Google: new 'anti spam' tag for blog comments...

...but could be useful for other things, too?

http://www.google.com/googleblog/200...ment-spam.html

Basically, if you now add the tag

Code:

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rel="nofollow"

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to an anchor tag, that link will get no benefit from it (beit PR, backlinks, etc).

Great for people whose blogs are targetted by comment spammers, but perhaps also useful for people wanting to link to other sites (such as affiliate pages) without those pages getting any PR in the process... maybe?

What do you guys think?

Apparently in addition to Google, MSN and Yahoo have also expressed interest in supporting this.

Very interesting. The article you linked to stresses that this tag is meant for website areas where users can post links. It seems like it would also be very useful for SEOs who want to control the flow of PR through their own links on thier sites.

I can't imagine Google letting people take advantage of this for SEO. Do you think they'll label sites that "abuse" this tag as search engine spammers?

They say it's just encouraged for comments pages. But very very cool.

I'm sure a lot of webmasters will be using this in the next few months. I'm not sure what google will think though, so for the moment I'll just stick with the out.php method.

Yeah, I certainly wont be using it for a good few months. If you're seen to try and control PR like this by Google then it can't be a good thing.

If Google don't want people working their PR, then Google should never have made it public :)

Unless they're trying to trick people into revealing themselves as PR-manipulators...

I meant PR itself.

I'd use it, but I watch my comments on my blog, and right now have an authorization image system in place, so they can't get me with their spam bots.

I simply moderate new comments. Image systems can deter people who have images disabled, or have sight problems.

This will be abused by people whilst doing link exchanges. People will have to take a look at the source code of websites they exchanged links with, to make sure they aren't scamming them.

Indeed not only a possibility, ozgression, but a probability. They may have spoiled the PR system.

indeed, I dont think this new idea is that great of an idea. It hope the rules are enforced properly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tntcheats

Indeed not only a possibility, ozgression, but a probability. They may have spoiled the PR system.

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Perphaps Google wouldn't be too upset about this though. It would mean the end (or a reduction in) link pages and get back to the original premise that a link is a "vote" from one site to another.

I personally hope that link exchanges go back to the premise of being a way to gain more traffic, not a higher ranking. I'd much rather a text link from a low-PR, but high-traffic site than one from a high-PR, low-traffic site.