Dofollow is a great way to get GREAT comments:
Vapid videos attract smegma.
Vapid videos attract smegma.
Recently, Shoemoney blogger Pamcakes recorded a video in which she says the dofollow movement a “became a blogroll circle jerk” of brandnew or low quality blogs “dragging on for months”, announced that Greg Bozer is setting up a dofollow list for ‘quality’ blogs, and then tells us she’s “looking forward to the follow on blogposts where people tell us how much more time people have spent moderating after removing nofollow from their comments”.
What is Pam’s evidence that the dofollow movement is a blogroll circle jerk? Or that the dofollow blogs will have trouble with spam? Eyerolls.
Still many bloggers read Shoemoney; many might ask: Are dofollow blogs poor quality? Brandnew? Full of spammy comments?
If so, why is the dofollow movement gaining popularity? And, more importantly, why do I run across so many good dofollow blogs?!
Obviously, just as there are poor “dofollow” blogs; there are also loads of poor “nofollow” blogs. There are brand new dofollow blogs; there are tons of brand new “nofollow” blogs. What of it?
But the insinuation that dofollow disproportionately attracts spam is just flat out, wrong.
The reality is Dofollow often raises the level of comments.
How does dofollow raise the level of comments?
First, dofollow encourages visitors to comment. Since many visitors subscribe to comments, they often return and conversation ensues. As a blogger, I like this! As a blog visitor, I find these dynamics conversations attractive. They improve the quality of the blog– and ultimately improve the bloggers own content.
Contrary to Pam’s eyerolls, we dofollow bloggers figured out how to deal with spammy pointless comments months ago. This is done both through vigilance, and by appropriate choice of dofollow plugin. (I wrote Lucia’s Linky Love to help me filter human comment spam.)
In fact, we can learn a lot about the effect of “dofollow” on comments by comparing the first three comments at Pam’s post slamming dofollow blogs and Andy Beard’s response post.
Evidence that ‘Dofollow Blogs’ have better comments than ‘Nofollow Blogs’:
| Pamcake’s Post Nofollow  |
Andy’s Post Dofollow |
|
Comment by HustleStrategy 2007-10-27 09:31:17 Pam going to be at pubcon partying like a rock star?  |
Meg wrote: One of my biggest disappointments at the moment is that my “subscribe to comments” plugin is not playing nicely with the others, or my theme, so I’ve had to deactivate it. I really appreciate the ability to “subscribe” (except when I made the mistake of subscribing to Liz’s birthday bash, went to bed and found 328 emails when I woke up)! |
| Comment by David Wilkinson 2007-10-27 09:45:10 ROFL! |
James - DigitalKeyToInfo wrote:
I think Liz is a model for us all to follow. I just hope I can develop a community like hers. |
| Comment by SonicReducer 2007-10-27 10:09:12 I think the value of the contest just increased by a large margin. |
Maki wrote: Liz has a real charm to her and is a top-notch conversationalist. The comments on her blog reflect her commitment to her readers and a two way dialog. It’ll be interesting to compare her model with Perez Hilton or entertainment sites in general. 600 comments is sweet but tiny compared to a single one word blog post by Perez which received 7217 comments. They are left by real people who don’t want anything from his site (traffic/links). Are they still junk? Maybe. Celebrity blogs are a riot.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a celeb blogger actually leave a comment as a response to their readers. |
Need I say more?
Lesson for Pamcakes
Andy’s post responding to Pam’s slam of the dofollow movement was named: BlogRoll Circle Jerk? - If You Encourage Junk Comments That Is What You Get
Maybe Pam should stop and think for a minute. She may realize that “dofollow” isn’t what encourages junk comments. What does? Well, substitute eyerolls for thoughtful commentary on a popular blog you’ll get worse than junk comments. You’ll get comment smegma.
Tags:comments community building dofollow shoemoney
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Comments
17 Responses to “Dofollow is a great way to get GREAT comments: Vapid videos attract smegma.”
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Ah, how the mighty love to sit on high and tell us all what fools we are. When some folk are given a platform, the best use they can probably put it to is to fall on their a** and make a few people chuckle.
Good post Lucia, and I think it’s why of all the better known blogs, Mr Beard’s is growing in stature. There are plenty of good quality DoFollowers, established or new, who cares? I’ve met far more quality bloggers and sociable bloggers through the movement than I have through any other channels, and I’ve never been inundated with spammy comments either.
I don’t generally read Shoemoney, so I don’t know if those comments reflect the usual quality of comments at that blog. But I’m glad my visitors don’t generally leave comments like those!
Spot on Lucia. I’ve found that the best comments on my blog are left by DoFollowers. Of course most of my readers are DoFollowers, but they don’t leave the sort of comments that Pamcake’s getting… I do get a few spammy comments from time to time (about 1 a week), but they are always from outside the DoFollow community.
I agree with Maurice: I’ve met far more quality bloggers through the movement and I have to say, the average DoFollow blog is normally well worthwhile reading.
Sounds like there’s going to be A list do followers and B list do followers if you take Greg’s post to heart.
The do follow list that I maintain and the Bumpzee do follow community that Andy runs may have different standards for the blogs that end up getting listed, but each blog that makes it onto these lists are checked for certain qualities.
They certainly aren’t like the chain d-lists going around the internet that I’m sure the people who copy and paste those lists onto their blogs do not check each and every blog to make sure it’s one they really want their site to be associated with!
As for Pam’s comments? I had as much spam coming in before I turned into a do follow blogger as I do now.
Yes I was getting a little more human generated comment spam before I started using your do follow plugin, but I moderated my comments the same way I did when I had a nofollow blog - carefully. Removing comments and links when they don’t contribute to the post in any way or appear to be from a spammer.
I’ve been a do follow blogger for almost two years now. Yes the movement gained popularity in the Spring and Summer, but it’s been going on a long time. This isn’t something new.
As for the type of comments left after Pams podcast - Yikes! LOL
My blog is a dofollow blog, and I personally have not found Pam’s statements to be true at all. While there are certainly those bloggers who try to leave some snippet comment screaming of spam (”nice post, come visit my blog at http:blah-blah-blah), in no way related to the topic of the post, my personal experience has been that most comments left are well thought out, articulate, adding meaningful points to the discussion.
My favorite part to date is that most of those who comment on my blog, come back often and keep good conversation in play, and we’ve built a community-like relationship of sorts by getting to know each other.
@everyone: I’ve visited all your blogs in the past, and I agree: the comments left on your blogs are of consistently high standards.
@Steve: I think everyone has more human comment spam since Dofollow began. But that’s not solely due to using dofollow. Many of us did go “dofollow” last spring/summer when the movement was publicized. At the same time, a few “human comment spam” companies formed. These were reported by Problogger (among others.) I commented on it too.
So, the human comment spam increased for everyone, not just dofollowers. I have no doubt the companies tried to use the dofollow lists, but that’s dropped off for me too.
Hi Lucia,
I was interested in that plugin of yours, but I run a Blogspot blog. Is there a widget or code for me to use to be able to do that with? Or can you point me in the right direction somewhere? I currently am set on nofollow, but was looking into possibly changing to do follow.
@Mitch
Try Andy’s post here
http://andybeard.eu/2007/03/how-to-remove-nofollow-on-new-blogger-dofollow-on-blogspot.html
or pop over to BetaBlogger for Dummies whohas also described how to do it here
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2007/03/remove-nofollow-attribute-on-comments.html
Thank you Maurice,
However the posts led me to where I can remove no follow from blogger (I still needed that info so thanks anyways). But I wanted to know if Lucia’s plugin had a version for free blogspot bloggers? I like the idea of a plugin that would remove or identify spammers easily, and I would like to set one up before I move over to do follow.
At this point in time I don’t have a wordpress blog, or an extra domain to stick one on it with a domain name that I like. Thats my current dilemma. It looks as though Spam Karma is also a WP plugin?
@Mitch– I don’t think there is any equavalent to Lucia’s Linky Love for blogger. Whoever wrote it would need to be able to do things like count comments in the database. It’s easy to figure out in WP because we host our own databases. I don’t think Blogger provides information on how to do that.
The *most* you might be able to do with Blogger is add logic to delay the dofollow for a few days. The main advantage of that is psychological. The human comment spammers never “feel” like they got the follow. (You’d delete it anyway, but for spammers, seeing their comment with no ugly pink exist for a little while can be rewarding.)
[...] you remember Shoemoney’s Pamcake’s eyerolls at the idea that “Nofollow” blogs have good comments? Well, if you need any proof, [...]
[...] you remember Shoemoney’s Pamcake’s eyerolls at the idea that “Nofollow” blogs have good comments? Well, if you need any proof, [...]
Dofollow it is very good indded to have good comments and also to build original content in the same time, a thing which Google really likes.
Thanks for the information. I will change my blog to make it “dofollow”.
I had no idea that this was an issue, and that a simple plug-in could fix it. Thanks!
I think the difference in quality of comments has more to do with the blogger than the commenters, for three reasons.
1) Anyone who takes the effort to make a blog dofollow is someone more likely to take the comment to moderate comments and keep the “nice site” and “ROFL” comments out.
2) Knowing that people will come just for the links, the blogger has an additional cynic’s filter built in, conscious or subconscious, to be more discerning about what comments to approve.
3) A dofollow blog attracts more comments, so just from a time management perspective, a blogger has to make a higher quality cut-off line (and because a dofollow blogger gets so many more comments, he can afford to delete a number of borderline comments, which also forces up the quality).
Yes it is… cause I just commented lol
great!!!
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