Now The D-List. Do I Have The Full Set?
September 11th, 2007 by Stephen Cronin (2,306 views)Yesterday I wrote about joining the Do Follow List. Today, it’s the D-List. I’ve been part of the Bumpzee No Nofollow community for some time now. So, do I have the full set of dofollow lists now?
I found out about the D-List and the Do Follow List from Zen Zoomie’s DoFollow vs NoFollow - We’re on the D-List and promptly signed up to both. I was added to the Do Follow List within two days. The D-List took almost a week.
I won’t go over my initial reaction to the Do Follow List, but I was a bit taken aback that I had to write the list up before getting a dofollow link (on a dofollow list). It was more the way this was presented than the situation itself - I understand this can help promote DoFollow.
The D-List seems work on the same principle. At least most of the links on the list are nofollow. I couldn’t find how to get it changed to a dofollow link, but I assume you need to write the list up. The initial contact was nicer, although it could have outlined how to get your link changed to dofollow.
At the end of the day, I’m not really worried about getting dofollow links on these lists. They are just two links in a sea of links. However, I do want to support DoFollow, so if you haven’t already, go and sign up to these lists!
If you know of any other lists, please let me know.
Loading ...
I have never actually seen much value in the lists and half the sites posting the list of links that I saw didn’t actually have nofollow removed.
I suppose I benefited from being on one part of a list, but certainly when they first started circulating there wasn’t any attempt to really educate, it was just a link-fest.
I prefer the idea of a central community, but that might just be me being a little biased.
Andy, thanks for commenting. Your views are always welcome here.
My initial reaction was the same as yours - I got the feeling that it was all one big link-fest. The part about having to write a post about the list to get a dofollow link (on a dofollow list!) made me a little cynical.
But then I thought, if I write about the lists and others do too, then it increases the chances of people finding out about DoFollow. I checked out the sites of both the lists I mentioned and the people behind them seem to be genuine.
Personally I get a lot more value out of the Bumpzee No Nofollow community than I will from these lists - because it is a community, not just a list. I don’t think you’re being biased.
I think no-follow does have its place. However, I think the better solution to blog spam is not allowing bots to make spam posts in the first place… not removing the value of legit links.
Hi Mary, that’s what the dofollow / no nofollow community is all about - disabling the nofollow tag so the value of legit links are not diminished. At the moment, those of us who’ve disabled nofollow risk increased spam from both the bots and from real life humans… If we can stop that, all the better.
As it happens, unlike many who’ve disabled nofollow, I think that nofollow on links in comments is not a bad thing. The idea of considering links in calculating PageRank is that sites with a lot of links will have good content (many people think its good, so they linked to it). But of course blog comments allow us to link to our own site which distorts PR (we are linking to our own site instead of other people linking to it because it’s good).
For PR to really reflect the quality of a site, it should only consider other people’s links to the site, not links from the site author. Interestingly, Tehnorati don’t consider comment links when calculating Technorati Authority for this very reason.
@Stephen
I would agree, but isn’t that the whole point of the rel=nofollow tag? It allows people to still click on the link if they like the content of the comment, but prevents pagerank from flowing through them? The only downside that I see to the nofollow tag is that someone’s blog could potentially never be indexed because it’s never linked from anywhere without the nofollow tag, but I really doubt that’s a major issue.
If no one legitimately links to a site, EVER, what are the chances that’s what you were looking for on google? Google doesn’t control the internet, people can still click on nofollow links, this tag is for the search engines and I think it does its job pretty well.
Hi Johhny FX, thanks for stopping by.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying - nofollow has a valid reason for existing. We’re discussing this in the context of the Dofollow / No Nofollow movement, which disables nofollow. Nofollow is a barrier to people building their blogs and many bloggers are very against it.
How was the reaction to the Dofollow plugin you installed ? I have read many places that this have increase manual spams on many blogs? Are you getting manual spam when you enabled DoFollow. I’m asking this, because I also want to enable it on my blog, but I’m worried about spammers.
Hi Tech Duke,
I’ve got the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin protecting me against the bots and Askimet cleaning up whatever gets through (I assume it’s all manual).
Askimet has caught 36 items in the last 5 weeks, so that’s about 1 a day. In that time it has probably caught about 5 or 6 comments that were genuine, which I had to rescue.
Apart from that I get the occasional ‘nice post’ comment and some borderline cases which I suspect are motivated by the link, but that’s only a couple a week. I’ve also had some very good comments that came the D-List.
So, I’ve seen a little spam, but also an increase in traffic. I’d definitely make the same choice again. But you have to remember my blog is not high traffic (yet!).
Thanks for answering. You’re right, It does increase traffic. Like I found you from D-List. The spam you get is far less than I get. Last 30 days Akismet caught 1,233 spam comments, And its increasing. A few went through to moderation.
Can you please recommend where can I get this math plugin ?
Anyway, I will give it a try with moderation on.
Tech Duke,
Thanks for visiting! I used to get more spam before the math plugin, but it stopped the bots dead. As for where you can get - the link is in my comment above (between your two comments).
Best of luck with Dofollow - hope you find it a good experience like I have.
The math plugin is the same one Matt Cutss uses and it has worked very well for me in the past
I agree it does increase traffic and I have found several great blogs because of it. I hope to continue to find interesting blogs. With so much to read I dont know how i will get any work done.
Hi Stephen
Quite a discussion you have going on here
Although a committed DoFollow blogger I have not joined any of the lists and am content with Bumpzee and Andy’s NoNo Follow community.
Human comment spam has not increased noticeably for me on any of my sites.
Whether you are part of the DoFollow movement or not, just using Akismet doesn’t really hack it anymore. As Stephen suggests, use additional tools, particularly captchas, which make spam bots lives much harder and stop them before they start leeching your resources. I also moderate all comments so even if my defences are breached it’s usually only one here or there. If you are a Wordpress user you might also want to consider the Simple Trackback Validation plugin which goes a long way in defeating trackback spam.
If you think trackbacks are not a problem for you, my Nucleus blog registered over 500 trackback spam attempts in the last 12 hours and this is not unusual at all once the bots start to find you.
Alex, I understand where you’re coming from. I don’t have time to write posts anymore because I’m too busy reading!
I’ve also found many great sites through dofollow.
Maurice, I’d choose Bumpzee and Andy’s community over the lists any day, but the great thing is I can have both. I’ve noticed a slight increase in traffic from the lists, which has resulted in legitimate comments (as well as a couple of spammy ones too). You’re spot on with your Antispam tips. I haven’t tried the trackback spam plugin, but I’ll give it a shot. Thanks.
I found your blog through the D-List. I’ve been checking out the blogs in that list and am not even sure they all do follow. Sifting through the list is a waste of time and I’ll probably give up soon. But still, I found this blog so it’s all good.
Hi,
I am working my way through the DF list. I don’t know what the results will be because I am new to this but I am finding some cool blogs. I saw Angel’s comment and unfortunately I don’t know how to tell if the blog is do follow. I changed the code in all my blogs, I assumed others on the list did the same. Maybe I am naive, or maybe theres more to it.
Rebecca
Angel and Rebecca,I would say that most of the blogs on the list are dofollow. I believe the keepers of the lists check the blogs when they are added. Some sites may remove dofollow later for various reasons, but the majority are dofollow.If you are using the Firefox browser, then get the SearchStatus extension. After it’s installed, you can right click on the icon (at the bottom of the browser, looks a little like @) and turn on Highlight Nofollow Links. Any links on the page you are browsing that are dofollow will look normal, but any that are nofollow will be highlighted pink.Use this to check the comments of websites you are visiting. Just a note however: some dofollow blogs (like mine) have a delay before your comments become dofollow, so you need to check the older comments.
If you put the spam protection blocker then it can help new bloggers by acting as free advertising. New bloggers will check out the list and stumble there. It’s a good way to meet and see new people.
Mike, what you say is true, but personally I recommend joining the Bumpzee No-Nofollow community as well. The traffic you get from the list is less likely to stick around that the traffic you get from Bumpzee. I’ve met loads of great people from the community.
I think you have done the right thing with removing the no follow attribute. If people are going to stop by, read your articles and then provide some intelligent and thought out responses, what’s the harm in providing a little link love? I see how spam could be a problem, but I think the benefits outweigh the negatives.
i have also found many good sites due to the list and am thinking of installing dofollow plugin on my site, but i am concerned about being overwhelmed with commet spam and people just visiting the site to get a link. but i think a blog certaintly does look better if it has lots of comments on it.
I thing Andy Beard has a great idea for the do follow movement. It could be much improved because there is nothing regulating it at the moment. Someone could say they do follow when they actually don’t. I still think there is benefit on being on the D-List though.
Barry, yes, I’m more than happy to provide the link to people who leave considered responses to the topic of the post. That sort of traffic is always welcome and I can deal with a bit of spam for that.
Subconscious Mind, you will get more spam, it will be more work, but see my answer to Barry. It’s worth it in my opinion.
Motorola, I know Andy personally checks every site that joins the Bumpzee No NoFollow community to make sure they dofollow. Most of the people who maintain the various lists do the same. The only problem is when people disable their dofollow plugin after a while.
Thanks for the plugin tip. I’m gonna install that now. Really useful bit of kit.
Hey this is an awesome plugin, but how come only some of the comments here are dofollows? The last five aren’t.
Angel, the dofollow plugin that I use has a delay feature. Comments will not become dofollow for 2 days after they are made. This gives me a little time to weed out spam comments before they get any benefit.
Any benefit would be small and short term, because even if the search engines come indexing before I delete them, the comments would be gone by the time the search engines came back, so it may be a little paranoid!
I mostly read do-follow blogs, and when I have time check out some nofollow ones. The reason is simple: why not give back (traffic) to those that give back as well (links)? Reciprocity is the mother of all marketing tools.
Joseph, I’m the same. There so many great blogs out there, that I can’t read them all. When I choose which ones to read, the dofollow blogs are normally at the top of the list. I do most of my reading via the Bumpzee No NoFollow community’s RSS feed. There’s a lot there on topics that don’t interest me, but there’s still more than enough that does and it’s all dofollow.
Glad I found this blog. I have been contemplating the use of the do follow philosophy, but had reservations about the amount of spam comments that I would have to moderate. However, it seems that by using the math plug-in it will stop bots and askimet does a good job with catching the spam now.
Thanks to all for a great discussion regarding do follow.
Hi Glenn. In general spam hasn’t been a problem at all, although since I last commented on this post, I have had one small outbreak. It only lasted about 4 days, then disappeared mysteriously (and thankfully).
Askimet caught about 200 spam comments in the 4 day period. I thought the bots must have found a way around the Math plugin and I was looking at changing the fieldnames it uses. I was using the default ones, which presumably a really clever bot could detect and use to answer the question. You can change the default in the settings (but they must match the html you added to your theme).
Anyway, before I did anything, the spam just stopped dead. Anyway, don’t let this put you off adopting dofollow. The amount of legitimate traffic I’ve received from it far outweighs one small spam outbreak.
Hi Stephen,
Thank you for supplying the additional information.
Hi Glenn, No problem - that’s the point of having a blog after all!
Hi Stephen - you are right!