You Trackback, I Follow
Posted: February 5th, 2009 | Author: Agitationist | Filed under: blogging, wordpress | Tags: blogging, google, useful, wordpress | 5 Comments »If you’ve been working on link building for your site, you may have seen the terms “nofollow” and “dofollow”. In a nutshell: standard blogging platforms like WordPress automatically add the attribute rel=”nofollow” to links left by visitors in comments of trackbacks (automatic links to blogs that have cited yours). If you’re new to this, it may be confusing, so I’ll break it down.
The reasoning behind this is that visitors could spam popular sites with comments just to get links back and improve their search engine rankings. Especially troublesome were people who would sign their comments with names that were obviously just Google keywords, such as “New Jersey air conditioning repair” or “Best mortgage rates”. Since most comment systems link the commenters name to their site, it was a cheap way for spammers to get some link juice for their sites. Usually the comments would be cut-and-paste jobs that added no value to the conversation (“Great job! Awesome post.”) and the culprits would leave them on hundreds of sites. The sole purpose was to gain backlinks, not to contribute anything.
And so the “nofollow” attribute was added as the default in blogging software. This attribute tells search engine spiders not to follow and index the link, thus removing the incentive to spam. And indeed it has worked. No incentive to spam = no spam. The free market does its job. Hooray!
However, some bloggers feel that if someone takes the time to contribute something of value, they deserve at least a “dofollow” link back. (Side note: technically there is no “dofollow” attribute. When you see references to “dofollow” or “yes-follow” links, it simply refers to the absence of the “nofollow” attribute).
The “dofollow” movement has been spreading around the blog world for a couple of years now. There are popular plug-ins which tell blogging software not to add the “nofollow” attribute to comments/trackbacks, and even search engines which specifically list only “dofollow” blogs. It’s all a great communal, open-source, happy joy-fest…except that the spammers are back. The cost of wanting to spread a little link love to your commenters? Loads of bogus comments to sift through and delete.
So what’s the middle way? Enter “dofollow trackbacks”. This plug-in for WordPress removes “nofollow” from trackbacks, but not from comments. Thus when someone cites your post in their blog, they receive a link back, but commenters still get “nofollow” links. There’s still no incentive to go around leaving worthless comments, but people who link to you automatically get something back.
I’m instituting it on this site as of now. It looks promising, but we’ll see how it goes, and I’ll report on the results at a later date. For now, count me with on the “You Trackback, I Follow” movement, and let the games begin.

Great job! Awesome post! lol
ok fine..I’ll add ‘value to the conversation’..sheesh.
This plugin provides incentive for ppl to blog your post links as well as prevention of thos who are intentionally running around dropping “Great post” comments to score a linkback from commentary. At the same time, killing numerous spambots from doing the same, which is a primary reason for not choosing dofollow for comments.
I used commentluv when I operated my Wordpress blog so I could show appreciation for my commenters, but after a short period of time, my spam box filled with tremendous amounts of spam that was a hassle to sort through in an already busy day.
dofollow for trackbacks is much more reasonable.
Just a quick note..It’s always good to remember that there will be many commenters who are learning as they go along with your posts, and even a “Great post” comment is a good one from those who are innocently appreciative. :=)
Great point, as usual…someone might just want to say “great post”. And I hereby encourage everyone reading this to do so…
er…um…great post.
this is really brilliant stuff.
re: avoiding spam: a friend of mine is a high-level techie who was involved in a giant anti-spam deal lately where hir organization grabbed all the spammers’ domain names from a botnet, and cut down the incidence of spam by huge amounts. the blog recording the specifics of this, most of which i am too uneducated to comprehend, is at http://foxgrrl.livejournal.com/ some of it is friendslocked. but i’m sure you could get access by sending an offlist message.
very william gibson… except nobody’s firing radioactive bullets into shipping containers full of money. well, maybe virtually.
Cool! I like this game.
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