Commenting on a blog with the express purpose of improving PageRank

PageRank as in Larry Page -  Larry, one of the principles of Google - or it could refer to "page" as in web page and the ranking of such pages in the Google, or other search engines, indices.

There is no point in making comments on most blogging platforms and placing links to a website that you may be trying to promote. In fact, it makes you look stupid! If you want to be taken seriously by those that know how the Web works you should know what Google and other large web operators do to combat spam on their blogs, websites and forums.

In fact, even on Google Blogger if you make a comment and add the URL to your profile it will also have a rel="nofollow" attribute added to the link:

• bestvn
• PPTP VPN Providers - the website that is attempted to be promoted

The link above I added the rel="nofollow" attribute to it. This is so you can see what sort of operator uses this technique and how their Blogger page is full of nonsense and looks like it is just a place to put advertisements. 

Not only will this technique not work it is also an indication that the person that made the comment did not read the note that I have on my Blogger comment page. I used to either re-post or delete the comment, but now that I have found out about nofollow I don't need to bother.

As I was saying in my earlier post, the addition of this attribute to the link will tell Googlebot, Google's search engine robot, to ignore any authority that it may have had. In fact, there is no reason that the Google algorithm that determines the "value" of hyperlinks can process such links in ever more "special" ways depending on whether the nofollow is present.

Google Analysis and WordPress

If you search for this topic you will find that the official Wordpress websites (.org and .com) will tell you that you cannot use Google Analytics with WP.

I interpret this as to a statement that they have not found a way to put a "hook" to GA in the WP user interface. The way that GA works is that is not just a simple one step process and involves the placement of tracking code in your webpages and the registration of your website with Google Analytics.

The registration will tell you what code to place on your pages and where to put it. The code will contain an identifier for your site and JavaScript code that will send off the data collected from visitors to your site so that it can be included in your GA reporting.

Google Blogger now have this feature integrated into their user interface but I guess they have an advantage as they are introducing a Google product for use with another Google product. However, I was using GA before this was featured and it was just a matter of finding where to put the tracking code and then to do exactly the same that I was doing with my website. In fact, I think the tracking is done on this blog is still done in the same way. i.e. modifying the template and not entering the tracking ID in the UI.

As far as I can see this should still be possible with WP. The explanation of how to get it to function is another matter.

There are blog posts and You Tubes that say that you can do this - it is left to you to see if they work. There are also plugins that allow you to use Google Analytics - however, looking at the website below, Wordpress plugins, I am confused at the moment as it is not the experience that I am currently seeing using GA.

Links:

• The WordPress site's declaration on GA 
• The Plugin on WordPress.org- says compatible to version 3.3.2 - I am running 3.4.1

Although the WordPress Plugin website says that the plugin is only compatible to an earlier version this does not mean that it will not work.

The NOFOLLOW tag and blogging

In my investigations on the differences between the WordPress platform and Google Blogger I was initially disappointed that a NOFOLLOW attribute was not offered when a link was added to a blog post.

It had been my suspicion that the attribute had been added automatically to hyperlinks that visitors had added to comments on Blogger. I had not checked this but I have on posts that I had made on WordPress. I now find that this is common practice in the case of blogging software. In fact the practice is rife with the large sites and it has been a source of criticism by the "community". I can see the naysayers point of view as this is not well understood by the small website owner or the blogger.

I think that is a case of "Do as you would want to be done by". In that if you link to a website you should be treated in the same way as if they link to you. By adding the NOFOLLOW attribute large sites were getting inbound links from the unwary were they were not giving the same in return. I have adopted the stance that I will not give a site that I link to unless I have a link back to me. As I have no way of determining this I place a NOFOLLOW attribute on ALL my hyperlinks.

When I was placing links on my website I either put them in an area where the search engines were banned or I just placed a link to a "links" page that stated that I had the links and if you wanted them you would have to write and ask for them. Thanks to Google Blogger I discovered NOFOLLOW.

Hard-coding the HTML it is a fairly easy task to add this attribute, as it is will Blogger. WordPress is somewhat more difficult but not impossible. The reasons for Google adding this to the Blogger platform is somewhat different as it was a made a requirement that if you had Adsense on your blog you would be penalized unless you used the attribute. I guess this was so that you didn't have 2 outbound links to the same website on your blog, one that they benefited from and the other you do - the net effect was that the one you had cancelled out the one that they placed in the Adsense ad.

A Google Adsense ad is a "Paid" link.

To add the NOFOLLOW attribute to a WordPress post or page you need to install a plugin and use "shortcode". While this is a little cumbersome, I am sure that it is worth it in the fact that ranking is not degraded as a consequence. In fact, I learn't about [shortcodes] and WP.

The syntax that you have to use in WP is better off documented here as the Nofollow plugin by bitacre will expand the shortcode to the required hyperlink syntax.

[nofollow href="http://url_of_site.com"] Site wanted to be not followed [/nofollow]

The text in red needs to be replaced by the site you want to link but not give ranking credit. In WP you can see the {shortcode] when the post is edited and it appears as a normal link in the post.

I checked this by looking at the source code of the webpage when I had the plugin active and when I did not. I also checked that hyperlinks placed in comments have the NOFOLLOW set by default.

There are many versions of this plugin - I only tried the one from bitacre. The Bitacre website is also an example of a website built using WordPress. They do have an error on the post relating to Nofollow.

I have an examples of this on my WordPress blog and I will continue to use this technique for all outbound links.

Links:

• What Google say - they are not being totally truthful here, as they are not w.r.t. Keyword Aggregation keeping "Search Safe"
• and what they say about "Paid Links"
• Keep Search Safe. 
• The Nofollow plugin from bitacre
• This is also another reason why the 3-Way link schemes that you see do not work. 

How does nofollow work with the Social Graph API (rel="nofollow me")?

Google also add some "get out of jail free" advice. This is to allow their social networking scheme to work. If you want to a person to link to you in your profile and want to link to them, they have added an extra "me" microformat to the nofollow attribute.

With rel="me nofollow", Google will continue to treat the rel="nofollow" as expected for search purposes, such as not transferring PageRank. However, for the Social Graph API, we will count the rel="me" link even when included with a nofollow.

To me this is an admission that they are really concerned about the ranking behavoiur of the Googlebot algorithm.

The added proviso that if you can verify ownership of the link than you can remove the nofollow. I am left wondering whether the users of Google Social Apps are even aware of the nofollow.

If you are able to verify ownership of a link using an identity technology such as OpenID or OAuth, however, you may choose to remove the nofollow link.

You can read exactly what Google say about this in the link above.

Google Sitemaps

I need to create another sitemap. It seems that I was editing it on the server directly.

As I am reconfiguring the site I can start a new one from scratch. In any case I am not sure of the value of having one in the first place.

I have added a robots.txt file and I need to add my IP address to Google Analytics to stop the logging of my own visits. It seems that I do not have the option of doing this for AWStats - I will have to look into this.

This is just a "to do" posting.

Links:

• My original post on Google Sitemaps.

Should I switch over to Wordpress?

As tempusfugit.ca has been dormant for a while I was thinking about re-instating it using Wordpress, adding new and unique content and even monetizing it. I am likely to have some editorial input on it if I do which should help with content generation. The skills that I have gained from creating and hosting on my own should see me in a good position to make a website that could generate revenue.

Update:

I do have a few observations on my intial usage of Wordpress.

However, it seems that the capabilities of Google Blogger are probably good enough when it comes to a simple blog. The main advantages that WordPress would offer are in the maintenance of a "proper" website. For example, there is much more flexibility when it comes to the generation of menu systems, in fact, you can make nested or cascading menus. Examples of this can be see on tempusfugit.ca

I have tried to use Blooger and WordPress on an iPad. They both have the same problem, the inability to upoad photographs to blog posts. The editing of exisiting posts works just fine, especially with a Bluetooth keyboard (like I am editing this post with).

The other main difference with respect to outbound links is that I cannot see an option to a add a NO-FOLLOW attribute to hyperlinks in blog posts. I am not sure if this will have a negative imact on ranking.

Regional Filtering

I am of the opinion that there is some measure of filtering with respect to where an Internet user is making a search.

For example, if I make the search: "windows 8 daz activation" one of the searches that finds my blog (this blog), I cannot find a link to me in the SERP that is returned here in Canada.

The results extracted from Google Analytics are from:

• Czech Republic
• Japan
• South Korea
• France
• Hungary
• Belgium

These results are obviously skewed from the North American perspective. How else would Internet visitors find me and Canada and and the USA be excluded from these results?

It is also my belief that Google Analytics is far less useful than they were since changes were made to the way that Keywords are now reported. I described the reasons for this in my post:

• Keyword Aggregation and Google

Santa Clara County

Santa Clara County is the region of San Francisco that is the home of Google at Mountain View.

Links:

• When someone complains to Google about your content
• Santa Clara visits
• If you think that you have information about yourself removed from the Web by Google
• You probably think that this blog is about you
• The Googleplex on WikiP

---

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Asus products that I have owned

Having seen multiple visits from Nei-Hu, Taiwan I thought that I would make a mini index of the posts that I have made relating to Asus products on this blog.

• Transformer Prime - TF 201
• Using Digi+ VRM

More to come.

Links:

• Neihu District on WikiP

The location of resources discussed on this blog

Since a lot of searches seem to find this blog made by those looking to download files and utilities I thought that I would clarify what is and what is not to be found on this blog and my website tempusfugit.ca.

I have in the past made certain resources available for download by visitors to tempusfugit.ca - As I am not a download service this was only on a "demand" basis and would have been through a User ID and password via a link to my intranet server.

Not all of the resources that I have at my disposal were made available and certainly not files that are readily available from legitimate sources. In some cases I only allowed download when the visitor had ensured me that they had followed all proper procedures to obtain the resource through the proper channels.

If you require one of the resources that I discuss on this blog please send me a message and I may arrange for my intranet server to be forwarded to the Internet. At the present time, Summer 2012, my website is not active. It is my intention that it will be put back on line in the near future.

Out of date posts

It is my observation that there are many hits on posts that are WAY WAY old and that the only reason that the posts were found was due to the fact that they contained keywords that were similar to the problem at hand.

An example of this is the post on ZoneEdit being unreachable. Now, it is possible that this does occur from time to time it is not my experience that it is a common occurrence.

Blogger Page views and Analytics

My theory is that the page view counter in Blogger is generated from a server log analysis. It is generally reporting a higher count than the visits that are recorded by Google Analytics.

This is probably  due to the fact that Google Analytics uses JavaScript to record the data from the visitors. If this is the case it also is an indication of the number of Internet users that browse and search the Internet is a "safe" manner - by turning off JavaScript in their browsers or by blocking the action of scripts.

Commenting on a blog post with the sole purpose of promoting your own company

This post was prompted by a comment left on one of my posts related to my experience with Acer and their customer service.

It was obvious to me that the comment was placed purely as blog spam. The ressons for this conclusion are that the comment was just a link to a website that the commenter was trying to promote, both from the Blogger name and the embedded link in the comment body. In addition the visitor, who searched for "acer support + blogger", did not visit any other posts on this blog and the comment added nothing to the original post.

The visitor was from iGennie Technical Services Pvt. Ltd. Nodia, Uttar Pradesh, India 


What iGennie say about themselves:
iGennie is an autonomous online computer support provider through remote access for software, and peripherals. We have expertise in handling issues with a huge array of products of third-party companies and brands.


While I have no objection to placing links on this blog, I do object to comments that promote services in a covert manner. I have placed a link to iGennie at the foot of this post so that anyone who actually reads what I have written will see what the comment really meant. I have also re-posted the comment on the the original blog post with the links removed. I clearly state that I will do this on the comment form - another thing that iGennie did not read!


I do have a problem with on-line customer services that provide support in this way as it seems to be just a Business Opportunity. Anyone with a real computer problem is not likely to find the blog post and if they did is unlikely to follow a link made in a comment. In this case, although I have seen others that do, there was no attempt to tie the comment into any form of relevancy to the blog post itself.


Links:

• What is Blog Spam
• My post on Acer Customer support
• iGennie website

Adobe Muse

Searching for The Technology Muse I came accross an Adobe product that claims:

"..... create websites without writing code."

This really does denegrate the whole process.

• The Adobe Muse product

Another reason for moving posts from a website to a Blogger blog

Google have made changes to the way that they handle Keywords such that they are no longer made available to webmasters who use Google Analytics to shape their content.

If a visitor is not logged into a Google account the information will still be made available but as the vast number of people using Google are logged in, this makes it a moot point. The reasons given for this change was to make Google search safer. Seeing that this information was not available to those making the search I fail to see how this could be the case.

However, as Blogger is a Google product the internals of how Google seem to operate would not keep visitors away from that blog platform. At least, on the face of it.

Deleting comments from blog posts

Although considered as bad manners and a violation of free speech, there are situations where I will either delete or re-post comments that are made on some of my posts.

The main reason for deleting or re-posting is in situations where the commenter is purely making the post to place a link to a website that they have an interest in. This is what I call "blog spam" and I have a note to this affect on the comment form:

English Feeder - Scraper site

English Feeder is a scraper website that I have seen picking up content from my website and blogs.

I have found entries in Google SERPs when I have made similar searches to those detected finding pages on my sites.

In the example above the premise is that the English Feeder site is presenting current Tech News, presumably to Belgian and French Internet users.

• Scraping content from other websites 
• Matt Cutts on "Spammy" Websites - The Panda Update to the algorithm

Matt Cutts seems to have changed his view on Scraping, when asked a question on whether webmasters should be worried about Scrapers he now says (May 2012 - at SNX Seattle) they could even help your rankings because they may actually provide links back to you.

More about Blogger search

It would appear that the search, when made using the internal search on Blogger, returns results in order of relevance by default. You can change this to date after you have a BSERP.

Also the keywords from previous versions of the posts seem to be retained so that even though they do not exist in the post as it currently renders the search will still find the post in which it did.

The relevance behavior means that the posts with the highest number of occurrences of the word or words searched for will appear at the top of the list. In this way you can manipulate the way that the SERP displays for a given set of search terms. The BSERP can further be manipulated by scheduling the post dates such that it the list is subsequently sorted by date you can position particular posts within that list.

The retention of search terms that have been deleted means that posts will still be found even if you have seen fit to remove the search terms. While this could be confusing for the visitor it is useful to further manipulate the SERP.

• SERP - Search Engine Results Page - as opposed to a BSERP (that is specific to Blogger)
• How to look in Google Cache 
• Google Instant Previews 
• Looking for yourself on the Internet

In addition to searching a blog and seeing what is returned in a BSERP a general Internet search can also be useful when comparing what you find on a blog. It is possible to see what was on blog pages in the past in the same way as it is with regular website pages. The display of the Search Engine Cache can reveal things that the webmaster or blogger has removed. The Google Instant Preview uses this cached information.

My thoughts go in waves

Normally the topics on that I post are related to what I am currently interested in and what I see others are by their visits to this blog. In the past my emphasis was on visits to my website, but now as the site is no longer active and the information is being migrated over to this blog, the response is dependent on visits to The Technology Muse.

This sometimes get sidelined by those that don't like what I have said about them on my website or this blog. One of the reasons that The Technology Muse is the dominant platform is that it preserves the anonymity of the media, a corner-stone of free-speech. Also the Blogger platform is vastly improved on what it was when I first started using it.

The news today is that Rupert Murdoch has been called out as "not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company" - BBC News 1 May 2012

Phone-hacking, cover-ups and general arrogance and "bully-boy" activities.

Leveson Inquiry - judicial probe into press standards

Operations, Weeting,  Elveden and Tuleta 

The culture committee

GIS - geographic information system

as per blog spam Renee Hewett American Sentinel University’s GIS degree courses.

• GIS according to WikiP

A geographic information system is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data. The acronym GIS is sometimes used for geographical information science or geospatial information studies to refer to the academic discipline or career of working with geographic information systems. In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging of cartography, statistical analysis, and database technology.

The GIS courses offered by the American Sentinel University are related to the study of Geographic Information Systems.

In the world of Social Networking and mobile devices Location (and/or Geo Tagging) is possible.

FileMaker

I seem to get a lot of Blog Spam from filemaker.com

I am not sure what value this product brings to the iPad.