Mon 29 Jun 2009
Custom Link Love For Wordpress Comments Plugin
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)
Recent announcements with the way Google Pagerank flows via nofollow links at Google has bloggers all a flutter. I asked Marty if he could sit down and modify a Wordpress plugin that basically rewarded regular contributers with a link, but removed the actual link from comments from those that haven’t bothered to continue participating on your blog past that first comment.
So Basically;
- Regular commentors will get a dofollow link that passes link love – with this, you really reward regular contributors
- Those with less than say 3 comments will not get a link at all (although you can modify this) but when they do hit 3 comments, hey presto, link love, and with anchor text value!
- Pagerank won’t evaporate through nofollowed links from link droppers because they won’t be links!
You can see it in action on the Hobo seo blog below once comments appear (or on any other post on the hobo site) when you comment. (see it in action on this post)
What does this mean? Well, if we’re to believe Google, this may help increase the amount of pagerank circulating on your site and indeed improve your overall Pagerank score, just by watching who you’re linking to using nofollow.
Download the plugin here – It works on Wordpress 2.8, and should be backward compatible (though clearly no warranties – it’s free – use at your own risk)
As I said, we’re using this plugin just now, so if you want a link on your comment, be sure to participate in the discussion often!
Installation is simple – just install as you would any other plugin, and go to the admin section (Settings > Hobo Link Love) and ensure in the field;
“Keep dofollow off comments less than some number of days old?” – You insert the value ‘0′.
This plugin is based on Lucia’s LInky Love so you MUST UNINSTALL THAT PLUGIN FIRST FOR IT TO WORK (if you have that installed).
This is a BETA release – we’re testing it too Any feedback very welcome
Hobo Marty is going to be making some more plugins – subscribe here for more, or visit Martin’s own site at Martin Gardner.
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Good it is based on Lucia’s, minor edits and good code.
I think you still need to leave the link visible – a pain I know, but links are in some ways part of disclosure.
Also good there is some anchor text… even if I use Andy Beard everywhere
Thanks for the comment Andy
Hi shaun.
I truly appreciate your extremely quick and effective action in this issue!
I’ve downloaded and installed the plugin and it seems to work well. btw I’ve not many comments on my blog but it’s a very smart approach to the new PR flow dynamics and it may be very interesting to many bloggers and SEO specialists.
Just a suggestion: the link should (imho) point to the article where you explain the sense of what this plugin does (or to another more “SEO focused”), otherwise it’s not clear (although still very useful for you..) at the same time it may help to increase the plugin popularity and diffusion..(maybe with a clever anchor text on a long tail of WP plugins sphere )
Thanks!
Andrew – Italy
Nice work Shaun & Andy. It’s interesting to see the different SEO blogs reacting to the nofollow changes and there are some quite creative solutions emerging.
Does the plugin drop a cookie or use the email address to track commenters?
I think it’s email
Andy (4) you need to comment a couple of times more and see it activate 
And the following link dropper is exactly this kind of moron comment that you can sort out with this plugin
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/get-your-free-2009-google -seo-basics-ebook-pdf/#comment-17918
@cinque terre (is everybody in the marketing sphere called Andy?!
) many thanks for the comment – you’re exactly the type of person I would like to see more of on my blog. I’ll look at that link later in the next update 
For now I am happy the plugin does what it says on the tin
Hope you stick around and get your link love
Just a usability thing, if you are automatically adding links to comments for SEO purposes, you really need to also differentiate them from links actually left by commenters.
To have it fully compliant, what you could do is pick up any words, and then add a definitions section at the end of my comment for any terms used, in short form, with a link to somewhere relevant.
I know it is not then within my UGC, but it dosn’t suggest I inserted a link to that page, and it would work even without CSS.
I used to use a similar approach with my disclosure policy plugin (I really should wake that project up again.
Ay yes I get you. That’s an auto linker plugin. I’m actually going to disable that one…. now.
Once again, you’re right, I shouldn’t be autolinking other people’s comments (even when it’s pages within this site) without full disclosure.
Learning every day Andy
What is the bottom line on this – for those who do not understand the above comments?
Not sure what you mean Mark about the emails, but I have done a post to clarify. It will auto publish very shortly.
Basically, instaling this plugin might improve your Pagerank page to page on your site if you run a blog with a lot of comments like me
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/i-guess-we-are-a-dofollow -blog-again/
Neat approach. Just to participate in the “how SEO blogs react to the nofollow changes” survey 4 a free link:
I didn’t change my linking policy “moderate UGC, link out to quality stuff + delete/unlink crap”. Every once in a while I change URIs, for example from a root index page to a blog or another more interesting page on the commenter’s domain, or from a domain I do not want to see linked (not even condomized) from my place to a SERP for this site. As for disclosures, search my comments for ['snip'|insults|missing HREF attributes|...]
Brilliant – I was looking for something like this.
What’s your policy on anchor text value? I usually use Gregor out of politeness, but if I could use some nice rich anchor text without offending anyone then I probably would!
I guess it generally comes down to the content of the comment rather than whether the name has some keywords in it or not?
Mmmmm… that depends Gregor. For instance there’s a guy who does photography in Hampshire that’s left comments on the blog with that anchor text. His profile looks OK and he’s not spamming everybody, he’s a small business and leaving intelligent comments, so I have let that pass.
I guess, like Google, I treat big companies and little companies different too lol – never thought of that, because I would OUT big companies dropping links on this blog.
Generally speaking, (especially now I am passing linkjuice) I would say:
• Brand Name or Nickname
• Company Name
• Personal Name
Thing’s like “SEO company” and things I will change back to the original if I don’t spam it in comments.
In the end though it depends on the comment, commenter, type of site, what side of bed I got out of my bed that morning, colour of socks etc.
I’m a pretty simple guy so if someone leaves a comment on my blog (which is currently nofollow anyway) I treat it as spam if it has any keywords in the name.
Once I install your plugin then I’ll be even more draconian!
The ones that confuse me is when someone leaves a spammy comment, spammy name but no URL!
I don’t think you need to differentiate the commenter’s from the links the two need to work together, I consider any keywords in name spam but other that that all comments are viable
I would be interested in knowing how it works – if it works – with IntenseDebate.
No Idea David
Sweet, so what is different from Lucia? Can you give me some detailed info on the difference (because I am lazy and don’t want to look at the code
)
I will blog about it and help “spread the love”
Thanks,
Sorry, one more question? What about CommentLuv? Does this make those links nofollow also?
@Jim Gaudet Only minor edits to Lucia in fact. I’m going to add a proper install .txt to it with changelog
Don’t know… yet. Working on V2 now anyway with some neat other stuff
Sweet, thanks. I setup your plugin and am using it now, thanks.. Looking forward to v2 already, hmm is that weird?
Anyway, I wrote a blog post about it as I should for any free plugin that I use.
Thanks again,
Hi Shaun,
Interesting solution you have here. I used to have the Linky Love plugin installed, and set it to after five comments or so, but I made the mistake of publishing a blog post about it.
Afterwards, spam commenters left five crappy statements then disappeared.
My solution is to be more vigilant about what I approve. The one you let through (linked to in your above comment) for instance, using the name “spyware removal tool” or something similar — I’d just delete it. Letting it through once means for me it’ll be automatic the next time i.e. no moderation, and you never know how many times they’ll return with spam.
Great idea, I am going to download and test this out.
Btw, I wanted to request a feature too. What about adding an option to keep nofollowing links AND remove links from commenters with less than X posts?
This is for people who don’t wanna risk linking to spammers who will eventually post many comments.
Hey Daniel how are you
I’ve been on your site a lot in the past – good stuff on there! (eveybody should check it out – Daily Blog Tips.)
That’s a good idea, although I am going to war on Nofollow on this blog anyway – i hate it. A post coming up. I’m planning on updating the plugin – I’m running an updated version at the mo which removes nofollow from just about everything…. including tracbacks. As I moderate ruthlessly, I don’t think I need to worry about linking to spam.
I’ll let you know how it works out
Shaun, your plugin essentially rewards commenters you want to reward and removes the URL link from those you don’t want to link to right?
The great thing about wordpress from the developers perspective is that they have an army of folks out there coming up with and implementing ideas to improve wordpress. This is one of those things that should be core functionality like page order and link order.
Those guys missed so much out!! Ha ha!
Glad you like the site Shaun.
I will keep an eye for future updates of the plugin then.
Keep up the good work.
Hey Shaun I like the plugin and it’s progression from where it was originally. NoFollow does seem to be a thorn in everybody’s side and it’s a band-aid on a bigger problem.
I just installed the plugin and am going to test it as before I simply dofollowed everything and just kept an eye on moderating all comments. I don’t get a lot as I don’t blog much but I do consult and develop a lot of blogs for clients and I need to always be bringing my A-game.
Question: When updates come out… will the wp-admin panel show an update or it won’t because you don’t have this in the wp/extend site yet?
Thanks for the work!
shaun, thanks for the plugin. its obvious we can still sculpt PR, you just won’t use nofollow with this purpose anymore. whats next? a plugin that automatically places all links you’d ordinarily nofollow inside a blocked iframe? this is only going to get more and more interesting.
Hi Guys
Thanks for the plugin. I intend to install it this evening when I get home although I am, fairly new to blogging so may take some time to come in to use.
I work for a small internet company and am sort of the SEO guy or at least trying to be. Your site is one of a couple of “first ports of call” places I am going to. There is so much information out there about SEO its rather mind blowing but it is refreshing to find a place like this.
Keep up the good work.
Steve
I am glad that this plugin was made. I had been thinking about doing the same thing myself for about 2 months now. Reward multiple commenters with dofollow link. I was thinking about having a database of urls that come from sites that leave good comments on blogs and use this list as a guideline to who gets a dofollow link. Basically it was going to work if you post 3 comments on one blog that has the plugin and then you post on another blog that has the plugin then you get a dofollow link because you have been trusted on a site that uses the plugin..
but I like this plugin. Its similar and less hassle. and I also don’t have to code mine anymore. You are welcome to integrate my idea of a large collection of worthy urls into the plugin if you wish.
Please add the provision of excluding more than one username to switch off their dofollow.
Also even after checking option to display comment count, it is not being displayed. Check here: http://nspeaks.com/348/google-chrome-on-windows-20002k-works-with-my-m ethod/
I will look into this Navjot, thanks for the feedback