"nofollow" Fallout
Google recently announced support for a new link tag: rel=”nofollow”. When Google indexes your site, any links that are tagged with nofollow don’t receive a PageRank boost from your link. This is intended to reduce the incentive for comment spammers.
Everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon: Six Apart has implemented nofollow for Moveable Type & TypePad; and the latest CVS for Wordpress already includes nofollow despite a raging debate on the hacker’s list about it’s use.
I don’t think nofollow is going to save interactive sites from comment spam. It’s a nice gesture but it really doesn’t address the root cause of spam. (more...)