Article written

  • on 24.11.2008
  • at 11:18 AM
  • by David

Article tags

category: blogging, plugin, web 2.0, wordpress

Disqus Gives Spammers A DoFollow Thanksgiving Feast Comments

Nov24
SIERRA MADRE, CA - MAY 29: Seventieth anniver...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I am a big fan of the Disqus commenting system, I’ve found it to be a great addition to my blog as well as a wonderful personal tool to use on other’s blogs.  I’ve had few problems and with commenting syncing now in place on the Wordpress plug-in, I’ve had very few change requests until now.  There has been a dramatic increase in human generated spam over the past week or two and if I was a spammer I would jump on this too, because DISQUS does not use nofollow.  It’s not even an option that I can find!

Let me give you an example, here’s a post I did on Disqus SEO that has been targeted for spamming (seems fitting, yes?)   The comments were on point enough that I replied before i figured out what was going on.  I replied by e-mail and the formatting is still screwed upon line wraps when you do that (My other major gripe with Disqus).

If you take a look at the page source and search for iphone and discount office supplies you’ll see some nice free dofollow links headed off to the spammer’s sites.  This makes me unhappy - unhappy customers uninstall.  Given the nature of SEO, where an outgoing link from your blog counts as a vote, Disqus should have ZERO dofollow links out of my blog’s comments unless I say otherwise!

If this isn’t corrected shortly then look I’ll be installing this Disqus Hack to handle it, and if it’s not upgraded soon i guess I’ll take a look at intense debate and see if they do a better job.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
[?]
Custom Search
  • What a useful post here. Very informative for me..TQ friends...

    Cheers,
    Bisnes Internet
  • mdhssxna
    thanx for this post. its really a nice post.
  • Yeah !
    .....Feast ..... :)
  • thanx for this post.
  • Yups !
    " A thanks giving Feast " ................ to all the spammer .
  • I totally agree with you. I'm glad to see they enabled the no follow tags on their platform now.
  • 9450203288
    Search Engine Marketing -Media Run is a leading search engine marketing company in London that offers best search marketing solutions like performance SEO, pay per click service, universal search, search engine marketing and website optimisation.
  • Unwanted email is a nuisance for everybody !
    Dr.David Black
    www.blackchiropractic.com.au
  • Shubhshukla
    Membership cards -Digital ID offer the largest range of plastic card related products and services on the web.
  • I think the blog has the option to make id dofollow or nodofollow. So what is the harm in that.
  • Aryansolankey
    I still unable to remove do not follow from my disqus thread. so I soon going to change my comment system.
  • I had the same issue, try to get in touch with their support and they should help you..
  • I would also be interested to know this! kindly reply back Jangro! thanks in advance.
  • there might be be any other blogging system which provides dofollow comments :).
  • I find Disqus a very good commenting plugin. You can always check back your comments because Disqus compiles all your entries...so, it's easier to see and follow your comments.
  • I am sure they will come up with the right solution.
  • I agree, there is this new thing added to disqus, blog comments are no longer dofollow! I am kind of disappointed now but still I love it.



    Jessica:-))
  • In whatever case Disqus is the best and I am going to keep using it..
  • Disqus may seem to be one of the best commenting system but they still have some minor flaws to deal with, like this one spammers can dig upon your past entries that has high PR, one way to solve this is to close the comment box..
  • I dont agree closing the comment box could be a solution.. we should find a better solution for this.
  • I agree with SEO Guru, and want to admit that it is wonderful, when people are interested in your blog, do comments; This work Disqus make excellent. If you think, that comment is a spam, just delete it, and all the work is done
  • I have not used Disqus yet, but do you mean there is no way to make the links Nofollow in Disqus, I am sure there should be a way if not then it is sad.
  • Disqus default has is do follow that's why it attracts spammers to comment on our blogs, I'm also using disqus but I put no follow attribute just avoid spam comments to come in my blog, but currently there are setting where in we can moderate comments on disqus right?
  • Yes the comments can be moderated. i would strongly support the dofollow movement and urge you not to go nofollow because of few bloody spammers.
  • I won't worry so much about the dofollow or nofollow attribute on the comment thread. As long as the comments left are relevant enough then let disqus do its job.
  • if i were you i would look into the wordpress plugin that will auto disable dofollow
  • I dont bother much on the dofollow or nofollow aspect.
    Disqus is a great content mgmt tool and has just my life easier. All I am bothered is to make sure the comment is relevant to the post I have made and has a valid appreciation or valid addition or point to make.
    As long as I have people reading my post seriously and making a valid comment everything is fine.
  • Disqus brings people to comment on your blog, if you dont have disqus go back in hole and never climb out. Thats why disqus have dofollow so people come to talk about your stuff and if you dont like it you remove comments. I think its better than not commenting at all.
  • Whether you have nofollow or not or wordpress or not youll get a ton of spam. I just leave all the comments on my blogs as long as they say something meaningful.
  • Spam feast, LOL, but you can just easily remove any unwanted comments, if you don't like them to gain backlinks from your, and mostly if they were just spams, Disqus is still the best comment system for me, it creates a friendly environment wherein quality comments are appreciated..
  • I don't understand the problem, as long as the comment is on-topic and adds to the conversation, whyt not let them have a free backlink?
  • That situation isn't the problem. The repeated spamming of my higher page rank pages and certain keyword specific posts with obviously spammy comments is a problem. It detracts from any real conversation and wastes my time. You're here for the free link, not the content, and not the conversation. If you were then you would have noticed that someone asked this exact question already and you wouldn't be commenting on other random old posts of sites using Disqus.

    A link from my site is a "vote" from me, that I don't have control of that is a huge problem.
  • Nofollow is an option. I'd guess 70 % of all blogs using Disqus are nofollow.
  • How do we actually know if it is nofollow and dofollow and does it really make so much of difference..
  • ssokolenko
    David, i am evaluating Disqus from a SEO perspective. I did a few searches for specific phrases and found that older comments were credited to Disqus subdomains (i used your posts for research); the newer ones however are crediting your own domain. Is that the new Wordpress functionality you are talking about?
  • I can't say for certain, but that's probably it. I know they made some changes to improve SEO results for the sites and as long as you use the newest versions of the WP plugin the comments will be crawlable on your site where the older javascript versions were not.
  • Just wondering though, if the comments were on topic and relevant to the blog post, is allowing a dofollow necessarily a bad thing?
  • It really depends - a halfhearted spammy comment that hits some keywords is
    not something that I'm interested in. If someone comes for the link but
    reads the post and adds interest or value then it's not a bad thing at all.
  • Disqus is the revolution of commenting in web 2.0. A definite move up from the standard blog comment system, its just a shame that they have this one minor flaw to deal with, and it seems like something so simple.
  • if you could remove "powered by disqus" that would work too,because that is the way you can find disqus blogs
  • With Intense debate URLs look like dofollow with JS on - but with off, they are nofollow. I think they should put up a big sign telling low-grade blog spammers this to make them give up ...!
  • I just recently realized this too, after having "Racing School" commenting all over my blog all of a sudden. Kind of tweaked that Disqus doesn't have nofollow set by default.
  • I've been told by the staff that they've made a change to handle nofollow, but I haven't seen anything yet so perhaps the next Wordpress plugin release will have it included
  • The joker who posted the comments on DigitalPoint forum ought to be shot. He gave clear cut instructions on how to spam your blog. More importanty, he specifically listed so many of your domains. I think there was another shiya blog he listed.
  • I hope you don't mind me hopping in here. IntenseDebate supports nofollow. With our WordPress plugin we output the WordPress comments in the noscript tag so if you had nofollow prior to IntenseDebate it will still be nofollow.
  • Thanks for that info Michael. I've spoken to the folks @ Disqus and they're are making a change for this now and i expect to see it soon.
  • Why don't you just not accept keywords for a persons name?

    That will cut down on comment spam.
  • keep in mind that the hack I developed is on the older beta version of their plugin.

    The same methods probably apply, but I haven't tried it. Let me know how it goes. I want to do the same.
  • SEO
    jangro, currently disqus's default setting is nofollow. Any idea how to change it to dofollow?
  • I would also be interested to know this! kindly reply back Jangro! thanks in advance.
  • I think it's in the control panel settings.
blog comments powered by Disqus

The KnightKnetwork is powered by WordPress and FREEmium Theme.
developed by Dariusz Siedlecki and brought to you by FreebiesDock.com