Blocking Comment Spam

An interesting read on Google Blog , Google is pushing a rel="nofollow" attribute for links to tell Googles (as well as some other) spiders not to pay any mind to certain links.

Its a good idea to stop the "referers" section of blogs getting over run with spam, but i dont agree with google policing the internet.

I don't view it as "policing". It's the designer's choice to use the attribute or not. For example, I'm quite certain that some people sign up on forums like this and never activate their account or post. Their only purpose is to get their website link listed in the "Members" page which Google does spider, hence providing them "free" backlinks. I've actually been trying to think of a way to write a mod that applies this "filter" to members like that until they have activated and made at least one post.

This kind of practice is obviously spammers simply taking advantage of the system, and I think it's a great idea.

Webmasters can use htaccess if they dont want google following links form certain pages.

It would be used to surpress competition though.
For example, people could have a portal linking to many sites which people would use because of the amount of resources its linking to, but include the rel="nofollow" so it wouldnt effect back linking. effectivly they would be stealing content.

Googles job is to list the contents of the internet, thats all.

If people dont want google following links to my site from thiers then they shouldn't be using a link to my site in the first place.

meman, I think you read it wrong.. It's meant for sections where users not the webmaster have the ability to add links, like comment boxes.

I think it's a great move by Google, The same people you're worrying about "stealing content" via this attribute are the same people who are sooner or later going to get black-listed by Google for shady practices.

wiki just implemented it on all outgoing links. Seems like this new attribute is really going to shake things up in the serps.