What would you think if we nofollowed signature links?
Hi everyone,
The moderating team here at TWF is considering adding rel="nofollow" to all signature links. We seem to be getting an increasing amount of spam and low quality posts. Via Google we appear on over 13,000 lists of "dofollow" forums.
Obviously, this isn't the sort of activity we want for our forums. It requires a lot of moderator attention to remove spam, and even determine what is and is not spam. The large volumes of low quality posts make this a less interesting place to be.
Ideally we would like to "follow" links for certain individuals who have proven themselves to be quality contributors. There are a number of ways we could handle that (either by post count or manual selection by moderators). Unfortunately we can't do that right now with Drupal 5 (requires Drupal 6 and a change to the Signatures module).
So, the proposal is to rel="nofollow" all signature links for the time being. How do you feel about that?
gausarts posted this at 03:06 — 11th June 2009.
He has: 11 posts
Joined: Jun 2009
All I heard about dofollow is mostly bad in google's eyes for site's owners. They may be penalized as some link farms. Not sure myself with all these SEO stuffs. I am just about to learn here. As a noob, I do follow your best considerations
dogfence456 posted this at 06:40 — 11th June 2009.
They have: 1 posts
Joined: Jun 2009
It requires a lot of moderator attention to remove spam, and even determine what is and is not spam.They may be penalized as some link farms.Thank's....
dog fence
Megan posted this at 17:12 — 11th June 2009.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
LMAO. This is exactly the sort of post we're trying to get rid of here. This one even copied bits of posts from further up in this same topic! Usually they're at least clever enough to copy something from another site.
Megan
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RTFVerterra posted this at 15:32 — 11th June 2009.
He has: 109 posts
Joined: Dec 2008
I am here for contents and sense of community dofollow or nofollow doesn't matter to me. I suggest you apply rel=nofollow to discourage anyone whose sole purpose is to establish link rather than to participate active discussion.
Civil Engineering Review
crush_hardcore posted this at 11:22 — 22nd June 2009.
They have: 2 posts
Joined: Jun 2009
I think that it would be best to do the whole NO_FOLLOW on all sig links and post links until Drupal 6 is implemented.
I am here to learn and tell more about what i do, rather than to gain links.
CRUSH
shakir posted this at 07:29 — 23rd June 2009.
They have: 83 posts
Joined: Nov 2007
According to me without nofollow is good and which give some bonus to the forum users. Also like sitepoint and digitepoit if u maintain, can keep the equality... Kick them for life and send some infractions found bad quality post....appoint some more moderators....
Megan posted this at 15:04 — 24th June 2009.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
We'd definitely like to be able to reward our regular members with the followed link. It's just a matter of balancing that with discouraging spammers and low quality posts. There are several levels of spam that we're dealing with here:
Problems in the first two categories are dealt with by moderators. We do suspect that the amount of the #2 type of spam above would decrease significantly if signatures were nofollowed. This would allow moderators to concentrate on other things.
The third category is something we can't really do much about right now. Technically there is nothing wrong with these posts, but they do clutter up the forum with meaningless content that isn't useful for readers.
Megan
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articlemaster posted this at 18:52 — 24th June 2009.
They have: 83 posts
Joined: Apr 2009
Dear megan,
There are many strategies to stop spam, different forum apply different one. However, i have suggestion.
You can set a time period and no of post count for new user's to be allowed to add signatures and link in there post. You can apply something like a new user must be a member for about one month and must have 50 quality post to be considered to add signature and link to their post.
For spammers this will a long wait and huge target to start spamming.This is only my suggestion. And it wont bother real users who will join your forum to share and learn.
greg posted this at 19:10 — 24th June 2009.
He has: 1,581 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
At the moment, on Drupal 5, only "no follow" to all sig links can be added.
Megan posted this at 19:45 — 24th June 2009.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
That's pretty much it. Although, I'd like to allow everyone to have a signature immediately. Just because it helps to get to know people right away and they don't have to wait to participate fully in the community. What we would like to do is rel=nofollow until users have proven themselves to be genuine.
Megan
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kim robin posted this at 03:25 — 25th June 2009.
She has: 12 posts
Joined: Jun 2009
I'm amenable with your proposals. Even though I was never been a moderator I know how hard your job is especially in controlling spammers. This forum has a little spammers compared to other forums that I've been gone through and it is really annoying to see those uncontrolled spammers. I think this must be stopped and should go on to your nofollow proposals.
Megan posted this at 20:35 — 29th June 2009.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Google is recommending this strategy as well:
Substitute "forum signatures" for "untrusted user profile pages". Actually, we should check our user profile pages too...
Really, we shouldn't be passing value to these links because we certainly don't trust them. Regular participating members who have proven to be valuable yes, but not new ones.
Megan
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Michael James Swan posted this at 21:06 — 29th June 2009.
He has: 400 posts
Joined: May 2008
I agree with all of the above and think that it would be a great idea.
I know that i am agreeing knowing that i have been warned on a few occasions but i have been giving more to the community also.
sarpras posted this at 02:58 — 9th July 2009.
He has: 24 posts
Joined: Apr 2006
Now this forum add links only good post so it not need to add nofollow links on signature.
If you use nofollow links, lots of members stop actively participating this forum. Very popular forum digitalpoint.com not use nofollow links on their signature.
Kokkada.com | Direct to Home – DTH
greg posted this at 08:18 — 4th August 2009.
He has: 1,581 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
I fully accept it's a bonus if they do, but forums are for "discussions". Providing advice, helping others, asking questions and providing resources (etc).
If people would leave simply because their sig links become no-follow, what does that say about the reason they are here? Surely they are only here for the sig links if they leave the forum due to no-follow sig links?
Besides, what is the big deal about forum sig with do-follow? Google barely takes notice of them even if they are do-follow. And if your website promotions are relying on forum sig links then you should probably be on a webmaster forum anyway to learn how to promote a website properly, not just meaningless tactics like sig links and directories.
I'm not wanting to sound harsh or offend those who like sig links with do-follow, but this is not what a forum is all about - at all. A forum is a community to discuss, and the forum sigs are there to allow other forum users to see links your site/blog/latest article, and NOT to get it listed on search engines.
Megan posted this at 14:22 — 4th August 2009.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I agree. We may have fewer posters but the quality should go up. I wouldn't mind if all the people who believe forum signatures are a good SEO tactic stopped posting. Then we'd have much better advice in our SEO and marketing forums, rather than people continually giving poor advice (post on forums, submit to directories etc.)
Megan
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Pixeland posted this at 08:19 — 5th August 2009.
They have: 13 posts
Joined: Aug 2009
I also agree with that, to be really really honest the only reason I joined this website was to use it as an area to stuff with back links. My first posts were set out with a long drawn out story filled with page links back to my web site.
Then somebody knocked my links off and made me mime the words you ******* ****, but now that I have used this site twice im enjoying it ... so who cares if there are evil people in here destroying my Black SEO devilish tricks ... and the signature links dont matter either.
Lets enjoy.
PS. Anyone got any tricks let me know anyway while im here ... no harm in asking.
greg posted this at 09:14 — 5th August 2009.
He has: 1,581 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
You admitted here you gave up because we deleted your spammy links. And most other sites and forums do too. Search engines are spending millions of dollars researching, developing and implementing major changes to counter black hat techniques.
To give the decent websites credit and ban the bad ones. The bad techniques will bite you on the arse eventually, and the domain and site will be penalised or banned and blacklisted.
All that brain power and time spent thinking of devious ways to write forum and blog posts with subtle links and keywords for your benefit. And not only do you get naff all for it if the post is left alone, but most times it'll get deleted anyway.
A complete waste of your brain resources, time and effort that could be spent learning better and more professional methods that not only return decent results, but will do so for the future.
Spam and similar tactics are a temporary and quick cheap method of getting a few low quality links and hits.
And most humans wont visit them either. I see a spam post on another forum or blog and simply ignore it, as will most people.
I know people who have had a website online for 2-3 months, up to PR4 and thousands of hits a day. And got there without using any pointless pissy about black hat spam tactics like posting meaningless links in a forum.
Besides the fact it's a cheap trick, doesn't it bore you having to go round forums posting meaningless drivel to get a few crappy low quality hits?
It is very much like going around the streets picking pennies off the floor trying to raise a few ££.
Pixeland posted this at 13:04 — 5th August 2009.
They have: 13 posts
Joined: Aug 2009
Well thats true, it has been knocked down to page 5 and 6 from page one ... it was slowly loosing ground two months ago and has now been dropped even for the main domain name which is Qindex, then I tried escaping that and set up new hosting to hide from Google and changed to Qintro.co.uk then that got no place, so i dumped it and bought Qintro.net and low and behold it failed to reach page one ... so im now on Qintro.com and switched off from the qindex.co.uk.
To be honest yet again ... the whole carry on has had me on page one of Google for a few months and now the same old story ... it been over stuffed with rubbish and its way back to page 2009 BC.
So my plan ... i'll keep an eye on what you guys are up to while i go back and forward cleaning up the mess on Qintro. BUT thats as far as im going with Qintro.com
Time for a new website on photography ... pass your comments on that before its on a downward slope, http://www.pixeland.co.uk/
BUT ... In all this I have learned a few good things, I started off with a page with three tables and continued to learn other things. After 3 years of hunting down how to get Googles page one ... I learned photoshop, dreamweaver etc.
Thanks John
NickD posted this at 10:38 — 7th August 2009.
They have: 56 posts
Joined: May 2009
Why are you changing your domain because your rankings drop? Its natural to experience an "up down up effect" especially with the type of link building it sounds like you are doing, bear in mind that when you post a link on a forum google finds it, then other people post new threads, which pushes your thread off the first page in the catagory, then google comes back and says "wheres that link" oh its gone, It takes a while for it to find the link again. also the more sigs with links that are added to the thread will dilute the worth of your link.
If you thought your domains were penailised or sandboxed you were very very likely wrong. It seems like you need to think about your link building strategy, not buying a new domain. Forums are not really worth using as a linking strategy, I have my links in my sig as free links are free links, but is it worth spamming a forum to get links of this quality? no way, you would be better off looking at article submission.
NickD posted this at 11:13 — 7th August 2009.
They have: 56 posts
Joined: May 2009
Pixeland, Who does your on site seo?
I checked the optimisation of your home page and its pretty bad, If I was you I would seriously think about using someone else. I have attached a report of the optimisation below for you to take a look at. You have a density of over 12% for the keyword web design. 1.2% is considered optimal for google. 12% is enough to get you dropped from the index for spamming.
If you are interested in outsourcing your seo, give me a ring or email me.
We offer a very competetive reseller deal.
Pixeland posted this at 16:59 — 18th August 2009.
They have: 13 posts
Joined: Aug 2009
Thank you for taking the time to look over the page, I was using webconfs.com for percentages ... I went back for a look and saw 9% for the word WEB and 8% for DESIGN, from that I thought all was ok.
I'll try cutting it back a bit and hope that cures the problem ...
I really just want this page up for phrase DUNDEE WEB DESIGNINGS for the time being.
Thanks for the advice.
victoraston21 posted this at 07:52 — 9th August 2011.
They have: 1 posts
Joined: Aug 2011
To be honest yet again ... the whole carry on has had me on page one of Google for a few months and now the same old story ... it been over stuffed with rubbish and its way back to page 2009 BC.
electric dog fence
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