Well, it's only a proposal from the search engines, but MovableType (and thus LiveJournal) will be implementing it -- with some work already completed and available for it.

This is a good thing as there is even less a reason for automated and not-so-automated comment spam. No longer will a site be given a PageRank (or equivalent) boost. Also, the blogs own links, rather than the user submitted ones, will thus carry even more weight. This also means, though, that any good links in comments or from users would probably need to be called out as an "update" in the main post to give them any sort of weight.

The downside is that powerful sites could block all PageRank boosts they give out by flagging all outbound links with no-follow. In other words, the power to give or not to give PageRank now lands on the content side rather than the search engine site. So now when you rant about a site you can make sure the negative coverage doesn't turn into a boost in popularity (you know, any news is publicity sort of thing) and vice versa.

Hrm..

Joi Ito's Web: Support for nofollow

Posted by Shane on January 19, 2005 9:41 AM | Permalink