A few bits before I get started. If you’re here because you’ve heard my blog is DoFollow, you’re right. However, please use your common sense. If you simply say “Hey, thanks for this article.”, I’m going to delete your comment. If you leave 15 of the same comments on different articles, I’m going to spam your comments. I’ve decided to DoFollow because I hope it encourages folks to comment and contribute. The side effect is that folks are going to drop by and leave a shitty comment. So, if you’re willing to take a few moments to leave a good comment or start a discussion, you’ll get a tiny bit of link juice and maybe a bit of karma. If you stop by, leave a BS comment, and move on, I’ll delete you and you’ll waste everyone’s time. Please comment genuinely and thoughtfully.
It’s been a few weeks since I DoFollowed’d the comments section on my blog and I’ve got a few stats, not exact, I’m sure, but a decent overview:
- Since 1 October, I’ve received 48 comments, which is about how many comments I’ve received since I started the blog. So that’s good.
- I’ve received 25 spam comments, either caught by Akismet or spammed by me.
- I’ve had a bit of ham and a few false positives, but nothing too serious. I think this is largely because the slightly spammy nature of DoFollow comments.
- My uniques are up 102%
- My pageviews are up 130%
- Pages per visit are up 14%
- Bounces are down 22%
- Average time on site is up 79%
- I’ve more than doubled my FeedBurner subscribers
A few caveats:
- During this period, I’ve also joined the ProBlogger.com Forums, which is driving a bit of traffic to my site.
- One of my posts got a mention on a decently popular site, which drove traffic until it fell off the front page.
I’m really happy with my DoFollow decision. Yes it takes more time to edit the BS comments and yes the comment quality has taken a bit of a dive. That’s ok. All other factors point to increased engagement with my content. Spam is the price I’m willing to for a more open and collaborative web. I’ll keep you all updated every few weeks/months on the stats here.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
“Hey, thanks for this article.” LoL.. I am reading this same exact comment on almost every blog post.. hehe.. Spam filters must now include lines like these.. We all know that dofollow blogs = spam comments .. hehehe…
I would say you are in one of the most difficult niches when it comes to “nice post”- kind of comments. Personally I have nofollow on my personal blog and still gets a lot of short one worded comments and the question is where you should draw the line. If you are not careful, there will be more and more people trying to stretch it.
Thanks for this great article (JOKING!!!)
I did read your article and it’s good you have pointed this out, i have several blogs which people have included in Do-follow lists and it SH*TS me as i have to now spend hours each week filtering out what is real and what is spam, i think the do-follow thing should be redeveloped by the major search engines to prevent spam.
Anyways thanks for your work, and thanks if you approve my comment, it is muchly appreciated.
PS.. is there any WP-Plugin that actually works ? because all my sites are getting hit with “Thanks for this article friend” would be nice to have a plugin to filter this nonsense out.
Ha!,
It is a bit frustrating to me too, but I guess it’s just part of the DoFollow decision. I don’t think it’d be too hard to create a plugin that would catch those comments. I don’t know that much about coding, but I’ll take a look at the details and see if there’s anything I can do.
Allowing Dofollow can increase your site visibility and visitors number. The only problem is high chance of spam comments. Using Askimet or any other Spam catching plugins, we can reduce it. Im having Dofollow in my blog and Im using Askimet too..
Lol I laught a lot when I got directed from the list of blogs to your one. Having links this ways should be done in a way it’s useful for both sides… I mean that thanks to this blog you are going to get a good link so at least you could or should submit something with quality not just “hello!” that’s quite silly… i’m sure Google bots must have something to not count links when the following word to it is something like “hello” “nice blog” “good job” or two worded sentences…
Well thank you for the laugh… And answering to Stefan I think that even with nofollow you get lot of comments of people saying just “hi” i think it could be better to do something like adding a counter of words… and not allowing post with repeated words, mispelling, short messages, etc.
Best regards
Carla
Im using Askimet to block spammers… I was tired of spammers at first. Now its ok
Interesting I had never heard of Akismet before, its only really the auto blog commenters that are a problem.
I just learned of do follow blogs and am currently speculating their relevance in the Google algorithm and what constitutes spam when leaving a comment. Is putting your business name as your name spam. My opinion would be no unless you leave a sales pitch or list of keywords instead of an actual comment. Anyone else’s thoughts?
I have also removed all nofollow tags on my blog. You can find it here: http://www.my-miracle.de
Greets, miracle