If the blog is a do follow then yes Google still count them as backlinks, otherwise they are only useful for generating some traffic
what do you mean by "Still google counts"? Yes, google will count all links which are not "nofollow".
Yes if you are asking about the link posted in the blog comments, they dont count anymore as a backlink. Also if you have a comment with a link pointing to someone else's blog, then urs as well as the other guy's blog/site will be penalised by google.
With the launch of the new Caffeine search engine, Google now completely ignores backlinks from comments.
It is highly unlikely they will penalize either site. The most likely scenario would be, the link will be ignored. If they actually penalized the sites you could easily take out your competition with an external blackhat campaign.
There is no real "source" but it is just reality that is slowly coming true. Many people have used blog comments as their main link building method and google have realised this. They have also realised the ridiculous amount of spam any high PR blog posts are getting. Google is trying to reduce all the crap as it is messing with their results. So in a fight to stop this they have majorly reduced the weight given to blog comments. So I seriously recommend people to move away from blog commenting and even trying to think of your own link building methods as that is what will be most effective. In answer to your question about the proof of all this. Many people have been experiencing SERP drops and even I have on a couple of sites. Something that I have noticed is the sites that I have seen the biggest drops is where I did mainly blog commenting for my link building. I have one site that I have barely done any blog comments for and many other powerful techniques that other people certainly have not spammed. I really do believe this is what has helped me succeed recently. Hope this helps and feel free to ask more questions
Well this has been going on for years. Google is always tweaking the weight of backlinks. But they certainly aren't "ignored", unless they are nofollow, and even then I am skeptical that the links are actually ignored. Google LOVES data, they are the biggest bean counters of all time. I highly doubt they "ignore" anything they can categorize and count.
Who can speak for google except for google? I can tell you that I get traffic from blog comments. But my intentions when I place a Blog comment are not SEO... I place comments for the traffic. SEO is a side benefit. I would expect that a blog comment would not be "counted" to use your term with much SEO weight.... but certainly there is no reason for Google to just ignore them. Think about the information it gives Google about a Site ... good or bad.
Well I disagree with you. Google are fed up with the spam! Google want their results to be reliable so therefore they put less and less weight on anything that is spam. Go read the google webmasters blog. You will see that there is even a post that they say they do not count blog comments as they know it is just spam! Now yes of course they count as a backlink but there are many other techniques that will give more results in the same timeframe
Search engines even Goooogle read the links in your comment (normally your name is hyperlinked to your website) and you build your link popularity directly from the comments. However, most blogs are NoFollow, which at least in theory means that they carry no link value. But there are also a fair number of DoFollow blogs, and some give you a hyperlink both in your name and at the end of the comment to your most recent blog post. Another SEO benefit from blog comments is that every time you leave a comment, the blog owner takes notice of you. This is especially true for repeat visitors, so it is worth returning to the same blogs over and over. The other bloggers will undoubtedly visit your website. So why avoid blog commenting, after all!!!