You comment, I follow.

Posted August 4th, 2008. Categorized under Site Related. 21 Comments

You may have noticed those new little buttons at the bottom-right corner of the screen. Or you may not.

I’d like to draw your attention to this little bugger:

"You Comment, I Follow" badge

(Thanks goes to Randa Clay for the awesome badge)

To give a basic description, by default WordPress sets links people provide in comments to “nofollow”. This means search engines don’t give any weight to that link, which is sort of like saying “The blog author does not endorse this website.” The original purpose of this is to cut back on spam, but if someone provides a link to his or her website, the only good it will do is if someone clicks it.

While I dislike spam as much as the next guy, I also want to thank those that take the time to comment me. So I’ve installed the WordPress plugin NoFollow Free to try to give at least something back. If you post a couple of comments, the rel=”nofollow” will be removed from your link. All I ask is for meaningful comments, not just some hoohah in order to take advantage of this and steal perfectly good linkjuice :]

I’d like to encourage other bloggers to do the same as well. Commenters should be appreciated.

For more information about the other badges this site uses, check out this post.

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21 Replies to “You comment, I follow.”

Comments:

1. Nihar

August 4th, 2008 7:52 pm

This concept really helped to get more readers who leave comments. Before this i was not getting enough comments on my blog. Now it is different. It will be same for you also.

2. Paul

August 5th, 2008 11:54 am

Haha, that’s the hope!

3. Jane from Kidzarama

August 8th, 2008 4:55 am

I’m using a different wp plugin, called “Dofollow”.

It does basically the same thing, but without the minimum number of comments, since I moderate all initial comments by readers anyway.

And then I forgot to tell everyone what I’d done for another month or so…lol

4. WordPress, Made Easy

August 8th, 2008 2:28 pm

Do any of you notice a lot more spam type comments (i.e “Good post”)? I am considering using the plugin, but really don’t want 300 comments saying “nice read” or “thanks”. I’m sure comment count will go up, but will comment quality go down drastically? Thanks!

5. Paul

August 8th, 2008 2:50 pm

So far I haven’t had any problems with that, but then again this is still a new blog. Nihar might be able to tell you more.

If it becomes a problem, I won’t feel any guilt deleting the ones that were blatantly posted just for the link. I’m doing this to encourage discussion and thank those that do discuss, not to just give out free links.

6. Pete

September 22nd, 2008 2:52 pm

Yes I’ve downloaded a badge for my site and I think that it’s good to explain to others the benefits behind the Do Follow! I just weed out the short comments that are obvious to spam. Just one should use their best judgment when detecting spam sites. But I feel the Do Follow is necessary in order for us all to be helping each other out.

7. Affiliate4Travel.co.uk

February 8th, 2009 1:31 pm

The badge is big enough and nice enough to make me click it, well done for that.

Great idea, I wasn’t even sure comments were no-follow but suspected it. I will probably do this when I move from Blogger to WordPress. I had a look at the other blog with similar plugin but think this is executed better thanks to this page and the lush badge. Guess if it catches on educating people about it will be less necessary.

So far looked at 2 posts here and both have been V useful. Think I had better subscribe !.

Thanks

8. Paul

February 8th, 2009 1:40 pm

@Affiliate: Thanks! I’m glad you like it. Making comments do-follow does seem to attract more readers, and I think it’s only fair that I allow comments to follow as a way of saying thank you. The badge I added myself, there are a bunch online that you can decide between based on your theme.

9. rob from brighton art listings

March 25th, 2009 10:44 am

i have dofollow but no badge? how important do you think the badge is/? i have some firefox pluggin or other that tells me if it is do/no follow. it is good.

rob’s latest post: Phinius Gage & The King Blues

10. Paul

March 25th, 2009 2:39 pm

@Rob: I think a badge is important if you want people to know that you’re do follow. If you don’t care, then a badge isn’t necessary.

11. John

September 15th, 2009 5:01 pm

My opinion is that there won’t be too much crap comments even with the “you comment I follow” implemented. Sure, we’ll get a little more 3-word comment spams, but these can be easily deleted. If what we want is more comments, it may be good to give others some incentives to do it….something that makes it worth their time to give meaningful comments. Sounds like a fair exchange, isn’t it? For the little extra comment spams that we have to delete, I think we’ll have the opportunity to have many more comments that would otherwise not be there.

12. Bill from MBA Program

September 16th, 2009 6:18 am

Just found the site today….and thank you for the explanation. As an Internet marketers, most commenters’ are looking to post links. However, the level of SPAM has been getting out of hand.

I can appreciate the transparency on your site, and I enjoy the content. You can expect lots of great comments from me in the future.

Best,

-Bill

13. Jez

September 24th, 2009 8:29 am

i like the do follow idea. it can increase your site’s traffic.

14. Pat from Dental insurance

October 12th, 2009 7:50 am

There seems to be a fine line between allowing comments and allowing spam. I think you have the right attitude though. I f people are willing to take the time to offer meaningful comments, why not help them in return. You both gain from it.

15. Damon from Debt Settlement

October 29th, 2009 10:49 pm

Hey Paul,

I recently (yesterday) decided to take the plunge and turn on comments and commentluv on my blog. I would like to also add this your comment I follow badge, since I also have the do follow plugin. This might sound like a stupid question, but I am a financial consultant by trade, and only a newbie blogger :-).

Can you tell me what I need to do to get the badge to show up like you have right under the comment box section and not just on the sidebar or something. Thanks
Damon@Debt Settlement´s last blog ..Debt Settlement Companies – Top 5 ways they can Screw you!

16. Paul

October 30th, 2009 12:41 pm

@Damon: You’ll need to edit your theme files near the comment section — it should be comments.php

17. Damon from Debt Settlement

October 30th, 2009 12:51 pm

@Paul,

Thanks for the response. I figured it was something like that but I was afraid to open the comments.php file because I don’t know anything about PHP and didn’t want to totally screw things up. If I open it with the editor is it pretty straight forward like HTML to plug in the code or is PHP totally different and I should have someone that knows more about it throw it in there for me?
Damon@Debt Settlement´s last blog ..New Debt Settlement Video is Eye Opening for Consumers

18. Paul

October 30th, 2009 1:04 pm

@Damon: Basically, you would insert the HTML for the image near where you see the HTML for the comment form. PHP interacts with HTML so you’ll see PHP here and there, but at some point in the file you should see the comment form. Then it’s just a matter of inserting it where you want it. If you’re having trouble though, I recommend asking someone else who is more familiar with PHP

19. Damon from Debt Settlement

October 30th, 2009 1:09 pm

@Paul

Ok thanks for the vote of confidence, Cross your fingers I am going in. :-) I have it in the side bar of my site already, but I really like it how you have it right under the comment section, so here goes nothing.
Damon@Debt Settlement´s last blog ..Debt Settlement Nightmare for Phoenix Woman

Trackbacks/Pingbacks:

1. View this trackback

August 16th, 2008 12:04 am

About the badges on the sidebar… | Xatal

[...] This one I’ve already explained, but I suppose it couldn’t hurt to mention it again. This is a badge that designates this site as being no-follow free. For more information, see this post. [...]

2. View this trackback

January 31st, 2009 5:07 pm

And the new design is live! | Xatal

[...] been wanting to do this for a while, but haven’t really had a chance. To go along with this blog being dofollow, I’ve decided to use a widget to list the top five (for now) commentators each month. These [...]