"It only necessary for good men to do nothing to allow evil to prevail"


The "dofollow" moniker is misleading at best. And the way directory owners use it is tantamount to fraud.

Saying or doing nothing allows the misinformation to continue, had the chosen term described the "not nofollowed" links better, say "unrestricted", "trusted" or "nofollow free" there would not be a potential for people to be misled. There is enough potential for people to be misled or defrauded on the Internet without those who know better allowing it to continue.

I think that's fine. I think it makes sense to help people understand things better. Technically "not nofollowed" makes more sense, especially from an html standpoint. However new words are created all the time. It's clunky to use though with the double negative. Like it or not people say dofollow.

If you want to let people know dofollow doesn't technically exist there's nothing wrong with that. However I also think there's nothing wrong with using the word dofollow at this point. It's become a common term used to identify links that don't have rel="nofollow" applied.

New words and phrases are introduced into the language all the time. I don't see any reason why dofollow shouldn't be one of them. What's important is that we're all referring to the same thing to make sure we're communicating on the same page.

My previous post was really more in response to what I felt was mainly an insult from Daniel. Perhaps he was joking, but it didn't come across that way to me. It came across as a veiled attempt to imply some stupidity on my part, which I didn't appreciate. If it was meant as a joke, my bad, but it didn't come across to me as an attempt at humor.

Google knows what a "do-follow" blog is--Google Dofollow Blog SE.

But I like to use this one--Do-Follow Diver--It works very well.

Sorry...I didn't see this thread earlier. Must be losin' it.

Google didn't create the page on the other side of the first link you posted. They only created the tools to let someone else create the custom search.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Google didn't create the page on the other side of the first link you posted. They only created the tools to let someone else create the custom search.

I was really just trying to help the OP.

Sorry I wasn't meaning to be critical. Justing pointing out that Google wasn't specifically using the word dofollow.

Originally Posted by vangogh

...

But it has come to the point where these SEO guru masters are spewing out false information such as dofollow tags, dofollow alts, dofollow attributes, dofollow metas and whatever else they decide to spew out.

If you accept that the word dofollow is a commonly used word to mean any link that doesn't have rel="nofollow" applied I'm not sure why all advice about dofollow is bad.

True there's bas information out there. There's bad information out there about every aspect of seo. However I don't see where posts that just say "dofollow doesn't exist" help clear up any misinformation. If anything it spreads more misinformation, because like it or not the word is commonly used now.

Isn't it better if we reply that there's technically no such thing as dofollow, point out what people mean when they say dofollow, and then answer the person's question? In a short amount of time we'll have a few good posts we can link to and point people to.

Remember though that my comments here weren't about anyone saying dofollow doesn't exist. It was mainly a reaction to you're being critical of me using the word. Again it's a word that is now used commonly. If you don't want to use it yourself that's fine, but I don't think it's appropriate to be critical of others who do choose to use the word.

About 10% of the words Shakespeare used were words he made up. Most every word we're all currently typing didn't exist in their current form 1,000 years ago. One of the great strengths of English as a language is its ability to grow and change, by adding new words and changing others.

I don't get why the auto response to the word nofollow is that it doesn't exist when we all know what the person saying it meant.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Sorry I wasn't meaning to be critical. Justing pointing out that Google wasn't specifically using the word dofollow.

Duly noted Steven. Much appreciated. I see your point.

Originally Posted by vangogh

If you accept that the word dofollow is a commonly used word to mean any link that doesn't have rel="nofollow" applied I'm not sure why all advice about dofollow is bad.

Because using "dofollow" to describe a link without a "rel="nofollow" attribute is misleading.

It implies the the links WILL pass value and there are many ways that a link can be stopped from passing value.

If anything the "nofollow" moniker is wrong anyway because the rel="nofollow" only blocks the links from passing REAL PR and anchor text for Google and anchor text value for Yahoo! and Bing.

It does not mean that the engines will not "follow" the link for indexing purposes or URL discovery.

That is the job of the nofollow value when applied to the robots meta element.

The search world needs to be PRECISE in it's parlance, as other industries are and because the industry crosses so many languages boundaries and cultures, exact wording and meaning is essential for there to be NO misunderstanding or mis-interpretation.

I can understand your point. My thinking in regards to people asking about it though is that we can explain that and then still answer their questions. Again the only reason I said anything in this thread is because Daniel seemed to be question my intelligence with his comments.

Maybe dofollow isn't a good work to correctly say what's happening, but it's the word that's come into common use. I'm not sure that only saying dofollow doesn't exist is going to lead to a better word. I think it mostly sends people to other places.

You could argue that nofollow isn't a good word either. Search engines do follow those links. There are plenty of examples around where pages were indexed that only had nofollow links pointing to them. There are also examples of pages ranking for keywords that are only ever used in a nofollow link. If the idea is that those links are to prevent passing real PR and anchor text then the word nofollow is a poor choice.

Also I think it's hard to be precise where search engine optimization is concerned since for obvious reasons search engines aren't going to tell us how their algorithms work. Additionally some of what Google will tell you about the best way to optimize a page or site doesn't work. There are many times where the page that ranks better is the one that doesn't follow Google's rules. It's an imprecise industry.

You can find the blogs under your niche by searching for the sites related to you.You also can search using your key words.This will help you to get more blogs under your niche.Getting a do follow blog is very difficult.You can post in no follow blogs also.They are not worthless.

I post on different forums and offer guest posts so I can find blogs that are in my niche. This gets my writing skills out and blog owners get free posts as well.

you can find alot of blogs categorically on blogging networks like blogcatalog

use just( inurl:blog "post comment" "keywords" ) and Google's Blog Search just this is fin

Originally Posted by vangogh

Why not just go to Google's Blog Search and search for words common to the topic?

I would have to agree that would be the single best way to do it. Unless you feel like purchasing a list of relevant blogs through a web marketplace.