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Image: jupiterimages.comSometime back, I announced the Site Revamp Project, where I requested you for a small favor:
“While I prepare to revamp this site, it would be great to hear about your expectations. Please provide your valuable suggestions and opinions by submitting comment(s) in the form below.”
Here’s a gentle reminder to let you know that I am still waiting to hear from you. So please do drop in your suggestion(s). 
Meanwhile, since the new site has been taking longer than expected, I thought of making up with a small change to this existing site.
We already have two different types of Top Commentators lists, which reward the All-time Top Commentators as well as Recent Commentators with do-follow links to their sites. I have been thinking of ways to reward regular contributors, but due to some initial design choices I had made, which I’ve talked about earlier, the popular CommentLuv and DoFollow plugins do not work here.
It occurred to me that I could introduce some changes into the core WordPress functionality itself (though not a recommended practice) and provide the dofollow (i.e., no nofollow) functionality. So I made the required tweaks, and I am proud to announce to you that this site is now a Do-Follow resource!
I know that this will arouse a lot of interest from crazy bots and link-building SEO services who would like to misuse this feature to build back-links for their clients’ websites. In an attempt to discourage the much-dreaded $p@m that often follows the enabling of such functionality, I have introduced some tweaks into the do-follow algorithm so as to discourage such misuse.
“Fine Print” of the Do-Follow Functionality
I have programmed it to remove the nofollow attribute for links to websites of only those authors who have 5 or more approved comments till date.
The good news is that comments submitted even before this announcement will be considered. Therefore, if you have 5 or more comments posted on this site, the links to your site are already do-follow as I type this.
I reserve the right to restrict any sites/links that will be harmful to the reputation of this site in the eyes of Google. In case you are affected by any such restrictions, please let me know and we can consider the possibilities.
A big THANK YOU!
All your comments till date are much appreciated, and this is a small token of gratitude for the love you have shown for this site all along, and for your continued support hereafter.
Oh, by the way, don’t forget to drop in your suggestions for the upcoming all-new website for Secrets of Success.
Hi,
Not sure I get all this techy stuff but I want to be able to continue commenting on your blog. Am I ‘in’?
Good luck with creating your new site. I need people to do mine for me – this is all like a new language; I don’t even know the ‘right’ questions to ask. So mine had gotten done using 3 different people – a copywriter, graphic designer and web guy. Now I’m also looking to update and I will be using one guy – a great web person.
Harriet, certainly!
All that this update does is give your website special attention from Google search engine each time you leave a valuable comment on this site. It will help your website get better search engine rankings and help more people find you.
Thanks for the wishes for the new site. I’m a techie myself, and I’m trying to fill in for all those three positions myself for this site that I’m building
Around 50% through already, and I can’t wait to see it go live!
I just learned the difference between “do-follow” and “no-follow” about a week ago, and I must not understand it too well because when I tried to explain it to a non-blogger friend, I stumbled over the simplest follow-up questions. But I’m not really a techie. I’m glad someone else out there is!
It’s good to know a little about this even if you are not a techie. It helps draw a fair amount of attention to your blog. If you do your own blog hopping and commenting, then knowing just a little about this can help you make some choices.
Glad you joined us over the dofollow rainbow!
Comments are valuable dofollow or nofollow, but it is so much nicer to comment and know you are getting that teeny tiny little bit of link juice.
The 5 comment thing just makes sense since the hit-and-run guys and gals who will never come back will not be sucking up that link juice.
That’s a good point, Steve! Not only will the hit-and-run ones *not* get dofollow juice, it will ensure that my regular friends here will get a more valuable share of it!
Wow, this comment box is doing some really weird things so I sure hope this comment goes through.
Glad you joined the ranks of dofollow Mark and as I’ve always told others, it’s your blog and you can have any rules you want here.
Like Steve mentioned, comments are very valuable so by rewarding those legitimate ones with some link juice, that’s a nice gesture. I hope you won’t have too many problems with spam bots but to help with that, I would be sure and get the GASP plug-in. That will cut down on a lot.
Congrats of the change. Good luck on the new site!
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, i use the Akismet plugin and it has saved me a great deal of work by protecting this site from spam all these years. Unfortunately it occasionally catches some valid comments as spam too. Did you have such issues with GASP?
You mentioned that the comment form was doing some weird things for you. Would you mind giving me some details like what is happening and what browser you are using? I’d like to fix any problems.
Cool deal Mark.
I switched my blog back to do follow a few months ago. I haven’t seen much of an increase in spam since the change.
My understanding is that when you make you blog comments do follow then Google and other search directories will index your comments in the search engines.
I have been getting an increase in traffic through search engines since switching back to do-follow.
Take care…
Justin, it’s interesting that you have been seeing an increase in search engine traffic since switching your blog back to do-follow.
I could have understood if it was bloggers who were motivated to comment, but I have my doubts whether search engines would give consideration to that. In fact I fear that passing on the link juice to others may decrease the rank of the site in the eyes of Google (but maybe not).
Could there have been other significant factors that contributed to the increase in search engine traffic for you?