Should You Keep your Blog Comments as Dofollow or Nofollow?

Dofollow and nofollow tag attributes are one of the most common used words. If you are new to it, I’m going to explain what we mean when we say a blog is ‘dofollow’ or ‘nofollow‘.?

Dofollow or Nofollow Comment
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Search engines use links to go through all the sites on the web. How it does that is, its bots crawl through a single website and then it looks for links within that website. Upon finding a link, the bot follows it to land on another page. This way a large number of websites get linked and the search engines are able to index or cache them and display as results. This process can only happen if the website has set its link attributes to ‘dofollow‘. By default, all links in a WordPress blogs are do follow. (It may very depending upon theme you are using).

If, however, the site decides to not share links and keep it interlinked within its own pages, a ‘nofollow‘ Meta Robot is used. In such a case, the bot will not follow the link. Nofollow is usually used, when you are linking to a spam site for the reference, or a link which doesn’t suits the topic you are writing about.

Having discussed what follow and nofollow means, I would like to list out the pros and cons of having a comment section that is ‘dofollow’. We all know advantages of commenting, as it gives us a link back from dofollow enabled blog (WordPress comments are nofollow by default), but as a Blog owner, is it a good idea to use Dofollow comment:

ADVANTAGES of making comment box Dofollow

  1. If you have a dofollow comment section, you are bound to get a lot of reader interactions going. Everyone loves get a little bit of link love.
  2. Since you are going to provide a lot of blogs with backlinks, you are bound to get some back.
  3. More relevant backlinks means a better page rank.

DISADVANTAGES of Do-follow comment box

  1. More comments mean more spam. Managing the comments is going to be massive task.
  2. Since outgoing link means you are sharing your Page Rank, you have to be careful about the quality of the sites you are linking to. Otherwise, the reputation of you blog will be affected.

Check out Matt Cutts Views on How dofollow Comments can affect your blog:

Having gone through both sides of the coin regarding dofollow comments, the ultimate decision is upto you. My suggestion is to keep your blog comments as Nofollow only, as this will prevent spam comment, and leaking of link juice. Your commentator could be rewarded by many other form like TOp commentator, comment luv or anything else.

Personally, I wouldn’t like to have a nofollow comment section as it would of now use. Since thousands of outgoing links would mean that my page rank is divided to insignificant parts and shared with each one.

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Author and owner of UniversityZero.info

30 thoughts on “Should You Keep your Blog Comments as Dofollow or Nofollow?”

  1. Mahabubar Rahaman

    I think by giving do-follow link/; number of visitor will increase ..

  2. Ahmer

    Hi Shocky,

    Very nice post to clear the concept of dofollow and nofollow. I am learning blogging and shoutmeloud.com is my main source of knowledge apart from other sites.

    After reading the post and comments I have reached the conclusion of keeping the comments Dofollow as it will encourage people to comment, give and take backlinks.
    Obviously, we will have to be careful with moderation of comments but in order to gain something you have to give something.

    In my opinion, Dofollow comments have more advantages than disadvantages.

    Harsh, please tell are Shoutmeloud’s comments Dofollow or Nofollow?

    Thanks.

  3. Dinesh Sangwan

    I have coupons and deals site and in almost every post, I have a link of play store to download app.

    Should i use play store links also as nofollow?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Dinesh
      Play store is a high quality domain so keep the links dofollow only.

      1. Muneer Ahmad

        Hi, Harsh
        Can you tell me it’s means below?
        Since outgoing link means you are sharing your Page Rank, you have to be careful about the quality of the sites you are linking to. Otherwise, the reputation of you blog will be affected.
        I can’t understand Please help me.

  4. Julio Maysonet

    I just started getting comments on my blog and I am wondering about the dofollow / nofollow.

    When I installed my wordpress I never looked into it but now I would like to know if my blog has dofollow enabled or disabled? How can I check it?

    I want to set my blog as nofollow for a obvious reasons posted on this article.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Juilio
      By default URL in WordPress comment form is usually Nofollow.

  5. Nagaraj

    Great Post bro, Thank you for Sharing with us and I’ll be waiting for your upcoming posts.

  6. James Lenfers

    I still don’t know Harsh. I get these seriously varying opinions and how it gets handled on dofollow or nofollow on comment sections. Frankly, if I comment allot on a blogging site they are probably already heavily linked all over mine and domain referred already with a dofollow, which is allot stronger then a comment section back link whether its a dofollow or a nofollow.

    So, I am not feeling much guilt when I go there and fully read and comment. Whatever link juice I am taking, I feel if I can, I am going to return it in some way and more even if they don’t show up on mine to comment. That is just how I personally play it. If I am going to comment allot on a bloggers site, then whether they come and comment or not on mine, they will be linked directly all over the place that is relevant to theirs. How good is that referral? Getting a little bit better every day.

    Dofollow or Nofollow on the comment section though. Things like comment luv or not. Don’t know because I can’t get anything close to a consistency of response from some very popular bloggers.

  7. Namrata Agarwal

    so should we maintain 3:1 ration between do follow and no follow blog commenting?

  8. amitpal

    I am pretty new in blogging but not in do-follow stuff i would rather keep my blog no-follow because spammers always try’s to find a do-follow blog where they can spam with their comments . Or the better way is to keep facebook comment plugin no links allowed no spammers gona comment .

  9. Gaurang

    It is better to make a comment “nofollow” rather than making it a “dofollow” since its a time taking task to manage spams..

  10. Will

    I completely agree that spam comments can become a troublesome task, but it’s only the larger web pages that are going to have to deal with so much spam that it becomes a problem. On the whole, most sites will easily be able to manage spam comments. On the flip side, the links formed via comments are important for smaller web pages looking for a boost, which is why I think do-follow comments are so vital as a way of building links across the web for small sites. From my perspective, as a young website trying to grow, it’s a democratic way of doing things – the bigger, “richer” sites must do a little more in order for the smaller, “impoverished” sites, in order to provide them with opportunity!

  11. Vector Graphics

    i really didn’t know that my blog was set on NoFollow on default. i just found out a few days ago and i was still thinking if i should go ahead and remove it or what. but i made my decision. i’m removing it and i’ll be officially a do-follow blog in a couple of minutes.

  12. Rick Baker

    Interesting Read. We’re considering making the switch to dofollow but it’s a tough decision. We already get enough spam, but akismet handles most of it. I’m curious if you do go to a dofollow method, should you let it be known? I see there are sites out there that allow you to list your dofollow blog, but then it appears that you’re really going to be attracting spammers more than anything.

  13. Binoy xavier

    I always have this confusion of whether to make comments Dofollow or Nofollow. As you said it’s upto the admin to decide. Good post 🙂

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Do you keep your blog comment as Nofollow or dofollow?? Do let us know Binoy..

  14. Arijit Das

    Do wordpress have “NoFollow” Default?

    1. Shocky

      Yes. By default WordPress keeps the links nofollow.

  15. Shawn K. Castille

    Personally, I think its only fair that if someone is contributing to your site that hey have the ability to be followed. I don’t like the stifle and suppression of my clients. They have a message to get out just as important as I do.

    1. Shocky

      Yes, and its always good share the link juice with your readers, giving them all the more reason to comment and hence build a community around your blog.
      With that said, it is important to have a fool-proof spam protection inorder to protect the blog’s reputation.

  16. Rakesh Narang

    Great post dude, i have really learned about outgoing links and nofollow links here..

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      So Rakesh what’s your view for the same?? Are you going to keep your comments as Dofollow or nofollow??

      1. Rakesh @ Wizard Journal

        ah! well my comment section would be nofollow because i get a lot of spam links daily close to 100, akismet stops many but sometimes you don’t get to check the link people are using, i may use a top commentors widget.

  17. ROn

    So the conclusion after watching the video is to not allow do follow comments in the blog

    1. Shocky

      Thats Matt Cutts point of view. There are a few blogs, that have dofollow and have managed to maintain a good readership and doing just fine with the spams using Akismet.

      The final decision for your blog will have to be yours.

      1. Ron

        Shocky,

        Matt told about spam things and I also agree with you that Akismet is just fine for those.
        But still will it be fine to keep the comments dofollow? for example, consider a post that have 30 comments. So if comment author’s links are dofollow the page will have 30 outbound links. is it ok? As you said,

        “Personally, I wouldn’t like to have a dofollow comment section as it would of now use. Since thousands of outgoing links would mean that my page rank is divided to insignificant parts and shared with each one.”

        I agree with your this comment, but in reply to my previous comment, you also said,

        “Thats Matt Cutts point of view. There are a few blogs, that have dofollow and have managed to maintain a good readership and doing just fine with the spams using Akismet.”

        Which indicates that you also have some point in support to keep comments dofollow. I am confused.

        The final decision is obviously the blog owners but I think we can have a good discussion. What do you think?

        Harsh, What’s your opinion?

        1. Shocky

          My intentions behind making this post was not to influence anyone to make a choice. I only wanted to put forward the points that one should keep in mind while making the choice.

          If look at it clearly, it is obvious that there are only negatives of dofollow if the comments are not moderated properly(causing excessive spam). Therefore, it is not as easy a decision as it may seem. Since it is always nice to give back to your readers, a dofollow comment section is a great initiative to keep them coming back.

          I, after doing much research relating to the subject, would recommend using the plugin LinkLove(http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/link-love/) which allows you set a certain number of approved comments required by a a user before he/she is granted dofollow privileges.

          Hope this helps out clear all your doubts.

      2. madhopuri

        Commenting on blogs demonstrates that you’re an active member of your niche, you’re passionate enough to participate in conversations related to your area of expertise, and you’re intelligent enough to add value to conversations in your space.

      3. Rakhee Kadam

        I am also same thinking that decision is totally depending on yours hand that keep the blog dofollow or nofollow

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