Duncan has started what looks to be a very worthwhile series of posts over at the Blog Herald on Ethics and Blogging – something that we all need to be continually challenged on. His first post is on giving Attribution where due or crediting your sources – something i ranked on a while back. Here’s a bit of what Duncan had to say.
‘Providing attribution is an ethical consideration all bloggers should consider. Many of you reading this already will, but you may be surprised how many don’t, and the higher up the blogosphere you go, the worse it gets. Think of it this way: you put your heart and soul into a post and half a day later, somebody posts nearly exactly the same thing, you cant prove the link but its more than coincidence, and you’re either heartbroken or angry. You don’t like it happening to you, so be ethical and don’t do it to others, you might be surprised: many bloggers like to see who is linking to their posts, they may well see yours and then all of a sudden you’ve got a link back…see the picture: do the right thing and good things may come from it.’
Our Policy at The Movie Blog is to put everything that comes from another source in BLOCKQUOTES, is BOLDED, is credited and linked. It’s the same that we would ask from others.
Similar to The Movie Blog, I also put quoted text in Blockquotes, Italics, and the source webpage is linked to.
But what’s your opinion about the rel=”nofollow” tag and (to a lesser degree) the “_blank” tag, Darren?
In all cases I use the latter tag so the link opens in a new window. That way my visitor can surf around the other site and I’ll still be there when they eventually close that window.
And it’s the only tag I use if the source site is a blog, but if it’s an online newspaper article (or something of that caliber) I sometimes will add the ‘nofollow’ tag too. That way it’s attributed and viewable by my visitors, but it doesn’t get any “Google juice”. :)
I had a problem last year where I published a bunch of articles on my niche site, and on the next Google update those very same articles I linked to popped up ahead of my website in the rankings for my primary keyword! Since online newspaper sites already have a high PR, I don’t want to give them any extra help by linking to them in any way that helps their rankings for my KW.
..any ethical thoughts about the ‘nofollow’ tag..?