Comments that SUCK!
If you read the Bloke regularly you might get the impression that he is biased towards the New Blogger. Oh contraire mon chere! The Bloke tells it like it is and I have often slammed Google’s Blogger when it is deserved, and this post is no exception.
Many of us take a great deal of time and effort to make our blogs look original and stand out from the crowd so as not to look like Blogger’s canned templates. But Blogger relinquishes control of the code only so far.
So why do Blogger’s Comments suck?
1. No Inline Comments:Blogger still imposes pop-ups on us, or a dumb looking page that can’t be modified to look like our blog.
2. The No Follow Rule:
Have you ever looked at the source code for Blogger’s comments? If you haven’t then do yourself a favor and be enlightened.
Despite the fact that I removed all nofollow inferences (rel=”nofollow“) in my template, Blogger still automatically inserts the attribute into comment links.
But it’s not just Blogger either. Wordpress does the same thing, but at least there are plugins available that can strip the nofollow attribute out.
Now I know why Blogger won’t implement inline comments. Because they control the code and it’s easier for them to impose their no follow rule on us.
(For those of you who don’t know, the nofollow attribute tells the search engines to NOT follow the link. Hence, you don’t get any link love and subsequent pagerank value.)
Talk about control-freaks!
Ok, I understand that Blogger was inundated with spam blogs (splogs) but is that an excuse to penalize the rest of us? Shouldn’t we have the right to choose for ourselves? We’re big boys and girls. Read this excellent article which explains why imposing the nofollow attribute is WRONG:
I especially like the part:
2. “If a blogger moderates comments, there is no need for a NoFollow attribute. “Everyone who passes a human inspection should get the link love.”8. Commenting on a blog post is the same as adding more relevant to that blog post. A thought provoking one sentence post can lead to pages of comments. If someone takes the time to help build your site’s content via posting comments, it is professional courtesy to give them some link love.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
And so my fellow bloggers, be sure to write a post about this nonsense. Write to Blogger, your congressman or even to your granny and tell Blogger to stop imposing its will on us and let there be link love.
Related posts: The Importance of Linking
Filed under: Blog SEO, Blog Tips, Blogger, Misguided, Search Engine
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Uh oh. I removed the “nofollow” from my templates, and then wrote that I did so in my “comments policy.”
Does this mean that I’m misrepresenting what I’ve done?
Is there an easy way to check that I’m not lying when I tell people I’ve removed the “nofollow” tags?
This is annoying. Grrr.
Thank you, Instabloke, for keeping us informed about this.
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I said the same thing in another post when I thought that I had gotten rid of it. But unfortunately just removing it from the template doesn’t affect the comments because Blogger still controls that part of the code.
There is nothing wrong with saying you removed it from your template, and how that affects comments is out of your control. I haven’t read your policy so I can’t comment, but if you think it’s important enough to edit then I guess that would be up to you.
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This may sound funny, but the thing I found most annoying by blogger comments is that they don’t have their tab indexes set properly for the form when you select ‘other’.
Enter comment, then tab and it goes to your name, tab again and it goes back to the comment. It requires me to mouse-click back to the URL field and then click the submit.
It’s been like this for over a year!
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I never noticed that before. No wonder my right index finger is so sore!
Great to have you back again Doug!
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“And so my fellow bloggers, be sure to write a post about this nonsense. Write to Blogger, your congressman or even to your granny and tell Blogger to stop imposing its will on us and let there be link love.”
…and then install WordPress
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I knew that bashing Blogger would smoke out the Wordpress fanatics
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Well, as long as we’re writing to Congress, Blogger, and Granny, we might as well mention that it would be nice to be able to EDIT comments, not just DELETE them.
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Good point! I can’t believe I missed that one.
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I am generally avoiding commenting on Blogger blogs at the moment because I end up with a half size windown in Polish so I can’t even proof what I am typing correctly unless I reduce the window to be showing text 4 pixels high.
The links that count are those on your permalink, not those in the stupid comment entry window.
Your blog is correctly a “dofollow” blog with followable links on the permalink page, which is the page that matters.
It doesn’t matter about links on the popup form page
Then again you are not going to get any benefit from it at all as a Blogger user if you comment using your Blogger ID
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Looking at the source code for this page I’m seeing lots of nofollow attributes. Nevertheless I agree with respect to using Blogger ID is not a good idea, but thankfully they have provided an option (”other”) to use our own URL. Thanks for dropping by Andy and putting up with the Polish windows.
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I agree the incomplete pop up commenting window is very annoying. I use a Firefox extension that allows me to right click in the pop up window and choose to ‘open in duplicate window’ - the new window is full size.
I left a comment in reply to your comment on my nofollow post on ‘Blog Blond’ regarding using Haloscan (www.haloscan.com) for Blogger comments. I wondered if you had any opinion about using this method?
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Please ignore the question about Haloscan as I just read your post ‘Trackback is Making a Comeback’, explaining why you stopped using it for commenting - because of the time limit on how long the comments remain there.
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Sublimely, I forgot to mention that your post was very thorough and well done.
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BTW, all you have to do is click the ‘Maximize’ button (the little square in the top right-hand corner of the pop-up window) to make it open up. This works with all browsers.
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You are looking at the comment link, not the permalink. When you click a comment link, it oprns a popul with nofollow links. That is just a form, it doesn’t matter if the links are followed.
What matters are the links on a permalink page
http://www.Blog Bloke.com/2007/06/blogger-comments-inline-wordpress.html
That page does not have nofollow on the comments.
Regarding haloscan, do no use it for comments, at least if you want to have the possiblility to move to another platform, or want to be part of the dofollow community. Haloscan comments are not “dofollow” from your domain.
The window is fixed width, maximised at aorund 4500 pixels wide. It is a pain to use.
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Hi Andy. Welcome back. I think we’re talking oranges and mandarins here. What you refer to as the permalink page, Blogger calls the post page. And that’s what I’m talking about.
I agree with respect to Haloscan and I wouldn’t use it for other reasons as well. I do however use it for trackback which is better than nothing.
Sorry about the small window but I have no control over that. You can however maximize it and make it easier to use. Thanks again for the comments.
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Fascinating info and commentaries. I learned a lot, but I’m still confused!
So should I start commenting as anonymous?
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Beats me
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I am so confused. It seems like the Bloke is telling us it does nothing to change the nofollow, since comments will stay nofollow, but then others (Andy for example) are saying it works? Can you clarify?
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Hi Jewel. Join the crowd.
Removing the “nofollow” attributes from your template is a good idea so you should go ahead and do it.
All I was saying is that after removing it from my template I can still see at least one “NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW” attribute in the source code for this post page that Blogger has stuck in there despite my efforts to remove it.
How that impacts overall is anybody’s guess at this time.
Nevertheless, like I said it is still a good idea to remove the attribute from your template.
I believe what Andy was saying is the pop-up comment page also shows nofollow attributes but we need not worry about that because it is Blogger’s page and separate from our blog. I agree with that opinion.
I hope this helps clarify the confusion.
…BB
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Hi BB,
Looks like we’re still fighting this war aren’t we?? ha ha ha
Everyone wants to know the answer, does it work or not? Totally agree with you guys, BB and Andy.
The best thing to do here is just remove them and then… just pray it works
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Kinda like Windows Plug and “Pray” don’t you think
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The only NEW feature that Blogger has now - you can have all comments right under every post instead of the dumb pop-up window for comments (I hate that pop-up too!)
I still prefer self-hosted wordpress blogs. They really stand out!
kellys last blog post…One Human Trait often Overlooked as a “Online Success Ingredient” (Part 2)
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Great article. Nice blog. Keep it coming. Mike
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