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NOFOLLOW tag for untrusted links enhancement by SixApart, Google & Co to create a new link standard to come up with comment spam

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Wed, 01/19/2005 - 17:27 — Christoph C. Cemper

REL=NOFOLLOW is the proposed syntax to add to the HREF links for untrusted links so that Google & Co know it's not a link to take into the pagerank calculation…

The untrusted links enhancement by SixApart, Google & Co was initiated to create a new link standard to cope with comment spam on all sides…

Quote:

The search team at Google approached us with the idea of flagging hyperlinks with a rel="nofollow" link attribute in order to alert their search spider that a particular link shouldn’t be factored into their PageRank calculations. The Yahoo and MSN search teams have also indicated they’d support this new spec, and we’ll be implementing and deploying this specification as quickly as possible across all of our platforms around the world.

Check these links:

Six Log: Support for nofollow

ysearch

msdn

nice quote from WMW:

Quote:

Fix blogger.com, blogspot and whatever else – there are still plenty of blogs left in the world, and plenty more being created such that this solution will have little effect on the problem. Kudos to MSN and Google for taking steps forward to eliminate spam. I think the nofollow tag is amusing but at least it shows some motivation on their part. BTW, google tried this before with the redirects through google.com and we all see how well that worked.

source

well – a first step in the right direction… now I can enable the HREFs in comments / referrer tracking again with that tag when it's live :-)

oops… just noticed the post of Mr. GoogleGuy in the WMW thread… supporters are

  • Brad Fitzpatrick – LiveJournal
  • Dave Winer – Scripting News
  • Anil Dash – Six Apart <— This is TypePad and Movable Type and LiveJournal
  • Steve Jenson – Blogger
  • Matt Mullenweg – WordPress
  • Stewart Butterfield – Flickr
  • Anthony Batt – Buzznet
  • David Czarnecki – blojsom
  • Rael Dornfest – Blosxom

    Quote:

    I believe we're adding MSN Spaces to that list ASAP as well. I've been amazed at how many people are cooperating. This is gaining momentum very quickly.

Yes – and according to the Google Blog this change is ALREADY LIVE at Google! that was fast…

And of course The Register had an article up today already that I missed initially….

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Comments

Thu, 02/03/2005 - 18:35 — Jocelyn Bogrow (not verified)

NOFOLLOW tag for untrusted links enhancement by SixApart, Google

%syn(Cool|Nice|Rulezz)% %syn(blog,|portal| site ! I)% hope to make %syn(my own|own weblog|my diary)%, not worse than yours ;)

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