Tuesday, December 2, 2008

No Follow?

Bilbo/buster is going on and on over on BB2 about my site having a 'nofollow' code on my comments section.

There are several reasons for this.

First, I'm like the guy from Jurassic Park who just touches a computer and it goes on the fritz.

I'm not touching the basic 'template.' I know that if I do, the computer will explode.

A flying saucer will land in my back yard, and some dangerous looking aliens will knock on my office door.

"Stupid human! Why have you disabled our monitoring device?"

(When they eventually put me in a straight jacket and lock me up, it will because of this. I've known since I was 12 that aliens were watching Earth through my eyes. The movie Starfighter totally stole my story....")

The second reason, as I teased Buster, is that I actually do get comments...which then enables the spam thingie, or something. I'm sure BB2 is totally on Bloggers watch list for spam.

And the third reason is, that I consider this a 'local' blog. I'm not sure why people from outside the area would be all that interested. Despite the impression that people have told me they have about this blog, I've really only talked about politics a few times. (Though my political leanings are probably pretty obvious to everyone.)

I don't try to explain things, like if I talk about Greenwood, I don't say: This is a main east/west artery in Bend, which contains older and light industrial commercial land, blah, blah, blah...

If I was trying to write for a wider audience I'd be writing a different kind of blog.

Sure, everyone likes to be read. But ultimately, this is for my own self-expression and edification.

And just to see if I can do it.

And hopefully have a few people who read it.

12 comments:

RDC said...

I think that you should just leave the 'nofollow' code as it is.

If nothing else the degree to which it annoys him and the rants it generates is worthwhile leaving it as it is.

Anonymous said...

This is really a non-issue for you Ned Flanders.

It's more relevant for Homer Simpson, who actually fears the big mean RE G*D's.

If you read his current post this week, the last paragraph warns that his site may soon be subject to 'official RE censorship', that is simple paranoia.

The issue is that he has stuff setup so that comments by anonymous are enabled for searching, and comments by logged in users are invisible (no-follow).

I really think this is a non-issue for you, as this is the new google default, and nobody ever suggested that you were a computer nerd. You do what you do by default, and nobody would expect anything else.

On Homers site, its different, because he theory purports free speech but hides his own comments from the search engines.

Lastly, I really don't think anybody important in the State of Oregon cares about these silly blogs.

dkgoodman said...

I'm confused. I thought the nofollow code told search engines to "no follow" the link. It doesn't affect the comment itself. The comment will still be indexed by search engines, but they won't follow links in the comments to other web sites. This is to make it unprofitable for spammers to leave comments just so they can link to their own web site and increase their page rank. Is this not the case?

H. Bruce Miller said...

Buster is a damned loony-toon. Who gives a crap what he thinks or says?

Anonymous said...

Well I hope your happy homer. Ned Flander's has taken the 'nofollow' story national.

I'll give my take for Ned's behalf.

Like I have said all along here, I liken here (BB2) and Ned's sites as rocks in the park where all we dogs piss.

We sniff each others scent, and leave our own piss/comment.

Dog's die, they come & go, its the nature of nature.

By keeping the comments invisible to the google 'world', the so called ONLY valuable thing on BB2 secret, means that nobody new ever comes here, it means that eventually as the old dogs pass away there are no new dogs.

Might as well put a big paper bag over this rock or hydrant.

That's my take, who in the fuck knows how or why or what makes homer tick ( or Ned ), if he they even do tick.

Life for any parasitic system requires a changing host. A host needs a diversified group of parasites, limiting the rock-pissing to the same old internal circle-jerk is not only depressing, it is intellectually lazy.

Pissing up wind is never a long term sustainable approach to living.

Anonymous said...

RDC,

The 'nofollow' code wasn't always like it 'is', its a new 'invention' of google's that started in the spring of this year, by default in the HTML TEMPLATE's for the blog engine.

It's been around since 2006, and Google invented it allegedly to minimize spam. In no blogsite in Oregon have I ever seen a 'spam' problem, many believe the 'spam excuse' is an excuse for the real intention of 'no-follow', which is to hide comments from the world on a selective basis.

The default selection of 'nofollow' is largely by complaint, .e.g. a party can notify google that a certain site has 'spam', and they'll turn-on the no-follow.

What the 'no-follow' does is tell all search engines not to read and/or index the comment or site. Which means that those that know its there can read it, but those who search will never find it.

It quite easy to DISABLE the no-follow, and I have explained in the Spring of 2008 how to do so, virtually every site in Bend, that I know of has disabled the no-follow other than dunc's and homer's site.

One man's 'spam' is another man's 'ham'.

Like I have posted above, my issue with no-follow is that by hiding the comments, what you do in effect is keep these blogsite's as a good old-boyz club, the trouble is that when you do that you only bring death. Sort of like printing a newspaper that doesn't allow new subscriptions.

I'm sure Dunc is right, if it be true that his blog is 'local', and nobody outside of the Bend-Club should partake, then its a good start to enable no-follow. That said, if I were Dunc, who always talks about comic-books, I would make it visible to the world, and leave a contact so people could order my comic-books from all over the world.

No-Follow is a program in cooperation with the government to censor, just like Microsoft these big companys work with the government. TELCO's provide backdoors to all phone conversations. In the world of internet blogging most people don't even know about 'no-follow'. In effect what they're doing is making sure that nobody see's what is written, but also making sure 'they' know who is thinking what.

So everybody is happy, in the 'local' sense you can bitch, but unseen to the world, on the other hand world law enforcement can see what all 'locals' are interested in by topic.

The internet is new, and with the way search engines work, what people write is just as important as what is written by the Bend Bulletin. The no-follow is an attempt by the government to make sure that approved information is is found and un-approved is invisible.

You can work with the system, or you can make it hard for them, the choice is yours.

Writing a blog with 'no-follow' enabled, is a lot like screaming in the woods.

RDC said...

"How the attribute is being interpreted differs between the search engines. While some take it literally and do not follow the link to the page being linked to, others still "follow" the link to find new web pages for indexing. In the latter case rel="nofollow" actually tells a search engine "Don't score this link" rather than "Don't follow this link." This differs from the meaning of nofollow as used within a robots meta tag, which does tell a search engine: "Do not follow any of the hyperlinks in the body of this document.".

The only real impact of is that someone cannot post messages in this forum with embedded links with the intent of raising their search engine score.

It does not have a major impact on the ability of one to find this forum using a search engine or in the indexing of its content.

Now it does seem to be a strange coincidence that the only link that shows up with any degree of consistency in usually in posts made by the same person that is complaining about nofollow be used and that those complaints are occuring on the same web site that the links point to.

No bias or self serving interest there. NOT

Anonymous said...

I'll say one for thing about no-follow, just for those who think that they're pissing on this rock and nobody can find them.

Google has many search engines.

The Nofollow is only for the 'public search engines'.

Government and law enforcement search engines provided by google ignore the no-follow.

It's all a silly game, the internet is new, I was working with TCP-IP in the early 1970's, but HTML was around and 1992, and Netscape took off in 1995 with the 'modern browser'. Alta-Visa by DEC was the first good search engine, but google blew them away.

Today we have too much democracy, and the government is learning to control information. I think its a good thing to have information, and thus I'm against allowing the 'nofollow' be the default.

Anonymous said...

You should be using 'firefox' browser dunc.

There is a tool called 'nofollow' that will paste links red for nofollow, and blue for 'follow'.

So you can visit any site including yours and see what is visible to the 'public google' search engine and what is not.

You say your site is 'local', yet you have your blog enable for follow, but your comment's no-follow, it simply doesn't make any sense, you should have it all one way or the other, if you truly believe your own argument that your site is 'local' only.

RDC said...

It means that if he uses a link in his posts then it should be used in search engines calculations, but if someone posting a response uses a link that it should not be considered.

Not a bad approach. That way he doesn't have people posting with embedded links just to try and raise their search engine metrics.

RDC said...

Duncan,

I did some tests last night just to confirm that nofollow does not prevent search engines from accessing content, that it only prevents them from using links embedded in their web site search rating calculations. I did searches targeted at comments I made to your blog.

On both Google and Yahoo the search engines did find my comments. So I have a pretty high degree of confidence that nofollow is used to prevent posted links from being considered in search engine ratings and is not a fator in blocking actual postings from search engines.

Unknown said...

What??? You used science to determine the effects of nofollow instead of spinning off crazy ideas from a paranoid imagination? How can you do that? That ruins all the fun of regurgitating conspiracy theories.

Kudos. :)