Bill Masson 
June 16, 2009, 6:39 am|
I have decided to change my do follow policy for Web-Work At Home and so I have disabled the do follow plugin. This means my blog has now reverted to the default WordPress status. I was disappointed not to get more support or feedback from visitors, but I just had no choice.
These are the reasons why I decided to ditch Do Follow
Spammers
My blog has been overwhelmed with persistent spammers, way above the normal level if there is such a thing.
Freeloaders
One liners and messages of so called support like “Great site, I have bookmarked you” and many others like it. When I had the Do Follow page up you may have noticed that I asked any visitors to retweet the page so as to share the Do Follow message. Unfortunately my message fell on deaf ears, in all there were 4 re tweets over a 4 month period, all of which were my own accounts to get the ball rolling. I mean how long does it take to click retweet? ….. Enough said!
Malware
Other malware sites linking to Web-WorkAtHome, I don’t have many options here apart from tracking down the culprit and asking for my link to be removed. These malware sites are a common way to capture unsuspecting visitors by flashing up warning pop up messages telling the user that their computer is infected. They are then prompted to download an anti virus program which in itself carries Trojans and other nasty viruses that won’t go away until you purchase the anti virus program.
SEO
In case you haven’t noticed my Google PR has dropped by 2 points from PR3 to PR1. I put this down to a mixture of the above. Two of the main culprits were links to malware sites and Do Follow tags which were leaking page rank. It got so bad that I couldn’t even login to my admin without being redirected by the big G. The redirect by Google was to a warning page that my site was linked or associated to certain malware sites. So I had to login to my Webmaster account and request reconsideration, I wrote a lengthy message explaining my situation. As far as Google’s stance on this issue, there policy is to investigate and resolve but gives no guarantee on reply or on their actions. Thankfully I am not getting any more redirects from Google, but the damage has been done.
So in finishing off, my overall my experience with the Do Follow experiment has given me no reason to continue, it’s a hard lesson learnt. I will continue to use comment luv and other plugins like top commentator as they do not impact on the sites PR.
I would love to hear your views on this issue; do you think Do Follow is dead?
It’s ok if you are no longer do follow. Your blog is great and really useful. Thank you!
Yasinta´s last blog ..Coming Home to a Heart
@Yasinta, Thanks for the support Yasinta
Bill Masson´s last blog ..How SEO Myths can mess you up (Free Report)
Me too!
I’ve had every one of the problems you’ve had. I guess that’s why NOFOLLOW was invented in the first place. I don’t mind if people comment on my blog to get people to see their own blog, or get some link juice, but just post something thoughtful, and real. I get so sick of seeing comments where the commentor’s name is a keyword, and the body is something like “great post. You are clearly a professor of words with what you write” or some such nonsense.
Joe Morgan´s last blog ..Donate Used Cars to Charity or Cash for Clunkers?