Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines have adopted a scheme to thwart comment spammers. The insertion of a “nofollow” tag in links to pages where visitors can post comments will instruct search engines that the link can’t be trusted so the search engines won’t pick them up. The spammers will stop comment spamming when they realize their efforts aren’t yielding placement in search engine results. One article on the scheme quoted Yahoo!‘s Jeremy Zawodny: “We think this is a good first step towards significantly reducing the spam burden on bloggers and weblog hosting companies.”

A lot of blogs have jumped on this approach and are praising the cooperation between search engines and companies producing blogging software. I checked the site of the company that produces the software I use, since it wasn’t listed among the companies working together. And there I found dissenting opinions. After reading them, I’m not sure I’m on board with the “nofollow” concept.

In his blog “The Middle,” Andy Wismar complains the concept will preclude important comment threads from generating the kind of awareness that leads to a useful discussion. He points to two posts on other blogs that generated a huge comment stream that formed a conversation about issues important to everyone involved. I remember my own comment stream (46 comments, I believe) that resulted from a post criticizing a printed commentary on blogging. Even more recently, a piece I posted on the iPod Shuffle generated a surprising number of comments; any of those contributing their comments may have found the item through a search that uncovered the conversation.

Wismar writes:” So, to all the spammers out there, the best and brightest at Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and blog tool creators have gathered to say ‘In your face, we’ll just devalue EVERY link, crippling your model and our own in the process!’” Exactly right. Isn’t this the very definition of throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Over at Threadwatch, there’s a list of ways the “nofollow” tag could be abused, including cheating reciprocal partners out of PR.

It’s great that cooperation between search engines and software companies has resulted in a solution. I’m just not convinced it’s the right solution. It may even be detrimental in the long run. So far, the use of CAPTCHA in this blog has prevented comment spam, so I’ll be in no hurry for Expression Engine to implement the “nofollow” tag. If they do, it will probably be something over which the owner of the blog will have control, as in this comment from an Expression Engine support staffer: “To that end, I would like that, if it is added to the core of EE - it has a permission against it. IE: Only add this rel tag to posts made by nonmembers, or some such.”