I think we shoud. This gets my vote.

Gets my vote too! (a lot of another blog tools and others type of program - like bbclone will include it)

http://bbclone.de

Graham wrote:

I think we shoud. This gets my vote.

i think we shouldn't.
because ppl who are writing real good comments doesn't get any credits if you use nofollow.

there are lot of blogger who don't like nofollow, see for example http://www.s9y.org/5.html (entry of January 20th, 2005) or http://www.itst.org/nonofollow/ or http://www.nonofollow.net/index.php?title=RelatedLinks

a plugin for nofollow would be ok, but i don't like the idea of default use of it.

What about a way to turn it off or on as the user wishes? An even better way would be for it to be linked to any future 'moderation' system for comments.

I.E. Able to have the coment displayed, and when it's verified as a real comment and not spam, then the nofollow attribute can be removed.

Walter there is already a hack for it that can cover your referer links in your skin folder. To do it to comments and trackbacks and pingbacks requires hacks outside the skin though. Personally I think referers should always have nofollow and comments (trackbacks, pingbacks) should be user-selectable by blog.

I tinkered with "commenters who already have the cookie don't get the nofollow" figuring first time commenters and all spammers would be nofollowed but frequent commenters would get the google juice. I gave up though. It hurt my little brain too much.

I think it would be great if this were included. If someone is trying to promote their site through my blog, then either they don't understand who my readers are, or they are vastly overestimating the size of my audience. But, I can see why some would not want this.

There are two suggestions in this thread that I think are worth pursuing.

1) I like the idea for a checkbox where users can select to enable this feature. Similar to the way the site owner can enable skin switching.

2) I also _really_ like EdB's idea to use cookies.

I make no claim to be a wiz programmer, but I'd like to be someday. I'm willing to lend some help to this.

Yes, we all want rid of comment spam, but there is a wider picture. While Google remains powerful - and everything changes in this world - nofollow will have a powerful effect beyond mere blogs and their comments.

What if, consciously or unconsciously, nofollow were implemented on a demographic basis? Domains, countries even, would be relatively penalised in their SERPS.

With nofollow, authority sites will be able to exert an even greater control over their relative position. The strong will become stronger and we know what will happen to the weaker. Which was not what the internet was supposed to be about, or so one's told.

Without becoming overly paranoid on the subject, this may or not be what Google intends.

polyxena wrote:

What if, consciously or unconsciously, nofollow were implemented on a demographic basis? Domains, countries even, would be relatively penalised in their SERPS.

With nofollow, authority sites will be able to exert an even greater control over their relative position. The strong will become stronger and we know what will happen to the weaker. Which was not what the internet was supposed to be about, or so one's told.

Without becoming overly paranoid on the subject, this may or not be what Google intends.

Thats an interesting slant on nofollow, and something I hadnt thought of.

One really could get all philosophical about this, since i'm guessing youre not the first to wonder about that potential.

Where an increase in pagerank may or may not have come from a link off a particular site 6 months ago, it (the link) was at least free of potential manipulation.
I'll guess that within 4 months that someone has put up a FAQ regarding the etiquette of using nofollow, since basically it's become one of those "should I or shouldnt I?" web issues.

Back to your idea though.. another example I thought of .... Take for instance my site. I have a nearly equal amount of democrat blogs and republican blogs in my links. What if I were to choose to use nofollow within the links to the sites that most typically I tended to disagree with? What if all sites did that?

Does using that one external link automatically entitle that other site to some of your PR? Gosh, i dont know. And isnt the bigger question the more important one -- have we given google too much power over the web?

verrry interesting questions.

whoo wrote:

Take for instance my site. I have a nearly equal amount of democrat blogs and republican blogs in my links. What if I were to choose to use nofollow within the links to the sites that most typically I tended to disagree with? What if all sites did that?

Does using that one external link automatically entitle that other site to some of your PR? Gosh, i dont know. And isnt the bigger question the more important one -- have we given google too much power over the web?

Yes, that is exactly the scenario I'm thinking about - you could give say, democrats an advantage over republicans, from your site. But again, I'm trying not to get too paranoid, there are other ways to do this even now, without nofollow - it's just that they require a little more technical knowledge about how search engines work.

Ultimately, yes, an external link does pass some of your PR on - that's really the concept behind 'authority sites' and backlinks. Search engines are the result of a lot of subtle statistics and trends - nofollow could easily skew those quite significantly.

I don't whether 'we gave' or 'google took when no-one was looking' - but it could be worse... Cheers...