My Do Follow Has Died!
Today has been an sad day for me, since I have just come back from burying my do follow Plugin. It died an unjustly dead – the Google doctors said it was most likely a heart attack, but they couldn’t really tell me for sure.
When I noticed something was wrong with it, it was already too late and shortly after my do follow Plugin died. Luckily I had time to held its hand for the last minutes of its life and I’m thankful for this.
If I make it to old age I will fondly think about the days when bloggers like me were blissfully unaware of paid link penalties and do follow slaps by the Google doctors. I’m also sorry not to have invited you to the funeral. As you probably understand, I needed the time to myself to come to terms with this sudden loss.
If you’d like to help, then I would appreciate a supporting comment or else you could donate to the charity of your choice. I leave this up to you. To see what could have possibly caused this sudden do follow dead, you can read Grizzly’s post on the Dead of Do Follow. Terry also stated his opinion on No More Do Follow and he also lost his Plugin today.
Bloggers who are using the do follow Plugin might want to analyze their Plugin’s health, as it also might be sick.
Monika
Technorati Tags: do follow dead,the dead of do follow,no more do follow,no follow rules
About the Author: I'm a passionate freelance writer and problogger. To further build my business I'm also in the process of building my own niche empire which pays me residual income.
Wayne Liew | Dec 9, 2007 | Reply
At first, you twisted my brain a little since I don’t get what you are meaning here. After reading dead of do-follow, I knew what is this all about.
I am still on the center point on whether to drop the plugin or not. I have seen you removing it but is Google Page Rank that important to you or you have some other reasons that you would like to share with me so that I can make my decision?
Terry Didcott | Dec 9, 2007 | Reply
I think you’re right to deactivate do-follow else you be slapped for doing nothing wrong in everyone else’s eyes except the big G.
This is getting too much. While I deliberately kept writing reviews in my blogs knowing they would eventually be slapped down as sacrificial lambs to the slaughter, I didn’t expect this development.
I’m posting another chilling chapter in this sorry saga at The Honest Way today – it’ll make your blood boil and hair stand on end…
Terry
costa | Dec 9, 2007 | Reply
My deepest condolences for your loss Monika. I understand your misery. Mine is half dead too.
No more dofollow for my comments, but i still “follow” when linking to friends and foes in my post. Just hope the AlmiGhty will forgive me on this aspect.
Todd Morris | Dec 9, 2007 | Reply
I had the link love plugin on my blog for a long time. I just recently switched to Andy Bailey’s comment luv plugin. Reading this, and your previous post on the “Value of DoFollow”, I suppose I’ll have to monitor the Spam situation a little more closely. But at this point in time, I’m much more interested in encouraging conversation on my blog, then getting more search engine traffic. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Monika | Dec 9, 2007 | Reply
Wayne: yes, as a matter of fact PR is important to me. Why? Because I’m in this for the long term and only blogs with high PR can be monetized effectively.
Google, no matter how annoying they get at times are essential to anybody wanting to make a decent online income (in my eyes anyway) and therefore I decided not to bear the risks of a possible slap because I’m being nice with do follows.
Does it suck – you bet it does but looking at various high trafficked blogs, none of them use do follow or ever have and their comments are still busy.
I still use do follow in my blog posts when I link to other blogs and that is worth so much more anyway.
My top commenter’s don’t have to worry since they get other benefits instead (I have a few ideas)
Monika | Dec 9, 2007 | Reply
Terry: as a matter of fact it was your post that got me moving eventually. After I seen yours, I visited Griz and when he blogged about the same topic it made things very clear to me instantly.
Like you, I cherish my PR too much with my future plans than not to worry about this possible slap. I’ll be interested to see what else you got on your mind.
Costa: great to see a budding mind. Like you I also use do follow in blog posts and always have except for high trafficked websites. (Not blogs mind you)
Your condolences have been gracefully accepted too.
Todd: I see what you mean, but have you thought about encouraging comments in a different way instead? That way you don’t depend on possible slaps and people still give you their two cents.
Also when I look at most blogs in my reader of which at least half are medium to high traffic, not many use do follow anyway and their comment section is always busy.
I hope it pans out ok for all of us depending on our goals.
Will | Dec 10, 2007 | Reply
Okay, I’ll bite! Could you please air your thoughts on:
1) why you think only blogs with a high PageRank value can be monetised effectively,
2) what you would consider to be a high PR value,
3) how you define “monetized effectively”?
Steven Snell | Dec 10, 2007 | Reply
I’m thinking about removing mine also. I’ve had a big drop in traffic from Google recently and not sure if it’s related.
Monika | Dec 10, 2007 | Reply
Will: the way I see it is that unless your blog has a high PR it can either:
* not be found anywhere in the search engines for a lengthy time
* not be monetized because if I decide to sell direct ads in the future my blog will only be attractive to advertisers because of the high PR. When I say attractive I mean top dollar.
* the same goes for using adwords or any other related advertising. No PR, no search engine ranking unless you are prepared to pay for advertising which can become costly.
* simply put, no PR equals no leverage for just about anything a blogger wants to do and then there is also the credibility factor. Blogs with a high PR are much more credible than others and they can monetize the blog easily.
* by monetizing I mean direct advertising, sponsors, adwords, affiliate marketing etc.
* what I consider a high PR value might differ from other bloggers views, but just for the record, I think a PR of 6 is pretty damn good.
Steven: now that is interesting to hear. I wonder whether it could be related like you say? If you find out, please let me know.
Will | Dec 11, 2007 | Reply
Hmmm, some interesting thoughts… So exactly what does an advertiser get from advertising on a high-PR blog?
Since we’re not even contemplating selling PR, the benefit for an advertiser must be traffic?
If that’s the case, does high PR naturally correlate to high traffic?
I suppose I should also ask you for an indicative ballpark figure that defines ‘top dollar’.
You see, what I’m getting at is that I’ve yet to be convinced that there’s such a direct relationship between PR and SERPs i.e. higher PR pages outranking lower PR pages for the same search term.
With all else equal, SERPS = traffic and that’s what’s on offer, right? Therefore, PR != income!
I’m also weary of placing any dependence upon something as out of my control as PR. Personally, when it comes to making money online, other third party measuring systems such as PR or Alexa are not in my plans.
Why put your eggs in someone else’s basket?
Trent Brownrigg | Dec 11, 2007 | Reply
I knew there would be a lot more blogs stopping the use of “dofollow” after all that Google has done recently to battle it. It sucks that it had to happen, but I think you made the right decision.
Goal Setting College | Dec 11, 2007 | Reply
Hmm… Monika, you mean the comments do follow may cause your PR to be penalized too? What about blogrolls or legitimate sidebar links? I thought it was only applicable for paid text links. Geez, it’s getting out of hand, isn’t it?
Pardon my ignorance and please accept my condolences
Like the way you wrote the RIP piece…
Cheers,
Ellesse
Monika | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
Will: I love your questions as they stimulate my brain into action.
Forgive me when I sound a little tired right now. It is nearly 1 AM and I’ve been writing all day so I’ll try to make some sense here.
I see where you are coming from with your thoughts and to be honest, I wish I could just say stuff this I don’t care. But I can’t because I really do believe that Google is owning the territory here no matter how we look at it.
So the way I see this is that high PR does equal high income and a lot of traffic. It is a natural evolution over time and really does make sense to me.
I think it is great if you can say I don’t care about Alexa, PR and Technorati, but for me these tools are measuring tools that indicate my blogs growth.
Yes, I can also see this according to my comment count, but this isn’t an indication as many new bloggers have a following with a much higher count (interest dependent)
So I guess I’m a ranking slave in some way or another but I really don’t mind! I personally thrive on seeing those numbers increase and it keeps me going, but that’s just me.
In regards to your question about what I define as top dollar that is a hard question to answer. because what is considered top by me might be peanuts for somebody else.
I shall leave this to everybody’s imagination. :-0
Will | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
I also believe that Google commands a lot and will continue to grow along that path. I wouldn’t have become a shareholder, if I didn’t believe that, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to depend on Google solely.
How? Where’s the traffic coming from and why is it arriving? Where is the income coming from? How is having a high PR going to help to bring in either traffic or income?
I’ve done some work in the SEO field and have a number of clients with websites that rank very well for their targeted terms. From these SERPs, my clients use their websites to generate business even though some have very low PR (think <=PR3). In fact, they even rank better than their higher PR competitors for sought after terms.
Time and time again, I’m seeing that traffic, money and rankings don’t always follow PR. For one, I don’t believe Google’s algorithms are that straightforward and then there’s a website’s individual capacity to generate money to consider. How much income is a PR7 website to generate if the webmaster hasn’t monetised it effectively?
Let’s take my own blog as an example. At its peak, more than 6 months ago, it was a PR5. Now, as a PR3 it brings in more traffic and generates more income than it ever has. I can also see that SERPs haven’t been adversely affected by the PR drop and that it still ranks highly for all of the same terms and even some new ones that it didn’t 6 months ago.
Want an example you can see? When I search for ‘click settlement’ in Google.co.uk, my PR1 blog post about the whole incident appears in position 3 above many other higher PR pages including Google’s own official blog post weighing in at PR4.
I’ve nothing against measuring tools, but they should remain just that – tools that measure something without interfering.
Don’t be shy! I was asking for your thoughts on what ‘top dollar’ means so that I can get some context. I sell links across a number of websites and the most each link will cost the advertiser is about $60 (the last time I checked). To me, top dollar links would cost several hundred dollars or whatever the most expensive links are at the likes of TLA.
All I’m trying to say is that I don’t believe that PR is the be all and end all of making money online. I am much more interested in things I have more influence over such as the amount of qualified traffic I can attract.
I don’t believe that people are doing themselves any favours by getting into a mindset that has Google controlling their income.
As all good businesses should have contingency, what will you do if Google do away with toolbar PR or if it stops serving you?
Will | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
Oooh, I can’t edit my comments so I can’t fix the blockquotes I tried to put in!
By the way, I hate debating SEO because I believe it’s such a waste of time.
Also, I think my last comment was the longest I’ve ever made on anyones blog!
Monika | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
Will: Sorry, I guess I have to install a plugin that allows readers to edit their post like comments
Look, I’m happy for you to get such great results with a lower PR and maybe I have to re-think my beliefs in regards to the power of rankings.
I’m in no way a slave to the system as even though I place personal weight on these, I don’t look at them or feel like it is important to my blogging and writing.
As far as I’m concerned I try to write the best possible content that I can and if that gets me ranked higher with those tools, than great.
If I was to loose all my rankings overnight as per your rhetorical question, I would simply keep doing what I do now and find other ways to measure my success.
Personally I feel that an income of $6,000 per blog per month is a fantastic way to become financially independent.
After that – it’s rinse and repeat!
And congrats on your biggest ever comment. I do fell honored in some way and welcome you back any time.
Monika | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
Ellesse: It seems like your comment went forgotten to be answered. My apologies for this, it wasn’t my intentions. Will has kept me on my toes with his last lot of Olympic style comments so I totally forgot about answering yours.
It seems like the do follow plugin is the next victim of “G”. What they say is that by activating our do follow we invite possible unnatural link building activities since bloggers only might comment because they get a link back to their site – never to be seen again.
In practice, this actually does make sense to me, even though this wasn’t my motivation and I never even thought about this in the specified manner.
So looking at it this way, I don’t think blogrolls would be affected, but then I don’t work for Google and I keep learning new things every day.
Goal Setting College | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
No problem Monika
I’ve heard of the theory that there are spammers commenting for the sake of getting a free link but it’s the first time I heard big G penalizing people for activating this plugin. Geez, when will they ever stop? Punishing nice decent people for their selfless action.
Unless they have a proper logarithm for tracking the difference, maybe blogrolls will be next in line… shucks!
Cheers,
Ellesse
Monika | Dec 13, 2007 | Reply
Ellesse: Google hasn’t taken an official stand regarding this latest development as far as I know. I only happened to find out about this potential slap by reading a good friends blog post.
Once I read this I had to say, better be safe than sorry. We’ll see what happens, but I didn’t ant to find out when it was too late.
Goal Setting College | Dec 13, 2007 | Reply
Monika, I agree with you it’s better safe than sorry. Just warned another blogger friend about this!
Cheers,
Ellesse
Vic | Dec 14, 2007 | Reply
Monika you floored me LMAO what a great way to touch the subject. I love your writing style.
Monika | Dec 15, 2007 | Reply
Vic: thank you
I tried to inject some humor into a very serious matter.