Updating Our Comment Policy

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One year ago this coming Saturday I announced here on SuccessCREEations that we were going to start rewarding quality commenters.

In that post I announced two things. I installed the Show Top Commentors plugin (original version.) I had some challenges with the plugin when I updated the blog and theme. Andy Beard, an SEO/Internet Marketing guy I highly respect, pointed out some significant problems with the plugin. The reality is that wasn’t really a reward so I quietly removed the plugin.

The second thing I did a year ago was remove the “NoFollow” attribute from my comments section. Back in 2005 Google stopped passing link juice on for links tagged with NoFollow to help reduce comment spam. It was a good idea. Trouble is it hasn’t deterred comment spammers at all.

So I used the dofollow plugin (original version) and put up a nice NoMore NoFollow badge from Randa Clay.

No Follow Lists

One side effect of that announcement a year ago (and posting the badge) is that SuccessCREEations made it onto several different lists assembled by internet marketing & SEO types telling their communities about blogs that removed NoFollow.

While it’s nice to be noticed, I started attracting some unscrupulous types that obviously were just commenting to get a little Google juice instead of being interested in participating in conversation here.

Fair enough. I understand human nature well enough to get that.

In the last couple months I’ve started noticing some folks coming here leaving comments with links to Turkish language sites. Even though I don’t speak Turkish (I did have a Turkish coworker until recently) I’m savvy enough to see that the Turkish traffic is coming from some forums that are sharing different known NoFollow sites along with their Google Page Rank.

SuccessCREEations makes these lists because we have a decent Page Rank.

I don’t see it as completely a bad thing. I worked closely with a Turk for several years. And folks who know me know that I have friends from all over the globe.

Even so, it is time to lay out a refined comment policy here. Read more