WebmasterWorld Nofollow

4th May 2007

posted in Plug-ins |

Basis

It’s been well documented that I support the use of nofollow on sites that use nofollow exclusively for their external links, such as wikepedia. However there are sites that even go a step further and don’t even allow links. WebmasterWorld is one of them. While they may have very legitimate reasons, such as not wanting to get spammed, to avoid conflict, or reduce noise, etc. I feel it unfair to use them as a reference in posts when I know that they won’t reciprocate to the many contributers on the site. I should also add my editorial comment that their ban on even mentioning specific sites cripples their help forums to the point of near uselessness, with all of the “in my sector” and “I’ve seen in my niche” posts that can’t be used for anything other than pure conjecture.

By use of the nofollow tag I am still sending them traffic, which is above and beyond their policy, but not influencing the search engines with a positive vote for the site. I know I’ll catch some heat from SEO’s who love WebmasterWorld, and I use it often for technical reference, but as I said at least I am sending them traffic.

Solution

For a while I was adding rel=”nofollow” by hand, but that got to be a pain, and I’d forget sometimes. So I developed a Wordpress plug-in that does it for me automatically, in posts and comments. Feel free to use and distribute the plug-in. It’s easy to install, and requires no further action on your part.
Install

Download the file.
Unzip the file.
Upload to your plugins folder.
Activate plugin.

Options

If you’d like to want external links to open in a new window change line 49 which is by default $txfx_iel_use_target_blank = false; to $txfx_iel_use_target_blank =true;
If you don’t want this plug-in to work on comments, then delete line 94:
add_filter(’comment_text’, ‘wp_wmw_nofollow’, 999);

Acknowledgements

I just modified the Wikipedia nofollow plug-in by Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson, which was based on Identify External Links by Mark Jaquith.

If you liked this post please buy me a beer. Thanks.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Plug-ins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. All comments are subject to my NoFollow policy. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

On May 4th, 2007, Sebastian said:

Well, don’t get me on a rant on nofollow … that would exceed the capacity of the text area. I’m not following the Old Testament approach, so I still link to WikiPedia w/o condom because due to the trillions of links I’ve sneakily inserted it’s a great resource.

WebmasterWorld is different but equal.
Equal because it *is* a great resource. I’m not paying the tiny fee for the Google forum (which is on my ignore list), I’m not actually paying to access the supporters forum, I’m paying because thanks to Google I can find technical assistance from WMW users when I need it.
Different, because the linking policy is plain retarded. When I’ve the whole answer to a question on one of my sites I can’t reference it because that’s not conform to the TOS. When I want to investigate something I’ve to sticky the questioner. I can’t discuss adult themes. And so on.
However, regardless the noise I consider WMW signals good vibrations. That’s why I link to WMW w/o condom. Because it’s worth my support.

On May 4th, 2007, JLH said:

I don’t completely disagree, just slightly, it’s my form of protest. Not that I expect anything to change, it was instituted before nofollow was a twinkle in Matt Cutts eye. I think they’ll survive without my links credit just fine, just like I’ll survive without theres.

I have noticed though that the questions have gotten dumber and dumber lately. That Tedster in the Google forum must have the patience of a saint, because he just calmly answers the same benign questions over and over…Must be one heck of a nice guy.

Tedster is indeed a fucking nice guy. If I were him I’d have unlinked the whole Google forum folder years ago. The world needs that patient guys, but hopefully old farts like me w/ a zero-BS-tolerance have a right to exist too I couldn’t post there, each and every word would be against the TOS.

On May 5th, 2007, Craig said:

Come on Sebastian!!!

You have the patience of a Saint,

compared to me.

I must just be strange but I’ve never really come across a question I had for which I found an answer on WMW but then again since all the questions I have are fairly low level, for which links to exemplary problems and then to code for answers are usually needed, I can now see why.

I never knew WMW had the ToS they have but then again, I’ve never really had a reason to find out as none of my searches for answers to questions I have had have ever directed me there.

But I have to say, now that I know, no links allowed to web sites on a web site about web sites? Something just plain feels wrong about that.

On May 6th, 2007, dockarl said:

Wow - you got picked up by the weblog tools collection - there’s a nice PR7 link right there

On May 7th, 2007, Caroline said:

I wonder if anybody had any idea that the nofollow link would evolve into a political tool. It’s given us the online equivalent of a subtle slap. I have to say it’s made the web more interesting

Caroline

On May 7th, 2007, JohnMu said:

How about a plugin that lets you list the sites that you want to nofollow to? I’m sure everyone has their favorite sites that they link to but do not want to pass value to. We could even share “nofollow-lists” :-).

On May 7th, 2007, JLH said:

I’ve been working on just such a plugin, plus a lot of other options. Sort of the ultimate in comment moderation and the use of nofollow responsibly.

On May 8th, 2007, azrin said:

can your plugin be utilised only for ’stale’ external links, example after 90days and not no-follow our own inhouse links,

(replace ‘

On July 22nd, 2007, SEO said:

yeah…
wonder what happen if we all use nofollow?

Have a good one.

On February 22nd, 2008, Brett Tabke said:

I can sympathize with the point of view. I really can. We do have some policies that appear harsh to new folks (or new to webmasterworld folks). On the other hand, I don’t think it is necc a normal community site.

> WebmasterWorld is one of them.

We certainly do. Just in the last 24 hours, we have sent out 21,000 offsite clicks through links in posts. Over 400,000 off site clicks in January 2008.

> have very legitimate reasons,
> such as not wanting to get spammed,

True.

> to avoid conflict,

How would not linking avoid conflicts? What type of conflict?

> or reduce noise, etc.

By all means. Just because billy-joe-jim-bob started a blog on blogger, sure doesn’t mean anyone in the community wants to hear about it. There is a blog and a blog spammer born every day

> I feel it unfair to use them as a reference in posts
> when I know that they won’t reciprocate to the many
> contributers on the site.

We sure do. The only place on the site that passes link juice is via contributors profiles. Which no other site on the web can say. I know two people who have pr7’s based on nothing other than their own WebmasterWorld homepage profile link.

> I should also add my editorial comment that
> their ban on even mentioning specific sites

Depends on what specific sites it is you are referencing. There are a few types of sites we specifically look out for:

- There have been known spammers that have come in and repeatedly attempted to build there own sites by poaching traffic via whisper campaigns or pure spamming.
- The “example brigade”. Many of the paid blog postings and marketers have been taught the, “ask the example” process where they spam forums by asking example questions that point to specific sites. They also use this as whisper campaigns.
- The “example” to get it in front of Google post. We have so many from google that read the forums. Folks know it, and often use us as the conduit to get to Google.

The example one has been the toughest for us. Innocent folks that don’t know about such tactics come in to get help with their issue and point to a site that ends up getting clipped as “example spam”. I totally sympathize with these folks, but given the nature of the pay for posting spammers, it is difficult.

Lastly, realize that we are not a site that is based upon advertising revenue. That really does change the way you promote and build a site.

> By use of the nofollow tag

Which use on all our off site urls within posts.

> I am still sending them traffic,
> which is above and beyond their policy,
> but not influencing the search engines
> with a positive vote for the site.

There has been alot of discussion recently in the communities to see if that is really the case.

> I know I’ll catch some heat from SEO’s who love WebmasterWorld

ah heck - most seo’s love a good discussion/debate - even when it is something they are passionate about. I think you presented mostly in a cool manner.

Did you know there are services now that will “spam” forums and communities for you? They will run an entire campaign for you across multiple sites and communities to put your product or service in front of them. Grass roots - word of mouth marketing words.

I think our biggest mistake is not to do more to educate folks on how much of this type of spamming is going on around the web.

Brett

On February 22nd, 2008, Craig said:

Doesn’t WMW have moderators? Every forum I have ever operated or have been involved in as more than just a member had moderators, as well as ordinary long term members that were able to keep on top of spam posted by any means, automated or not.

As for automated spam, that shouldn’t even be an issue because a forum that has as a possibility the creation of accounts via automated methods has bigger problems than just spam.

On the other hand, on the Google Webmaster Help forum, people do try to blatantly spam the forum but not only are links nofollowed but due to the replies regular posters make in the threads started out as spam, I don’t know that I would risk spamming there only to have the site I was spamming links to showing up in Google searches for basically being lower than a snakes belly in a wheel rut.

Besides, sometimes the spam threads are more entertaining than just about any other kind of thread out there! :-()

Same thing goes for the “example spam” type. At the GWMH forum, people are actually encouraged to post links to problematic sites so that people can take a real look at what might be going on. But anyone that posts a link there runs the risk of the thread they are asking questions about their site in showing up in searches related to their site. In effect, the fact that threads and posts are indexed and show up in searches so quickly becomes a deterrent for someone who might have ideas of spamming on their mind and would just end up with their site showing up in Google searches in a bad light.

But, if you want to keep it such that one can only tell the Doctor, “It hurts when I do this.” and the Doctor having no clue what “this” is or even where “this” is, can only reply, “Then don’t do ‘that’.” and continue to basically preclude the ability of there to be any real help given, the way you are going about it works perfectly.

“Where there is a will, there is a way.”

Craig

On February 23rd, 2008, Brett Tabke said:

> keeep on top of spam posted by any means, automated or not.

Ya, we’ve had 1 automated attack in 10 years. That’s not an issue and I consider that a security issue and not a spam issue.

What are an issue is these types of spam:

- “Hey, my site has problem x too”.

With “site” linked to their site.

- “My site dropped off the top page at Google when I did XYZ”.
- “Check search “zeta” for the problem. (gosh, funny the persons site comes up #1).

Whisper Campaigns:

- “I am looking for wonder widget X, has anyone used it”?
- “What do you think about widget x”?
- “I used wonder widget A to fix problem Z”.
- “I fixed that problem by using wonder widget Z”

With just a mention of wonder widget. They will do that 10-100 times in the forums under multiple nicks. Most often it is never linked to any site. Many services have nicks with hundreds of posts counts going back years. We have found 3 such professional campaigns in the forums over the years.

Most often though, whisper campaigns are by knowledgable affiliates creating profile based traffic. People like their posts and click through to the posters site.

> Besides, sometimes the spam threads

hehe. Yes. We had a debate a few years ago about publishing all the spam (like 40k messages in 10 years).

On February 24th, 2008, Craig said:

“I consider that a security issue and not a spam issue.”

Definitely agreed.

“What are an issue is these types of spam:”

Also agreed, but protection from these types of spam at what cost?

How many webmasters could receive real help in comparison with the few that might try to slip one by?

On that note, more often than not, people who bring up their favorite “wonder widget” in the GWMH forum usually get their “wonder widget” ripped a new one. Not too many people would care to have their work, no matter how useless, ripped to shreds on such a forum.

Similarly, people who reference their own sites/blogs for contributions to a discussion run the same risks, if it isn’t a legitimate contribution, it ends up going the way of “BizyCrap”. (inside joke)

On the other hand, contrast the Google Webmaster Help forum with the Google Adsense Help forum. If you want to see some of the best MFA blogs on how to make millions on Adsense, just check some of the regular posters’ spametures in the Adsense forum, and that is after a supposed “clean-up”.

In both cases though, it comes down to depending on the people involved, both “staff” and regular members, as to what is allowed to “fly” or not.

“We had a debate a few years ago about publishing all the spam”

That would rock! I’d buy a subscription to WMW just for that alone! :-()

Craig

On February 24th, 2008, Brett Tabke said:

> but protection from these types of spam at what cost?

When the system works as it should, the process should be:

- joe SEO comes into a forum and asks about “http://www.foo.com”.
- moderator drops them a note to “please use an example and here is why”…

All is well at that point with a nice interaction with the poster and the moderator.

When the system works well, it keeps the forums pretty clean. I think we have one of the cleanest and most professional quality message bases on the web.

When it doesn’t work well, then often part b of that scenario is ineffective. Either the ball is dropped, the guy never sees the PM, or the explanation doesn’t resonate with the poster. I would imagine that is what happened in this case and actually prompted the original post here. Is that what happened?

fuzzy little gray line.

The big problem is trying to set some policy that works to keep things clean. Trying to find a line between:

- pure spam. drive by: “Dudes, get your Viagra at GWMH.com”!
- whisper, “hey, anyone use GWMH forums” or “I see the same at GWMH”.
- recommendation, “I think GWMH is the best hair spray on the market”. (and they are the manufacturer or an affiliate).
- self promotion, “I just posted a new article about this one my http…blog”. (and they own the blog).
- example, “hey, what’s wrong with the css on GWMH”? (and they just want you to look at their site).
- search, “just try a search for GWMH”. (and they own the first or second result).
- competitor, “just try a search for GWMH”. (and there is spam in the first result).
- noise factor, they post enough - often junk - just to create a profile for themselves.

For everyone of those, we can find some sort of exception to bust a hole through any posting policy. Trying to find a line that the community can live with has been difficult. It has been a freaking moving target all these years. Clearly (by nature of this very thread), we fail at it sometimes. Every time we try to open things up and let drops go, someone comes along and blows a hole through the policy or just flat challenges us on it with some indefensible example. I think we belong to one of the most creative communities out there - there are a smart bunch of folk in seo and webmastery.

> people who bring up their favorite “wonder widget”
> in the GWMH forum usually get their “wonder widget”
> ripped a new one.

That is a perfect example of how a professional whisper campaign works. From that whisper drop of GWMH (obviously innocent in this case…I know) you can go down two roads:

- another guy comes along and asks “what’s gmwh”…and off you go on that tangent to talk about it. Just talk - not promote.
- you continue to reference GMWH groups to build name brand recognition in other threads.

We had a case about 4 years ago that was a classic. We didn’t even know it had happened in the forums until about a year later. A widget owner had made over 100 “whisper” drops or recommend mentions in the fourms. All of those are unlinked and never pointed to a domain. The four posters involved had over 500 posts in the forums (eg: they built up legitimacy before starting). We discovered a year later, that this (now successful) product, was only launched in the forums. That was the only marketing they did. It was such a great campaign, that 60+ proWebmaster moderators had missed until the widget owner talked about it in a presentation. I think the bottom line on that is that real good forum marketers don’t spam - they insinuate and quietly work word-of-mouth sources.

Can you write a workable set of guidelines?

On February 24th, 2008, tedster said:

There’s another aspect to the WebmasterWorld policies that hasn’t been touched on much so far, so I thought I’d offer some input. In fact, the two forums I directly moderate (HTML/Browsers and Google Search) have even stricter policies in their Charter than WebmasterWorld has in its umbrella Terms of Service.

The idea is this: how do you build a knowledge base? Not just help one person resolve a problem, but build up some accumlated wisdom for many others to use?

If you link out to examples of problems, then you’ve lost a lot of control. The link can go 404, or the problem it illustrates can be fixed. Then future readers of that thread can be left with not very much help.

So explaining an issue in words and code snippets keeps the knowledge IN THE THREAD, and always available for reading in the future and updating by moderators as needed. What you end up with does become a knowledge base.

This is not so good for the person who just wants someone to hand them a fix. But for the person who is willing to go the extra mile and think through their problem rather than just post a quick link and say “Help”, several benefits can materialize:

1. Critical analysis skills can grow
2. Technical vocabulary improves
3. Complex issues are clarified faster in the thread
4. Because of 1-3, the post can attract more help from busy but knowledgeable members

WebmasterWorld is not a good place to get someone to do your work for you. But it is a great place to learn how you can do your own work more effectively.

Regarding Brett Tabke’s latest reply, most of what I might reply would revolve around three points. Much of what you mention should and could be dealt with by either moderators or “report this thread” functionality. The second point, something can be made so “clean” that it is infertile. Third, if it takes a year to figure out something happened and at that, one has to be told it happened, how much “damage” was done and during that year, how much good was contributed?

In reply to Tedster, your points sound reasonable until one considers that even if one does list the URL of their site, discussions about the problems still must include specific mention of what the problems are so even if they are fixed on site, the listing of the problems in the thread still remain.

Also, do you like playing 20 questions? I know I don’t. If I have to guess at all the possible problems that might exist, I’d more than likely just shove them in the direction of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and say, figure it out for yourself.

Beyond that, while we are playing 20 questions, I have to assume the one with the problem is asking objectively, which is virtually guaranteed they are not and more importantly, can not.

I have a question for you, how do you prevent the polluting of discussions about issues sites may have when all there can be is self reporting?

You get enough people to “recognize” that they have a -30/60/90/950/”flavor of the week” penalty and et Viola, a living breathing disease has been created.

No one has any solution, no one can even agree on possible issues involved and in fact quite the opposite, most threads of that ilk have so many competing and contradictory indicators that someone should be able to figure out that something isn’t quite right with the “penalty” hypothesis but after how many pages does that actually happen, if it does indeed happen at all?

That wouldn’t be so bad but when you have a large number of people reporting the same “exact” thing one ends up with so much weight, most of which is nothing but vapor, behind the “penalty” that no amount of explanations to the contrary, including pointing out exactly what is causing the problem for a given site, can dissuade someone from the “fact” that Google is penalizing them and that is that, they are being penalized and it is up to Google to remove the penalty.

Put another way, I’m frankly tired of people coming to GWMH from WMW because they are sure they have the “flavor of the week” penalty and half the thread being taken up with them insisting it is an unearned penalty because no one at WMW could come up with consistent indicators. How many -30/60/90/950/”phase of the moon” penalty sites have solved their problems due to discussions at WMW?

Maybe GWMH should restrict any mention of WMW or anything discussed there.

Beyond that, in every profession I have ever worked in, trying to solve problems based only on self-reporting of a client rarely helped lead to solutions. More often than not, one has to actually go to where the problem is and view it first hand, running whatever tests one determines to be necessary and analyzing the results before one can get very far. How many and what kind of SEO’s would accept a job that is working on a site, sight unseen?

We will probably have to agree to disagree but all of the arguments for such tight restrictions seem too much like rationalizations more so than they do practical requirements. But, since one can choose what forum one wishes to participate it, no one is forcing anyone to use WMW and there are a number of other options with a more relaxed rule set so you are of course free to administer WMW as you wish.

But as for this discussion, JLH made a comment regarding his opinion of the usefulness of the WMW for help, which I share although not for all the same reasons, and then you and Brett voiced your opinions / points of view but you have to realize they are unlikely to change our opinions, or at least mine, because we see the latent “market” precluded by such strict restrictions. In other words, we see more relaxed conditions working for other forums of the same caliber so we wonder why WMW can’t make it work also.

On February 24th, 2008, Gregg (aka: lorax) said:

>> Much of what you mention should and could be dealt with by either moderators or “report this thread” functionality

Oiy! I work hard enough! As a moderator of WMW (Ecommerce), and an owner of a small business, and a single parent, I find this amusing. I’m sorry but I do. The level of knowledge, experience, and maturity required to moderate a forum, let alone sniff out a whisper campaign, is not easily found! This whole thread makes it sound like identifying miscreants and handling them and their numerous ways of gaming the system is as simple as reading a few posts in a single thread. I think we all know it is not.

It takes a significant amount of time to research a member and get a handle on them. This is something a volunteer moderator has to make time for. I have a business to run and family to tend to. My priorities lay outside of the Board. Doing this level of work is often very time consuming and I find myself at the crossroads of do I research this or do I do billable work?

You may criticize WMW for how it chooses to guide it’s membership. It is your right to do so. But please don’t make the assumption that all moderators (on any board) are part of a well oiled machine that has roles and assignments and completes them on demand. Brett may give us guidelines to work with but we do take a significant amount of our own time to read, think, and respond. We are mostly volunteers and do our best to help out.

On February 25th, 2008, Neil Marshall said:

>because we see the latent “market” precluded by such strict restrictions.

Forgive me, but, what do you mean by “latent market” and what “latent market” is being precluded?

On February 25th, 2008, Craig said:

“This whole thread makes it sound like identifying miscreants and handling them and their numerous ways of gaming the system is as simple as reading a few posts in a single thread. I think we all know it is not.”

That might be one way to read it. Another way might be that identifying miscreants and etc is part of the job. Basically, it means monitoring every active thread or, delegating it to people who can be trusted to share, or at least understand the viewpoint of what goes and what doesn’t.

True, it ain’t easy but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done in any event.

But, the level of effort one needs to put into it primarily depends on the services and levels of services that one is willing to provide.

It’s much easier to deal with things in a more controlled condition but there are things, obviously or we wouldn’t be talking, that can’t and don’t happen in such a state.

I think we can all agree that although there those who would try to take advantage of any chance given, there are also those would benefit honestly from such a chance.

By preventing the one side, the other side is inhibited.

But again, that is a choice that one makes.

Personally, considering the reputation that WMW has, I find it hard to believe that you would have as much problem now, as in the past. You guys do run a consistent ship, I’ll give you that, and I think it is that consistency that would allow more leeway to be given.

From Neil - “Forgive me, but, what do you mean by “latent market” and what “latent market” is being precluded?”

As I was mentioning in my reply to Gregg, if a give functionality can be used for both good and bad and the bad is prevented from happening simply by removing the functionality, the good is then precluded.

That issue becomes important if one asks oneself whether or not there exist people in situations who might be able to benefit from being able to post the URL to their site when asking a question.

One can hardly disagree that such people exist.

In the end, if one prevents the bad use of a tool by removing the tool itself, one also removes the good use of the tool.

The final question is though, does a given “tool” happen to fit within the services you are willing to provide. That’s basically it.

On February 26th, 2008, John Honeck "JLH" said:

Thanks to all involved for the great discussion.

By the way, the plug-in that started this whole thing, is broken as far as I can tell. I’ll add it to the list of things to get fixed, it’s about #1,345,339 right now.

WMW has great value with regards to specific issues such as programming. As much as I respect Tedster and value his opinion, I cannot visit the Google forum anymore. Just too much bad information there. He’s got incredible patience and sets the record straight with diplomacy I could never muster up.

I’ve seen way too many of those “Totally white-hat authority in my niche and hand coded” sites that got unfairly smacked in WMW only to find out later that its nothing but a piece of crap thin affiliate travel site with 150 navigation links on the left side going to “Cheap travel deals in [town,state]” and about 9000 pages on the site with nothing but a URL with the name of town, maybe an H1, and a javascript flight selector affiliate junk.

I’ve also seen many of thread started about how they got smacked for something benign (like changing meta tags) only to later learn that the actual site has 86 links to it and 85 of them are from free-web-directory-for-seos.com type sites. In an open forum people like that get sniffed out in one or two posts.

Take for example the -950 stuff, none of Tedsters observations could have been accurately been made without some private messages and actually looking at real sites. Now, I’ll take Tedsters word on it, but the other are probably suffering from MSSA penalties more than anything.

That being said, back to nofollow. I see that the profiles have links now, guess I never really paid attention to that. I do still object to linking to WMW as an authority based on the no linking policy, for the same reason I won’t link to wikipedia which doesn’t credit it’s sources either. No document of any authority has ever been written without reference to supporting documents, even Einstein had text books. To acknowledge a source without references is adding credence to it and encouraging that behavior.

Now I’m not saying WMW is a textbook or even a periodical since it’s manned by un-paid volunteers to there is no one to hold responsible for the editing, but in this industry it is held as an authority based on the reputation of a few. Granted Tedster and Brett are indeed industry experts, I’ll stipulate to that, but when anyone can post information on a forum that information sometimes inherits the authority of the forum, which is wrong. With back up information and references (links) more of that content could be considered authoritative. Is it fair that I’ve thrown all of the content into the same basket? Not really, but then again it isn’t quite fair for WMW to treat even its most prolific members as common spammers and deny them using links.

I’d imagine that the members I just referenced are not even asking to link and it’s really a non-issue, which is fine, it is a private site and can be run anyway you’d like. It’s just not for me. Though I did get a kick out of all all the “I got banned from Adsense” threads when I used to read it.

I felt like coming to WMWs defense when I saw that Matt Cutts confirmed the -6/+5 thingy on ANOTHER SITE, that just seemed like a slap in the face to me. You guys do all the work and other sites get the glory, but then again whoever said Google was fair? Not evil, but they’ve never made any attempt to claim fairness. In the end, I didn’t say much because after a while you just realize you can’t fight city hall.

Once again, thanks to all of the rock stars of webmastering for commenting here.

JLH Design Blog

WebmasterWorld Nofollow

WebmasterWorld Nofollow

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