I just got done busting my butt trying to add nofollow links to the comments section on one of my social bookmarking sites.

I was getting a lot of link spam and although I could have deleted the comments, I didn’t really want to. So I had to get creative.

Ok, actually I looked around until I found some pieces of javascript code that did what I wanted it to. I had to take three js functions and hook them up together.

In the end no matter what link the user enters in the comments section it will always have the infamous rel=nofollow attached to it.

I know a lot of people don’t like this tag cause it can hose them in their efforts to get good links. But most of those people are the guys sporting some link spam. The old rule still applies. If you have good content and offer something of value you will get a link of value in return. More links = more PR. Just look at Microsoft’s web site (PR 9)! They offer lots of value don’t they? Well, that depends on who you are. Alright, I confess I use XP at work too. But I don’t like it so there!

The real reason I added this to the site was because my page rank dropped from a 6 to a 4, then down to a 2, then 0. FRICKIN ZERO. That’s horse piss! I have excellent internally linking on this site. I have close to 45,000 internal links. Well, dang it hang on I’ll go check to make sure.

Ok, 85,162 pages indexed at yahoo. Only half that at Google -which is still good by comparison. They say if you can get 10%-25% of your content indexed by Google you’re doing good. I’ve got 47,640 inlinks. Now that includes all links. Breaking it down its like: 2,670 incoming links and 44,970 internal links. Not so much on the incoming links. I have to work on that.

So back to my original point. With such sweet internal linking structure I was holding my PR nice at a 6. But then it started dropping off, I didn’t think much of it, but it got worse. I added some nofollow links on the outbound links, but I forgot about the comments.

I login to MySql and check it out -just to see how many I have. I don’t remember the exact count and I don’t feel like opening it back up to check. But it was about 15,000 or so -aw heck I’ll go look dang it. Hang on. Total comment count is 15,150 BooYa! What a memory. haha. So yeah, after closer inspection there where like 85% of the comments had links in them. Hmm, so let me do the math. (carry the one…..) Ok, that’s like 12,877.5 outbound links. Wait did I just write a half link? Dang, that would be cool. Anyway… So duh moron. Yeah, no wonder I lost all my freakin PR. Stupid poser link spammers. Not any more though.

Lesson learned. Money lost, lot of money lost. I sell links, and with a higher PR I could have been banking more green. Dang It!!!

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