Isn't it easy to add a "nofollow" to your code and every time a spammer (and everyone that) adds a link, s/he is restricted to that? Of course yes. But the unfortunate thing is some people never seem to understand this simple theory and etiquette of commenting on websites. msn.com was one dofollow horizontal portal which generously allowed dofollow links till recently but not anymore, thanks to some spammers seeking instant gratification. The less I speak of their commenting etiquette the better it is. You could find them blatantly advertising their tradekey.com product pages on health topic pages. What a shame. yes, it feels bad to have lost a great source as msn.com is from SEO point of view but isn't it equally bad or worse to see tasteless comments on unconnected pages? When do we grow up really?
It's indeed shameful - but alas the net has no police and some folks would do everything possible to gain advantage. Perhaps msn could have adopted moderated comments to keep away the spammers (just as dp does so effectively) instead of converting dofollow to nofollow. Big loss for us no doubt, but this step won't teach anything to spammers - they would continue to spread where ever they can - and for once majority can't do anything but to accept!
This seems to be the motto and the "everything" is stooping to such levels. They got the wrath of the webmaster but google will not be open in its action when it comes down. But the point I am making is not just about the strategic loss but etiquette; you don't enter in just about anybody's party and start playing around to your advantage and still claim falsified rights when caught. You've got to be relevant there to be there. netiquettes aren't far removed from real world values.
Ouch!! Losing a PR8 back link could put a dent in the back linking strategy. Hard question to answer as its very difficult to track. I can say though, that I have one article on a like themed site to my own. That site is "nofollow" - but I get lots of traffic from that site. One other thing, is while Google may not count the nofollow link, Yahoo does and I love that. The link needs to be an open url - not anchor text!
MSN.com may be PR8, but most of the pages you could actually comment on and get a do-follow (now no-follow) link are no where near that.
I don't think it matters much when you could link to your page from a very widely read website. You can still get decent traffic from nofollow pages but it is about the value that stands spoiled now which otherwise would have passed some SERP benefit too.
I get a lot of traffic (15%) from Stumble! (all the links are no-follow). But almost no traffic from other no-follow links...
There's no need chasing dofollow forums and blog links only. As long as you get traffic through those links, you will soon see your site rank for those keywords. For most people, PR is almost useless unless of course you're selling links. Other wise, focus on site optimisation and link building rather than PR. Helen
its shame when you find a good pr source, you scroll down a little and see 5000 lines of spam. i seen on some blogs people included every page on their site!.. had to be at least 500 urls in one comment!.
Yeah it's sad when you see a forum or blog spammed with viagra and porn. I've seen forums with thousands of pages of porn and viagara.
That's awful. I don't know when people grow up. may be the spammers are looking at instant success knowing fully well that they are alerting the poor webmaster.