In an attempt to battle blog and wiki spam, Google has introduced a rel="nofollow" tag for hyperlinks:
"From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results [...] to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists."
It might also solve the nasty problem of weblogs ranking very high in search results, beating or sitting right next to BigCo sites. Think about it. Blogging or distributed conversation is about linking. If we unselectively apply the tag to links to sites of comment and trackback authors as proposed, Google and other key search engines will see the blogosphere as much less connected and rank it considerably lower. Six Apart is proud to announce having done just that: all visitor-submitted content on TypePad sites gets tagged automatically, read: gets considered potential spam. If someone posts a comment on my blog, giving him Google credits is what I actually want. Just as I did with TypeKey, I sometimes begin to wonder what's really on a company's agenda.
Applied selectively, the tag could be interesting. It is good to finally have something to tell search engines to ignore certain links. Public lists of Technorati inbound links on blog homepages or other lists that do not add to a discussion might be good examples.
Other thoughts:
- MSN Search and Yahoo Search will parse the nofollow-tag, too, and MSN Spaces, Six Apart, Blogger, Flickr, Wordpress instantly all agreed to make use of it. Keyword 1: Google's power within the industry. Keyword 2: Quick cooperation among vendors is possible. Keyword 3: People shouting "web standards" don't seem to necessarily have a problem with shouting "propietary extensions", too.
- If some companies introduce something new, considerable parts of the blogosphere say hooray no matter what it is.
- Obviously and unsurprisingly, TypeKey failed. It is a long way from claiming to have the cure for spam to automatically tagging all visitor-submitted content as potential spam.
