Google, Yahoo and others have announced a new html tag attribute - rel"nofollow" - to stem comment spam in blogs and unmoderated forums.

http://www.google.com/googleblog/20...mment-spam.html
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000069.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/arc...ollow_tags.aspx
http://www.sixapart.com/log/2005/01...t_for_nof.shtml

They will recognise the new tag ASAP. An example from Yahoo:
<a href="http://spammer.example .com/" rel="nofollow">buy now</a>
will work the same as a robots.txt exclusion on a per link basis rather than per directory.

This could be very useful for links on your site that are useful for your visitors, but your don't want to pass PR.

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Montana Internet Service ISP Dialup Internet Service Provider

Lots of interesting stuff here:

1) Google confirm that they actually follow links in Blogs (spammed or otherwise) - unless instructed not to do so.

Doesn't mean they contribute as back-links or to SERPS though does it? I thought we had some evidence to the contrary here.

2) Search engines co-operate, when necessary ("Ask" are missing here). Is this the first time that they have got together like this?

Cheers,
Paz.

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10.3 million entries for Hotels in Turkey but I'm still chipping away.

All good stuff. Happy with that!

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Programmer, researcher, ...

Search Science

End of spamming blogs

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snip

It's actually been around for a bit...
http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/thread6218.html

Unfortunately, people will likely still try to do it considering that there are still people that stuff alt tags & comment tags with KW spam.

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Wildfire Marketing Forum-Visit our free marketing forum to learn and share tips about marketing.

Donno, I think this new rel="nofollow"> tag in any way will open the door to spammers. Don't ask me why... I just feel a "disturbance in the force". We will see what happens.

Obi-NAN-Cannabis

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Not spending money in Marketing is like stopping your watch in order to save Time!!!

That doesn't even make sense. How do you think it would open the door for spammers?

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Wildfire Marketing Forum-Visit our free marketing forum to learn and share tips about marketing.

Don't really know, I just tried to imagine spammers blocking their links in an arbitrarious way.

This example popped up to my mind.

I have a site of breast cancer info, all content is right, but full of links pointing to porn and ALL OF THEM "rel nofollowed's" so the spider can't see them.

Donno, it's just a bad feeling.

Obi-NAN-Cannabis

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Not spending money in Marketing is like stopping your watch in order to save Time!!!

There are already numerous ways to do that. I don't see this changing anything from that POV.

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Wildfire Marketing Forum-Visit our free marketing forum to learn and share tips about marketing.

The change is one more tool for them to spam. But anyways, we will wait and see. Probably ur right and this is not going to make a difference.

Obi-NAN-Cannabis

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Not spending money in Marketing is like stopping your watch in order to save Time!!!