Killing Innocent while trying to kill Criminals. (from: Feedster on: Scoble)
http://jdk.phpkid.org/index.php?p=1161
No, this post is not about some news report about killers, it’s about ‘nofollow’ attribute introduced by Google.
Hey, please don’t run away! My argument is little bit different from all arguments you might have found on Technorati. So please spare a moment and read it. (It is bit lengthy, so grab that cup of coffee)
I found that Anil Dash has summarized, in a best way, various arguments against ‘nofollow’. (If possible, go read his post before you continue) I tend to agree for the most part. Here is the most interesting paragraph in his post.
If you want to make a real argument, you can say that your comment, being cogent and articulate, increases the value of the page it’s on. Therefore, you should be compensated for your contribution, and PageRank is a currency in which you accept compensation. I haven’t seen anybody advance that argument, which is disappointing.
Let me try to advance this argument. But to better understand it, let’s go back to year 2003. (Don’t worry I will hold you! )
Year 2003:
Blogging is a new trend. Some considers it as a fad; some sees it as a wave of future; and still others have no clue about the meaning of blogging.
But as always in case of new technology, few brave souls (The Early Adopters [1]) embraces it, they keep blogging and keep evangelizing the concept of Blogging. Now some of these brave souls are indeed good writers and they managed to stay away from blogging their daily chores and blogged something which could appeal to a fellow geek. Geeks slowly started liking the idea. They started using trackbacks. They started posting comments. Comments and Trackbacks made it possible to have two way interaction which was earlier possible only in message boards. Comments allowed us to share our view and find others view on the same topic. I would dare to say that most of the times; the post is valuable only because of the comments. A lot of the times, blog author discovers interesting new things to blog about from comments. And as a side effect of comment, you get a better page rank. And no matter how you cut it, if there is a gain involved in particular action (say boosting page rank by posting a comment), people are more likely to do it. And that’s what happens. The trend catches on. At the same time, Google is becoming the de-facto standard for search and introduces AdWords, which can help anyone with good page rank make money. PageRank is an actual currency. So people start linking to each other, commenting to each other’s blog. It’s a recursive function! Now, this crazy linking/commenting leads to a problem where blogs are skewing the search results heavily and rumors are around that Google might drop blogs from its main index. Eric Sink warns Google in a nice way. So blogs were already a problem for Google, even before the comment spam came in to picture.
Now, let’s fast forward to year 2004.
Google is a phenomenal success, so are Blogs. AdWords has become immensely popular. Google launches successful IPO. There are reports that people are surviving by running blog with Ads from Google. Remember those brave souls I talked about earlier? Those brave souls are now A-list bloggers and everyone wants their blog to be noticed by them. Terms like Scoblized are invented! Everyone wants to get Scoblized (I am included)! They are ahead in the game because they were the first movers. They received lot of comments. They posted comments on other blogs leaving link to their blog. And as it stands now, they have excellent PageRank. Definitely, they worked hard but you can not deny that all that linking played major part in PageRank.
On another note, everyone realizes that the best way to make money online is through the AdWords/PageRank, and that included Spammers. So now, Spammers started abusing comments like they abused email. And comment spam problem is getting severe, day by day. Google was already affected severely by linking/comments on blogs, and comment spam was the scallywag that broke the camel’s back. Google springs into action and introduces ‘nofollow’. No PageRank for comment spammers and No PageRank for guys who posts useful comments. There is no incentive left to post comments. Obviously, it does not mean that people will stop posting comments. But now they do not have an obvious incentive. Remember, Scoble telling us to post comments on other blogs so as to get our blog discovered. He told us to do so because other people reading comments might click on your link AND because commenting and linking helps you in PageRank leading to better chances of getting discovered in Google Search. But ‘nofollow’ makes sure that my little effort to increase my PageRank is fruitless. And I care a lot about PageRank. I don’t know about you, but majority of inbound links to my blog is from Google Search.
So what’s the point of whole story? Simple, actually.
The whole ecosystem behind blogging was based on linking/commenting/sharing and ‘nofollow’ kills that very thing on which blogging is based, IMHO.
Now you will say that if you want to comment and want PageRank, comment on your own blog and then make the blog author link to your post. Now excuse me, but I think this idiotic. What would you prefer? A blog post followed by meaningful comments (which will allow meaningful reading) or blog post followed by 100 different posts on different blogs. (which is impossible to do) I prefer former.
Also, as others are speculating, this attribute may increase the comment spam, and I tend to agree with that.
I don’t know whether this is a dialogue from Hindi movie or it’s part of Indian constitution, but it goes like
Even if we have to let 100 criminals get away, we should make sure that an innocent is not punished.
The ‘nofollow’ attribute is going to kill criminals (comment spammers) as well as innocents (f-list bloggers like me!)! Ouch!
JD
[1] Thanks Eric Sink for writing ‘Marketing for Geeks’ series and educating us on this term.
Copyright: Copyright 2005