure out whether it's an aid or a hindrance.
The more complicated they make their algorithms, the more irrelevant they become and the more relevant and appealing social media becomes, as a route to qualified traffic.
I say qualified, because search traffic is qualified. In the same sense, a social media website like Digg or Mixx send traffic from articles within specific categories. So we're just replacing one kind of specificity with another.
The big difference is, the former would appear more like a Royal Marine assault course, while the latter is more an over-50s jog through the fields...
About Me
What is more Cutts said that they've changed the way they handle it for quite some time now but it is known in the seo industry for a few weeks
It will be nice to see how will wordpress.com will handle the changes at their .wordpress.com blogs since they were the ones that implemented the no follow at the comments when Google suggested it....
It can be an attempt from Cutts side to mess with us :P
Its a nice post but can you write one post about the comment system in blogger platform.
Thanks
Ultimately this approach gives more freedom and control over access.
nice post
Stumbled
The Supercomments probably needs some tweaking in UI to make people understand exactly what is going on.
With whatever I propose, comments would still appear with articles, just like pingbacks / trackbacks, or a bit like extended tweets, and could also reflect the conversations happening elsewhere better.
The only solution I have seen work requires users to login and the comment link links to a user profile rather than from the comment. Of couse it will greatly cut sdown on comment from people who stumble in.
Thanks for the WP insite.
Regards
In addition there are other factors such as anchor text and possibly domain authority.
Acne Treatment
:-)
Allow me to convey some of the content of the forums owners spiritual on this link.
http://www.malak-rouhi.com/vb/
Atab you success, prosperity and excellence
How To Get Taller