Fifteen months ago, in an attempt to reward those individuals displaying the taste and distinction to comment upon this site, I converted the Ominous Comma to a Dofollow blog.
Simply put, this means that every comment upon this site would add a small but cumulative addition to the originating site’s google ranking, allowing them to leverage their site’s visibility in the search results one comment a time.
Sadly, all this had done is inspire a host of nearly-random comments from people running real estate and merchandising pages, which would be alright had the remarks in question not revealed that these individuals were not really reading the stories and basically had no idea what the rest of us were talking about.
Well, no more. 
I’m done bribing people to spam me. With some twenty three thousand spam comments so far, I really don’t need any help in that regard.
So I’m pulling the plug. More precisely, I’m pulling the plugin that allowed my precious google juice to shower my commenters with clout, which now that I’ve typed that out loud, makes me wonder why anyone would ever put up this that sort of thing. You people are some kind of twisted.
Anyway, for my dear friends who come here to make meaningful contributions to our ongoing conversation, all this will mean to you is that there will be fewer virtual three-years-olds pulling at our pant legs, or possibly kilts, to interrupt us in order to proudly state the obvious.
“Doctor Toboggans’ mustache fake you say? Good heavens! Wherever did you get that idea?…Clue-Mart?”
Alright, the rant is over. As well as the handout of page rank.
See you again soon.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
If you want to reward bloggers with a do follow add the comment luv plugin.
How does this help? You as the WP admin can edit comments, including the do follow/no follow setting of the comment luv link-to-last-post in the comment, thus giving you the power to send the Google juice to the bloggers you think deserve it while at the same time not rewarding the spammers.
But be careful with do follow. Each blog has a limited amount of juice and the value diminishes over time if it sent to the same website over and over.
MAKE HER HAPPPPYY! WITH ENORMUSS SIZES!!
CHEEEPP SUPPLEMINT ONLY $14.99!! EMAIL ME I’m WAITING!@
Google juice????? All together now……….eeeeewwww
I hope you’re not expecting “meaningful contributions to the conversation” from everybody. That’s a lot of pressure, you know?
I think there’s something seedier than comment spamming going on here. I think that Dr. Toboggan’s mustache probably got in a twist after he fell for a certain spammer’s anatomical enlargement scam.
You and Chris Cameron are too sophisticated for me and are talking over my head. Joel, however, is just right.
Chris C -I do appreciate the technical advice, but this is part of my new direction for this blog. I simply don’t want to be bribing people to come here.
CrummyJoel -Actually, those supplemints have made my breath so minty fresh that I’ve had to chase the missus off with a firehose. Fortunately, we have all inflatable furniture, so mold hasn’t been too much of a problem.
Chris non-C -Don’t be squeamish. Nothing get you going in the morning like a fresh-squeezed glass of Search Nectar. Be sure to get the extra pulp variety if you can find it.
wolf -Just work at your own pace and you’ll make it to “meaningful” before you know it.
Steph -He really should have known, there’s just no way his head couldn’t get any bigger than it is.
father muskrat -Joel is always just right. Someday Google Juicers like Chris and myself will achieve his level of…whatever that thing it is he does.
Good God, Brent, you mean I could have been scoring Google rank points this whole time??!? I didn’t know! Poopy-doo!
(Like the new pic in the upper right corner, too! Very Kruger-esque.)
LOL-at-Crummy Joel – that was hillarious.
So where were we? Oh yeah.
What?
So, whose not following anymore.
“twenty three thousand spam comments”!!!!!
You’ve had 23,000 Spam Comments??! Ouch! Is that because of not having Captcha? I have it on my Blogger style blog and yes sometimes it’s a Royal PITA when they give you a 17 letter word (Grrrr), but that doesn’t happen too often.
And I like your response: ” I simply don’t want to be bribing people to come here.”
You don’t need to bribe. Your material stands on it’s own. :)
I hope all is well with you.
~ZZ
Jeffrey Ellis -You still have cool points with me. I’m sure Google will give you a good rate of exchange. I’m glad you like the picture, keep an eye on it though, it keeps changing.
LOBO- The more I think about Joel’s comment the more effortless it seems. Perhaps someone’s been moonlighting on us.
Alex L. -Excellent question. Everyone no longer commenting on this blog, please leave a comment and let me know.
Greeneyezz -Thank you. I use akismet to round up all my spam so my readers don’t have to do all that letter-crunching. Just another cool thing about WordPress.
I have been proudly writing you nearly-random comments for some time now. I always did it without hope of any personal profit because I believed in you man.
Even when I couldn’t decide whether you were actually funny or not, I said to myself, “What the hell, everyone else is laughing, go with it.”
But if I catch anymore of your google juice over-spray, I’m switching back to LOBO’s blog. At least there I don’t have to sweat that whole “humor” thing.
I hear ya on the spam. I installed captcha after I had over a thousand crap comments in one day. Still don’t have it sorted out, so I think soon we will be going free of “nofollow free.”
BTW, there are two thoughts I have on the whole Google juice thing: First, you can’t ‘run out’ since you don’t actually give it away. Although as Google follows more and more links from your site, each of those recipients gets a smaller piece of the pie. Do follow never hurt my rankings, and we used it from the start.
Second, Google juice is best served cold, in an actual ‘glass’, not a plastic cup. And you need one of those umbrella thingies.
Don -Your faith in me is touching. In fact, it is touching me right now and I really wish it would stop. Especially since there is no telling when it last washed its hands. Even as we speak I am installing a splash guard to protect readers like yourself from any last misting of clout that might occur as the pipes finally run dry.
Tim -I feel your pain. At least I think it’s your pain, it’s either that or Don’s faith again. But anyway, the only thing I was really worried about running out of was patience.
And that shot of Google juice, is it served straight or over ice?
Wow I never got links from real estate sites and if comments get too spammy I just delete them.
What I have found is that sometimes the keywords that people leave are invaluable especially if they are related to my site. Then I come up in Google and stuff.
LOL! Oh man…. these plugin developers really do have good intentions… it’s just so unfortunate that spammers dont …. :)
I was going through my links awhile back and one of my sites made it to a “where to spam” list (yup there really is one! I almost fell of my chair) because of my dofollow links.
With all these spam comments, it’s just so hard to find the right luv.
Great article. Nice blog. Keep it coming. Mike
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