Blogger Comment Link Love
One of the things that has frustrated me about Blogger, and Google to some extent, is the fact that they try to dictate to me how the links should be on my blog. For example comment links are automatically given the “nofollow” attribute. Well I don’t like that. I want the people who take the time to comment to get a link back to their website or blog. That seems fair. I have comment moderation in place so comments have to be approved before being published so I can delete the spammers comments and they won’t get any link love.
I searched through the Blogger help, which is pretty much useless to tell you the honest truth. Then I searched through the Blogger help group, and there were some answers there, but they were all for the new layout system when your blog is hosted on Blogspot. Well that did not help me so I went back to the Blogger help looking for the classic template tags and it was there that I got my idea.
The Blogger template tag <$BlogCommentAuthor$> is the template tag responsible for printing out the comment authors name and link. There is no way of telling it not to output a rel=“nofollow”, so enter in a little snippet of PHP to modify that little bit of HTML that Blogger is inserting into my blog. Look where Blogger has the <$BlogCommentAuthor$> template tag replace it with <?php echo str_replace(' rel="nofollow"', '', '<$BlogCommentAuthor$>'); ?> and presto that nasty little rel=“nofollow” attribute is gone. Of course this only works if you are processing your HTML files as PHP.
On some blog templates you might not find the <$BlogCommentAuthor$> template tag, instead they have <$I18NPostedByCommentAuthor$>. It does exactly the same thing. Just replace that tag with <?php echo str_replace(' rel="nofollow"', '', '<$I18NPostedByCommentAuthor$>'); ?> and let the link love begin.
On a related note, if you leave a comment and want to have a link pointing to your website make sure you choose the “Other” under “Choose an identity”. This way you can specify your website or blog address instead of a Blogger profile. No one needs to have link love to their Blogger profile.
Oh and what is the cost for all of this link love? Unlike some bloggers out there who have decided to charge $10 to remove the nofollow attribute, I will charge you ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! In case you are wondering the above link is a nofollow, because he does not need anymore links.
Comments
Rhett
I would but... I like just being logged in on all the different blogger blogs that I visit. So it's more about me being lazy than concern for getting linkbacks.
Tips 4 Blogspot
I am working on a similar approach for FTP Classic bloggers, except that I am running into a snag. My fix uses a PHP function (thereby negating any Template updates after it is installed)<br/><br/><b>Your solution and mine are not working.</b> I do not have a clue as to what is causing it. The blog is using other PHP methods, and they are working.<br/><br/>Please see the comments in my <a HREF="http://webstractions.blogspot.com/2007/06/remove-nofollow-from-classic-ftp.html" REL="nofollow">Classic FTP Dofollow</a> post to understand what is going on.Ignore the final comment when I ask if his pages are PHP ready. They are. <br/><br/>I am in email contact with the the blog owner and trying to resolve this issue. Your help would be greatly appreciated.
LGR
Thanks for the comment. I looked at the code here on my site and the rel="nofollow" is being removed on the author name. Here is the code from your comment. <a href="http://webstractions.blogspot.com">Tips 4 Blogspot</a><br/><br/>My code will not remove the nofollow on links in the comment body. I will perhaps tackle that another day.<br/><br/>My first guess if the code from your function is not working would be to check the regular expression. I dislike regular expressions because I tend to mess them up more than get them right. My question would be why use a regular expression, on the author name at least, because Blogger for a change is consistent with using double quotes. I'll come and take a look at your site later when I have more time.
WordPress Guru
I did not understand when you say "and Google to some extent," . Do you mean that Google when crawls blogs automatically discredits the weight of the links coming out from comment section ? A large number of bloggers are using Do Follow [or something similar] to boost the comments count and traffic on their blogs , and people seem to be getting link juice out of the comment section as well. I do understand the blogger part however.
LGR
No I mean that Google is taking the nofollow and applying it to more and more things. Google is dictating to webmasters how we should build our sites, or they will declare our websites unfit for their index. That is BS. The recent PageRank reduction on blogs and websites that sell text links is a recent example. Google wants webmasters to fix their algorithm. Google's search results have become tainted and no longer represent the best information because they have taken the position of editor and have decided what sites should and should not be in the index. They have crossed the line from trying to return good search results to actually censoring the web. That is unacceptable. While I might not care for John Chow's blog, it is a great example of <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=john+chow" rel="nofollow">Google censoring web search results</a>.
LGR Webmaster Blog - Google’s Blogger Commenting from Bad to Worse
[...] as other with a link to your website. This also means that the instruction I had written up in Blogger Comment Link Love no longer works. I guess Google no longer trusts anyone to moderate any comments on their [...]
Kevin
Do you know if blogger still does this by default? <a href="http://www.mightyvendor.com" rel="nofollow">.</a>
LGR
Yes Blogger still inserts nofollow on all comment links. I can't see that changing anytime soon since Google owns them.
rr
Do you know if blogger still does this by default?
LGR
Yes they do. Now that Blogger is closing down ftp publishing this trick will not be possible for much longer. My advice, move to WordPress ASAP.