New Restriction on Comments

There seems to be a myth out there that if you post a keyword in the name section of the comments along with your url, you’ll get a valuable back link from my website. Not only does Google look at the fact that ALL comments have “no follow” in them, but the company also knows that these are non-authoritative  comments.

To be perfectly blunt, you will get absolutely no SEO benefits from the practice of posting a keyword phrase with a url in my blog’s comment section.

When I visit other sites, It’s annoying to see people’s names appear as “The BEST Detox diet!” If it annoys me on other sites, it must annoy others as well.

My Akismet spam filter catches a lot of spammers who do this, but sometimes they get through since they are “real” comments.  I am just giving everyone a head’s up that I may remove the urls in any comment I wish. Of course I own the site and could do that anyway, but I wanted to give advance notice to be fair.

I will not alter the actual comments in any way, but I may remove the url.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

20 COMMENTS

  1. lmao @ 1st comment, good one 🙂

    I find the practice rather rude, certain of your readers do it a lot. I mean its just so CHEAP, I dont think Id want any of my budding businesses, success or fail, be seen to be pushed in such a lame way.
    However to say there is no benefit whatsoever might not be entirely true (yeah yeah I know you probably dont wanna hear it). From testing and general experience in developing my own webz:
    First – Google LIES when they say they dont follow nofollows. Its true. Dont believe me? Register 2 jhgfbfbyfjxrd.com type domains, obviously unindexed, hook both up to a hosting service with decent server logs. Place some nofollow links on a high pr page for ONE of them. You can bet that youll see googlebot show up soon on the linked domain, and probably youll see it indexed a few days later. The unlinked one will remain in the dark. How did goog find it without the links?

    Second – Ive noticed some instances of nofollows actually passing juice – ESPECIALLY when all the links on a page are nofollows. Google wants to know the sites that people are talking about, since so many sites now use nofollow as standard it has kinda diminished the whole nofollow purpose. Do some testing, you’ll see.

    Anyway yeah, good call with the url removal 🙂

  2. So, Elliot, you set up a blog, perhaps a popular blog, and folks are supposed to visit it to get valuable information, but nothing else?

    All these stupid blogs serve no purpose, of a guy can’t get a follow once in a while from them.

    As much as your blog is ‘kewl and popular’, I don’t so much like your rude and snide way of addressing infamous commentators. You should live and let live.

  3. @ Uzoma

    If you link to a site and use your real name, I have no problem with it. In fact, I encourage you to link to your home page so people can read what you write if they so choose. When I comment on other blogs, I use my real name and sometimes link to my blog. It would be a different story if I used a keyword like “Domain Blog” in lieu of my name, simply to try and get a cheap link back.

    However, it’s frustrating to go through comments from people who use names like “home mortgage loans” and link to ushomemortgagelender.net or whatever, where the primary purpose is to get a link and/or have people visit their parked page.

    You are someone who uses his real name (I think anyway), and that is appreciated, whether I agree with your comment or not.

  4. I do use my real name, it isn’t the sexiest name in the world, but it’s mine .

    I think your blog is one of the few that is worth posting anything on, as far as getting some exposure is concerned. The other ones gets, perhaps, 10 or 20 visitors, and yet don’t want the poster to get anything out of it.

    My attitude is, if you don’t want me to get exposure for my domain names, why should I visit?

    I truly believe that it should be a win-win thing.

  5. @ Uzoma

    I believe that I am very open and use my real name and real identity. If others are going to comment, they should as well, just like you do.

    There are very few people who do what I am prohibiting, so this isn’t really a big deal, nor will it impact many people. This is just a head’s up.

    BTW, DNW also explicitly prohibits this type of comment spam, and the Akismet plugin I use is also very good at stopping these types of comments.

  6. @Elliot,

    I didn’t read this article. Otherwise, I would have not used domaining. I guess it helps to read every new article you write ahead of time. Thanks.

  7. @Uzoma
    There is this thing spinning called the earth. People who choose to share live on it. People like Elliot who shares his experience and wisdom. That is why you should visit. And, if it is not a good enough reason, f-off. Go start your own blog and manage it your way. Seriously, commenting on blogs is not a goverment right, read it or don’t but questioning the way he manages it is more arrogant than your perceptionon of having a right to shamelessly promote what-ever-it-is you promote. I win every week from this blog by learning from it.

  8. you may as well ban all links from comments, it’s silly to have a real name linking to a site how on earth are we to know what the site is about b4 visiting it from some guys real name ?

    this obsession people have with preventing nofollow links is crazy, perosnally i find akimet blocks 90% of my readers genuine comments. to really stop comment spam simply block most 3rd world ips.

    • @ Tony

      I think having links is good because it allows people to learn more about the commenter. For instance, if someone is an expert SEO and I don’t know the person’s name off the top of my head, if I visit his or her website linking from the comment, I can learn a lot about that person and it gives more credibility.

  9. @Elliot

    I understand the spamming issue, but what I don’t get is why have no-fallow? does it hurt the blog to have a do-fallow links or you just don’t want anyone to benefit from posting a comment on your site?

    • @ Mike

      No follow is default for WordPress. Otherwise, spamming would be 10x worse because people would be rewarded for posting back links.

      IMO, people benefit from reading the content I write, so I don’t really mind that they don’t get the SEO benefit from commenting. Many people post comments to ask questions of me or other readers, and the answers they receive are the benefits of posting comments. 99% of all blogs (maybe more) have no follow back links in comments.

      If people don’t wish to comment because they aren’t getting a back link, so be it.

      I was being curtious by letting people know that if they are only posting comments for a back link, it’s a waste of time. This isn’t a widespread issue, and that is one reason I posted this on a slow news Sunday.

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