Affiliate Programs

31 responses so far ↓

• 1 2xKnight // Feb 5, 2008 at 12:00 pm

  I’m on that list, and I fall into at least one of the categories you have problems with.

  I set up a comment policy that says I’d prefer not to have keywords as the name. Keywords can be part of a user name, but not by themselves. I did that because I was getting a lot of borderline crap comments and they all used keywords in the name field.

  It also might look like I still use no follow. I use a plugin that removes the no follow attribute after a couple of days. It’s purely to catch the few completely spammy comments that slip past the spam plugins.

  I joined the do follow list to help those who comment because they want to participate. I did not join the list to set up my blog as a link farm.

• 2 Lifecruiser // Feb 5, 2008 at 12:49 pm

  Thanks for the comment on my blog

  It might not be that we’re dishonest, it might have something to do with the DO FOLLOW or NO FOLLOW FREE WP plugins that are used not working as supposed?

  Explanation:

  I first tried the DO FOLLOW plugin on my blog, that we’re supposed to take away the NO FOLLOW. In the beginning it worked, I checked it when installing the plugin.

  Later on when I checked it again, it didn’t work as it should and I could not find out why. So I installed the NO FOLLOW FREE plugin instead an checked that it did work. Or so I thought.

  Now when reading your post, I checked once more, on several comments and notice that, for some reason, it only removes the NO FOLLOW for some blog authors, not all of you. Strangely enough.

  I have no idea what to do about it though

• 3 Tim // Feb 5, 2008 at 3:25 pm

  I use Firefox to check links too, and I was wondering how come all of these blogs are on that list as well. My first thought is a lot of them don’t understand what they’re talking about, like you suggested. The rest must be scamming the system.
  As for the keyword, I can’t imagine what difference that makes. I go by the avatar “Bluebeaverbeer” in various places, and others go by nicknames like “Truthie” or whatever. So what if someone wants to be known as “Plumber Snake” or Alberta Real Estate News” or some other keyword? As long as the comment itself is relevant, that’s fine with me.

• 4 Jos // Feb 5, 2008 at 4:04 pm

  Hi, thank you for visiting my site, and you comment. I DID follow you, and came to this blog and read your post.

  I don’t exactly understand what you mean by being taken advantage of by bloggers that claim to be dofollow but are not. What is the advantage, then?

  Also, you mention Blogger/Blogspot are nofollow. I was told that if I remove the ‘rel = nofollow’ tag in the comments section of my blogger blog, the comments would be ‘dofollow’. Am I right in understanding that this in not true?

  If that is the case, then a whole bunch of blogger/blogspot blogger think that they are ‘dofollow’, but, according to what I understand from you, they are not? In that case, they don’t know that they are still ‘nofollow’… I have removed the ‘nofollow’ tag from my template, and every once in a while am getting comments that my blog is stil nofollow. Can you clarify this?

  -Jos

• 5 Lifecruiser // Feb 5, 2008 at 5:49 pm

  I’ve figured it out now, the NO FOLLOW FREE WP Plugin has special options:

  “To encourage users to submit comments it has some options to replace the nofollow only when the author posted X comments before and put back the nofollow when some blacklisted words are matched. The replacement of the nofollow is also based upon the users type (registered and visitor users).”

  So, maybe that’s some of your problems to get rid off the NO FOLLOW?

• 6 Dashboards // Feb 5, 2008 at 8:55 pm

  Recently bought a link on a blog with the intent of getting some anchor text. The blog was having TLA links so I thought would directly go through the blog rather than TLA. It seems the link was eventually placed as a re-direct and not like the other TLA links. I guess, will have to be careful in future for what I should expect

  -NJ

• 7 Justin Briggs // Feb 6, 2008 at 12:32 am

  I agree with the no keywords policy. I feel that people who are only concerned with keyword names are just using your site for a an easy back link. I think its fine to use a keyword though if it is part of your site name. I also think having keyword after keyword comments looks spammy.

  I personally use a plugin that only remove the nofollow after X number of comments. This is to prevent people from just dropping in to spam a comment for a link, but will reward any of my return visitors.

  I also feel that bloggers don’t “owe” anyone a back link. Its the visitors responsibility to check if they really are a dofollow blog.

• 8 Affiliate Programs // Feb 6, 2008 at 10:17 am

  Hey Peeps,

  Notice that I didn’t say ALL of the dofollow blogs I visited had nofollow still attached, I said a good portion of them did.

  @2xKnight - that’s fair enough. Also, I moderate my comments pretty hard. Like I said in the post, if it’s a “nice site” crap comment, it gets trashed. I wouldn’t blame anyone for that.

  @ LifeCruiser - Nice blog..made me want to throw a bag together and get gone..lol. I understand the software, but then again, who determines what a “blacklisted” word is? The folks at Digg will have a different definition of a blacklisted word than those at BlackHatSEO. Besides, I believe that a blog owner should moderate their own comments and be the final judge of which comments get through. Then all comments should be do-follow if they’re advertised that way.

  @Justin - I still fail to see what difference having a keyword in the name field makes? What if my name really was Affiliate Programs. Can you imagine trying to get a comment approved? As I stated in the post, if a person goes to the trouble of having their blog included in the D-List and promotes that “U Comment, I follow”, then the comments should have the nofollow removed, plain and simple. It’s not the visitors responsibility to make sure the nofollow is removed, it’s not their blog and it’s not them promoting the blog as a dofollow blog!

  @ Jos - I have to admit, your blogger blog is a strange puppy as I see it. Once you post a comment on the blogger pop up, it then redirects you to the post page where the comment will appear. When I looked at the comments on the post page, they were all dofollow. That’s cool.

  What I meant by visitors to dofollow blogs being taken advantage of is that a vast majority of visitors to the dofollow blogs do not know if the nofollow attribute has actually been removed or not. So they’re thinking that if a blog is on the dofollow blog list, then the comments will all be dofollow, which as I pointed out, isn’t true most of the time. For those promoting their blogs as dofollow but who haven’t removed the nofollow attribute, it’s just an old bait and switch game. And a selfish one at that.

  They want the benefits of comments and visitors but they don’t want to live up to their end of the bargain by giving a link back.

• 9 Awesomeness // Feb 7, 2008 at 9:52 am

  I have ran into the same issues before with people who say they blog is dofollow still having the rel=nofollow on their comments.
  On my blog, I use the link love plugin (kind of like your Top Commentors plugin) so that people who visit often and comment more than about 3 times will get some link love… since I do it this way, I don’t advertise my site as do follow. I know some blogger do this and still consider their blogs “do follow”…that’s total garbage if you asked me.

  As for your point on keywords in the name field, I couldn’t agree more…I mean really who cares what you put there…If your going to be “do follow” you should expect some extra administration..but if your going to be that picky and limit that much then why even bother going do follow? Being a do follow blog would benefit both parties, not just lure more comments to your site…but I digress.

• 10 Jen // Feb 7, 2008 at 2:18 pm

  I support you and this definitely sounds like an accountability benchmark for blog marketing and business publishers.

  Those with scarcity mindsets will always think they are giving up something from their blog if the link has keywords even when the commentor has left a value added comment.

  Thank God when Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins of Stompernet started their million dollar careers, they were selfish and stingy. They encouraged and even taught internet business owners how to leave comments with keywords in the name and comment field.

  Real Marketers know the difference and do not horde.

• 11 Jen // Feb 7, 2008 at 2:21 pm

  Pardon, my error in the last entry. I meant to say Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins were NOT selfish and helped everyone, many who have gone on to six and seven figure online businesses with their techniques and strategies.

  Linking with keywords is just not a big deal.

• 12 Blogging For The Money // Feb 7, 2008 at 8:02 pm

  You seem to be forgetting that the Do_Follow list is run by one person. You have to ask to be added to it, and you have to ask to be removed from it.

  I’d had Do_Follow on four of my blogs then decided to remove it. It took nearly 3 months to have my blogs taken off that dang list.

• 13 Tiffany // Feb 8, 2008 at 10:08 am

  Talking about “thank you for sharing”, I can understand why you say this comment is bullshit. Maybe it because you see that the commentators don’t share anything about their opinion relating with your posting…But as a commentator I would like to say that many times I post that sentence to articles that I like. This mean that I do agree with the writter opinion and I don’t have anything to be add to. Even sometimes it realize me to something that I never thought before. That’s why I say “thank you for sharing”.

• 14 ~ Stacy ~ // Feb 10, 2008 at 1:08 am

  Interesting. I joined the DoFollow blogroll a couple of months ago. But, I’ve been so busy lately that I have not taken the time to make use of it.

  Perhaps I believe in the good of people a bit more than not, so I’m inclined to view this ‘dishonesty’ (as you put it), as more of an ignorance factor. Not all bloggers are css or php gurus, and all these widgets and whatnot can be confusing at times.

  I followed all of the instructions to make my blog fit within the ‘Do Follow’ guidelines. However, I had no clue how to check to make sure it was done correctly. So, I thank you for the Firefox plugin information, and I will be using it to check my blog as well.

  To be honest, though, I think I’m liking your idea of using the Top Commentator plugin instead. It seems like more of a sure thing.

  As for keywords in place of an actual name: I don’t mind that as long as it’s not a spam comment being left on my blog. I have no mercy for spammers.

  Like you said, ‘If you’re going to leave a comment, leave one that benefits the blog.’ Or, at the very least, one that is relevant to the post.

  Anyhoo, great post! Thanks again for the helpful information.

• 15 Don // Feb 11, 2008 at 10:36 pm

  @Tiffany,

  I say that on a lot of my comments, but it’s not the only thing I say.

  If a commenter can only type “Thanks for sharing” I take the comment and the email as well as the Name into account to determine if it’s a spam comment or not.

  I’ll often reference the post and then end my comment by saying “Thanks for sharing”.

  The point I was getting at is that many times a commenter will only leave a simple vague sentence. I take those as spam.

• 16 Ayrshire Blog // Feb 12, 2008 at 6:33 pm

  I was thinking about this dont follow /do follow thing recently and concluded that both have problems but I think there is a potential solution.

  With no follow there is not the same incentive for people to make substantial comments. With do follow there is the risk of simply atttracting spam traffic.

  I am trying to develop an alternative which I call a “Comments Inclusion” policy. I have tinkered with this in a couple of posts and havent yet tried it fully but I think it may have potential.

  Basically it involves informing commentators that the Blog is no follow BUT that the best substantial comments ( not one liners etc) will later be edited into the end of the post - to become part of the post - and the commentators link will be included - giving them that sought after link juice.

  This should allow me to give selective link juice to people who take the trouble to leave substantial comments while run of the mill comments just stay in the do follow. commentators are then helping to build the substantial content of the post and they get link juice for it. Seems like a win win ??

  Its more work than automatic follow or dont follow of course but maybe worth it.

  I am not sure if there would be duplicate content issues if the comment text was simply replicated in the body of the post but in any event my preferred approach would be to edit in selected quotes anyway rather than the whiole comment.

  What are your thoughts on “Comments Inclusion”.

  Of course if you think its a good idea you could always do “Comments Inclusion” and edit this contribution into your post ( with my link)

• 17 Outlook // Feb 15, 2008 at 2:56 am

  Microsoft and yahoo both are the competitor of Google. If these both are get combined they can make more efforts to compete Google.

• 18 Are We Do-Follow Frauds? » Reader Appreciation Project // Feb 21, 2008 at 7:07 am

  […] Don Lawson wrote an insightful post asking, “Are Do-Follow Bloggers Dishonest?” […]

• 19 Sue @ TameBay // Feb 21, 2008 at 7:22 am

  The reason we don’t allow keywords in the name field is exactly If you’re going to leave a comment, leave one that benefits the blog. How can you be part of a conversation if your name is “subprime mortgages” or “cheap CDs”?

• 20 Tim E. // Feb 21, 2008 at 8:16 am

  Hey Sue,
  What’s the difference between “sub prime mortgage” and “awesomeness”? neither one is a name. And then there’s 2xKnight, Dashboards and Lifecruiser commenting here. Are you saying that you can’t even give any of these the time of day because they aren’t “John Smith”?
  It sounds to me like you have issues.
  You can comment all you want on my blog with whatever you choose to call yourself. Just don’t mention any performance related drugs or try to add a bunch of links. If I feel your comment is spam I will remove it, but the name would have nothing to do with it.

• 21 Comment Fraud // Feb 21, 2008 at 2:15 pm

  […] are some interesting posts appearing about comment policies, do follow, and the do follow list at Affilliate Watcher - Are Do-Follow Bloggers Dishonest?, and Reader Appreciation Project - Are We Do-Follow Frauds?, and I think it is beneficial to set […]

• 22 Raquelle // Feb 27, 2008 at 5:13 pm

  My PR6 blog used to be a do follow blog but I had to stop due to amount of spam I got and still get. I never added my blog to a do follow list and believe I was found via search as I did post about it once on my blog.

  My movement into do follow was to help my friends who ran sites similar to mine and who supported me daily. It wasn’t for random people to stop by and leave useless comments in an attempt to get something from my site they didn’t work for.

  I bet a whole lot of people found their blogs added to do follow lists without their permission and that is why, like me, they simply stopped using it.

  Looking back on it, as a new blogger I should have done my homework before I added do follow to my site- but then how could I have known those who weren’t meant to gain from it would try it?

  Either way do follow is a terrible idea and one search of the net shows people slowly moving away from it. Like most good things- spammers and those who want something for nothing- have ruined it.

• 23 Bhumika // Mar 1, 2008 at 10:30 pm

  I will call only those bloggers dishonest who have “You comment I follow” or similar banners/images placed on their blogs and still comments carry “NoFollow”

  Many bloggers seem to have added themselves to DoFollow list to increase readership but with last Google penalty parade, feared penalties and discontinued… Some, though cannot be called dishonest, were not honest enough to post a specific post announcing discontinuation. Many bloggers as Wayne Liew honestly shared their concerns in a post while discontinuing

• 24 SEO // Mar 2, 2008 at 6:41 pm

  It should not really matter as long as you clean up the spam you get.

• 25 Ian // Mar 7, 2008 at 4:09 am

  I think its more ignorance than intent. I can’t see why someone would bother saying they are do follow then not implementing it deliberately - whats the point? How does it hurt them to do it properly? Or, how does it benefit them not to?

• 26 sevenpics // Mar 21, 2008 at 8:15 pm

  i’m totally pro - dofollow, but i understand that spammers are a plague.

  who likes spam?

• 27 Geld Lenen // Mar 30, 2008 at 3:44 pm

  i’m totally pro also, as long as my posts are read and the comment makes some kind of sence I give the dofollow as a reward.

  gr,
  Geld Lenen

• 28 pam // Apr 2, 2008 at 9:01 pm

  I know I’m a little late to the discussion, but was reading your archives… and wanted to thank you for writing about this!
  I’m one of those that joined the list probably 6 months ago, but deactivated the plugin early on…! I really need to have my name removed from the list, but it had slipped my mind!

  So… I appreciate the reminder.

• 29 How to make money online // Apr 7, 2008 at 11:47 pm

  I’m using that SEO extension, it’s great! : D

• 30 Internet Marketing // Apr 8, 2008 at 7:10 am

  small blogs may be dishonest, but i think that big cant be dishonest.

• 31 George // Apr 9, 2008 at 7:37 pm

  I know quite a few people on those lists who decided to change to no-follow, because of spam. People just aren’t updating those lists.

  I am still a do-follow blog, because I am NOT a fan of the no-follow tag. Never was, never will be.

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