Google Pushes Fix for Comment Spam
Google is looking to the past in order to crack down on the increasing problem of comment spam, promoting the adoption of a simple HTML link attribute that tells search engines to ignore its contents. As Web logs continue to proliferate, spammers have taken to filling comment areas with links, which in turns gives them a higher ranking in Web searches.
But now, Google will not give credit to links with the attribute rel=”nofollow” when it ranks the popularity of Web sites. The search giant says the additional tag “isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.”
BetaNews | Google Pushes Fix for Comment Spam