Search Engines: 1, Spammers: 0.
In an exciting bit of news for bloggers everywhere, Google and a number of other search engines are rolling out support for a new attribute for hyperlinks that tells the search engine not to follow or index that link.
Your new spam-safe links should take the form:
<a href=”somelink” rel=”nofollow”></a>
This removes the benefit that spammers got from posting their links in your comments, i.e. a higher PageRank (other ranking systems are available).
WordPress, Six Apart and a number of other blogging software community members have announced their support and hopefully the tools will soon make this transparent.
More news and details on the Google blog…
update: This blog now uses rel=”nofollow” on all comment links, thanks to a timely wordpress plugin from Clint Ecker. Here’s hoping it makes a difference!
