damnum absque injuria » Attention Comment Spammers

January 20, 2005

Attention Comment Spammers

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by Xrlq @ 11:01 pm

You can still spam this site if you want, but it won’t do you an ounce of good. Neener.

Thanks: Clint Ecker. Hat tips to Venomous Kate and James Joyner, neither of whom have seen fit to install it themselves.

Comments (10)

10 Responses to “Attention Comment Spammers”

See-Dubya Says:
January 21st, 2005 at 2:09 am
Love your site! Very informative! Try some online casino gambling!
SayUncle Says:
January 21st, 2005 at 5:36 am
I read it but what does it do?
Xrlq Says:
January 21st, 2005 at 7:54 am
It adds a “nofollow” attribute to the links in any commenter’s comments. The links still work, and are invisible to the readers, but they block Google/Yahoo spiders from following the links, thereby ensuring that they don’t count toward the high Google rankings the comment spammers were hoping to achieve for their sites.
The Lonewacko Blog Says:
January 21st, 2005 at 10:20 am
It also affects non-spammers who leave comments.

And, I’m sure some spammers will continue to spam in the hopes of getting people to click their links.
Xrlq Says:
January 21st, 2005 at 10:48 am
That depends on what you mean by “affects.” The only effect the nofollow attribute has on legitimate commenters is that they can’t artificially boost their Google rankings, or those of any sites they link to, by commenting here.

Under the default settings, legtimate commenters would not have even been affected that way. If you just install the plugin but don’t edit the comment and pop-up comment templates, the nofollow attribute will only be applied to the links contained in the message body, not to the one listed in the URI field above.
See-Dubya Says:
January 21st, 2005 at 1:44 pm
That’s great! I feel like some online casino gambling! And video poker!
The Lonewacko Blog Says:
January 21st, 2005 at 3:27 pm
So, I guess that means I’ll have to start being nice to other bloggers in order to get in to their blogroll?

Speaking about blogrolls, what about Scoobie (scobie or something?) Davis? Based on something I found on technorati, he appears to be a fine “liberal” blogger who seems to have created a large number of interlinked blogspot blogs, perhaps as part of a google/technorati/ecosystem scheme. That type of stuff will continue to work.

And, many bloggers already have a redirect on the URL field, so that’s not much of help.
Xrlq Says:
January 21st, 2005 at 3:59 pm
I like the nofollow attribute better than redirects. Redirects are slower, clunkier, and just plain look wrong to the naked eye. When a TypePad user follows a redirect link to your blog, your referral logs will only tell you that they reached you through a typepad.com redirect; they won’t tell you whose entry/blog they came from. Nofollow gives you the benefit of a normal looking link that behaves normally in every way except one.
The Lonewacko Blog Says:
January 22nd, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Great minds think alike.
Xrlq Says:
January 22nd, 2005 at 3:20 pm
As I’ve explained in a new post, I think you’re mistaking knee-jerk contrarianism-for-contrarianism’s-sake for some sort of greatness. There’s nothing “great” about arguing passionately that 2 + 2 equals banana.