Thanks for stopping by.

I think the change in comments on BlogSpot was done to prevent comment spamming there. As I’m sure you’re aware, they’re a haven for splogs and by taking this rather useless step they’re seen as “doing something” about it. What worries me is how clumsy this move was, it reminded me of something Microsoft would do, not something Google would do.

I think that comment based link building should be OK with Google because it’s more likely to add value than not. Most ‘dofollow’ bloggers will delete or delink “Hey! Nice article!” type comments, or they should, and leave in meaningful ones. Using DoFollow or even Top Commentators requires that one keep a tight rein on comments. If you don’t you may well get a penalty for linking to a ‘bad neighborhood’ site.

The change in Blogger comment section is showing signs of it but I don’t think it will be here until at least the next Page Rank update. Speculations of it perhaps. What will be your opinion on such a move by Google? Why is it necessary for them to remove links from all Blogspot’s comment section?

I know Google’s algorithm will be greatly devalued with such a move but many are gaming the the algorithm through the strategy they call, blog comment link building in forum discussions. This is the reason why I think giving out free links through comments might get the attention of Google soon.

I didn’t think your intentions were bad at all, just that you were perhaps a bit too worried about where Google was going next. You certainly aren’t the only one using a lot of caution with linking.

The “paid review to get PR” strategy always seemed a bit off to me. A review will scroll off the front page of a blog rather quickly, maybe in a week or so, and thus into PR oblivion afterward unless the blog owner specifically optimized for it. But, as long as they’re paying you, who cares, right?

I also understand that review brokers don’t like magazine style themes like I use here that don’t have full front page articles.

Of course, I’m just sticking with paid reviews that are OK with nofollow and full disclosure. These aren’t as common but there are some advertisers who do actually want buzz, not PageRank.

I hope that restores people’s faith in my intentions, which are, after all, honest!

Terry

The unfortunate part is I still also have some open links to paid review sites, which I can’t shut down until I’ve been paid for them - I did the work and I quite rightly want to be paid for it!

I am systematically no-following all paid review links older than a month that have been paid for - that’s fair enough from the advertiser’s point of view as they’d only get a month’s worth of paid links if they went to TextLinkAds and it’d cost them more too!

I’ll be doing the same on my Mame Money Blog which lost its PR and once all the links are gone there, I’ll take the advice of Mohan and try and get it back.

That will be interesting…