SitePoint forums switched to nofollow
Just noticed this morning that my SitePoint Forum posts have rel=”nofollow” attribute added to signature links. Not cool. I always thought SitePoint was dofollow forum. After a little digging I found this post: Fluff posting on the forum. Apparently change was made on Nov 17th 2008 and SitePoint now requires at least 100 posts to have signature links without rel=”nofollow” attribute.
I don’t blame them for cleaning up the signature spam. The “fluff post” rule seems like a good idea, although I would imagine that it will put a lot more strain on their moderators. And some will be more lenient than others. (What is fluff? They know it when they see it.)
Look at the bright side. Less fluff means more value for the good posters because of lesser outbound links, tiny value though due to the number of links on a forum to begin with.
I suspect they will run some kind of keyword search in user’s posts to see what percentage of them is “fluff”. We’ll see where this battle against spammers takes us.
Personally, I only post in PHP sub-forum to answer other users questions. I suspect there is no big SEO value in that, but as a bonus I get quite a few clicks on my signature links.
nofollow is against the very basis of internet, the internet is made up of links and if links are not there then the internet itself will not survive, i agree that spammers take advantage, but in the name of spammers, the very existence / survival of internet cant be put in danger, iam of the view that search engines should rather find more innovative ways to keep spam at bay and nofollow should be banned completely if required a legislation should be passed in us congress to enable this
Thats not the worst of it.
I was fine with the 100 post minimum.. that meant a smaller pool to compete with for links on one page. (I quickly racked up posts)
But what I dont like is that if you are not logged in you cannot see the signatures… at all!
That means google cannot see ANY links, follow or not. Any links that were there in the past dont matter!
I liked sitepoint, but I think Ill spend more of my time on v7n and digitalpoint from now on.
Hi ,
Im new to the forum and just wanted to introduce myself, i’m Ivan . I’ve been lurking around the forum for quite some time looking up info but finally decided to make an account.
I think that google can see them if sitepoint gives google access. There’s a function in webmasters (I think) that lets you give google access to passworded pages. Same goes for adsense.
I gave up on Sitepoint – they can rot to death.
You can NOT ever justify turning on no-follow.
If you were previously no-follow fine.
I will tell you why:
You begin, and let people know that your forum is seo-friendly. I mean, you may not actually state that – but you definitely don’t quell those that are advertising for you on that point.
The community becomes big massive. You may MILLIONS of money with it.
People devote years on helping, adding comments, all for free. Supporting you, advertising for you.
Then because of a MINORITY – you punish everyone. You kill their signatures. So their websites experience a minor drop.
You make them feel guilty like it was their fault.
You don’t care that your own PR sky-rockets. Because that is what happens when you switch a previously do-follow to no-follow – All that leaking PR becomes contain and you surge higher on the SERPS
Spam is the problem. Raise the number of minimum post to 500 – 1000 who cares! But don’t punish the veterans. Damn, even if I was below that mark fine.
Fluff is the problem? Well with a higher number of posts to vet you can TRULY calculate if the poster was fluffing about or not.
And what is fluff anyway?
What if the style of a person is to be direct. Like ‘Sorry I don’t agree’. Or even ‘Rubbish’. Or ‘Nice one!”
So now we will be Post-Commenting NAZIS? Where we enforce how a person should express themselves?
It is very Hypocritical. Because these big communities were feeding from the people. They make MILLIONS. Absolutely. They are not poor people. And so an enthusiastic webdesigner starts a home-made chocolate shop in New York. He doesn’t have any budget. He is competing with HUGE businesses that can buy their do-follow anyway. That guy joins a community his signature is ‘Chocolate Chips Delivered at your Door – New York’
Bang! That guy is a criminal. That guy is a spammer. That guy should be shot. Take away his signature. Hide it from search bots. Or add a Do-Follow now – that we changed our policies and can’t give a damn about smaller guys. We give DO-FOLLOW links to big companies now. You know, we write ARTICLES and link to them DO-FOLLOW, maybe for free even to suck up to them. But the small guys – ah let’s trample on them.
So in short SITEPOINT (and other ex-do-followers) = Absolutely Greedy Hypocrites.
(same thing in the game industry: DRM, Internet connection blaming the pirates. Rubbish! they do that so you don’t sell your game or give it to anyone else!)