In early 2005, Google implemented a new value, “nofollow”, for the rel attribute of HTML links and anchor elements, so that website developers and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank — they are links that no longer constitute a “vote” in the PageRank system. The nofollow relationship was added in an attempt to help combat spamdexing.
This tag was picked up by WordPress and impelemented for URLs in comments. What it means is that URLs in the comments field are ignored by Google, and PageRank and indexing are not improved for the target sites, from these links. The expectation was that this would dissuade spammers from commenting on blogs. This did not work and spammers are still there, spamming all over, no matter if the blog is do follow or no follow.
As a consequence, we decided to remove the no follow attribute from our comments link and implement better traps for these spammers. All the comments will still be held for moderation, but if you are a legitimate user we are inviting you to add your comments. Each legitimate comment will be approved and “link juice” will be sent to your site.
