Can having a dofollow blog result in negative SEO repercussions with Google?
 by Casey Markee

Can having a dofollow blog result in negative SEO repercussions with Google?

  • I allow dofollow comments on my blog and have for awhile. However, I've been hearing that Google doesn't like blogs that allow dofollow comments and that it can affect my blog's reputation and how I rank organically? What's the truth? Is this something I should be doing on my blog?

dofollow-comments.jpgAnswer: We covered this question previously in the September 2009 SEO byte titled Do you police the comment spam on your blog? You should! Make sure to check that byte out first and bookmark it for later.

In that byte we specifically stated that Google will and does penalize blogs that don't moderate their comment spam effectively.

Dofollow blogs are huge targets for possible Google slaps because comments from them, especially on posts that have accumulated PageRank, can pass some link juice to the commenter.

Since we wrote up that byte Google engineer Matt Cutts released a Google Webmaster Help video on YouTube (February, 2010) that further clarifies this issue in more detail. We have embedded the full video below and strongly advise all of you who have a dofollow blog, or who are thinking of getting one in the future, to watch it.

The main lesson from the video, according to Cutts, is that if you do not moderate your blog comments your blog reputation is going to be severely affected. Specifically, he states the following:

"...sites that are linking to you...

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