Has anyone else noticed recently that a lot of people leaving genuine comments on blogs have also started leaving ‘signature like’ links to their own blogs at the bottom of their comments? (NB: I’m not talking about links within comments that are relevant to the conversation happening in the comment thread).
I’ve noticed it happening more and more on my own blogs but also others. I’m a little torn on how to respond.
On one hand the comments are definitely genuine, on topic and from regular readers – something I love and want to encourage. On the other hand they have an opportunity to leave their link in URL field of the blog and to leave two is doubling up.
I have no follow tags on most of my blogs so doing it has no SEO benefits – but I still find it a bit spammy and have started emailing people who do it – politely asking them to refrain from doing so but I’d be interested to see what others think of it?
Unfortunately Mike, some of the ‘People’ commenting on my blogs lately have been using autosubmission software.
Also, it’s not 40 minutes once in a while, it’s a constant bombardment, 24 hours a day. In the past 24 hours, I’ve deleted about 350-400 ‘customer’ comments and my stats aren’t showing any extra pageviews, or extra ad revenue, or contributions to the conversation over there.
Real people are welcome to comment on my blogs. Always have been.
Alright, I have to comment again…
To highlight, I have, and do, place at least my name and designation in my comment posts. This is simply to highlight WHO had left the post. As you look at comments in posts, many people use psuedonames, as opposed to their real names. I always use my real name. I fell that a signature is a great way to reveal, even if seemingly redundant) WHO left the post. Call it self promotion or whatever.
I do agree that maybe a link in the comment is not necessary, simply because the name is linked, but I believe that leaving your name is simply a sign of integrity, that YOU YOURSELF left that comment, so the whole world can see that Christian Connett left the comment, not – j8675309 –
I do not have anything against psuedonames, but I leave my name to make the statement, that I proudly, and honorably left that comment.
Maybe the point about leaving a URL is a valid one as well. I began ReciprocityBlog.com to promote OTHER blogs. Not just my own. Yes, I have AdSense and Amazon on there, so don’t click them… I want to spotlight influential blogs, and I would hope the receive a reciprocal link back to ReciprocityBlog ( notice I left out the .com that time)…
Reciprocation is a great thing, until it gets abused. We simply have to monitor our Blogs, and maybe define a ‘Comment Standard’ that states, you get a TWO LINE signature, your name, your web address, that’s it. Maybe even SHOW the link WITHOUT an A HREF…?
Just thoughts for the masses.
To forward thinking…
J Christian Connett, CPM
Hmm, just another 2c.
A few people have been mentioning that to the uninformed it would not be obvious that one’s name is a clickable link.
Now while there are undoubtedly people who do not realise what it means to “click” on something, for those a little more advanced the traditional link format is an *underlined* word/phrase. *hint*hint*
A quick google search’n’sift gives this article, which I tend to agree with, although I’m less fussed with links being standard colours all the time.
[…] Poll of the Week Should Comment Signatures be Allowed? Yes No Undecided […]
I must say, this is tempting me to write a hack for wordpress to allow a fourth field for the poster – URL label.
So the comment poster will be able to supply
– commment
– name
– url
– label for url
This does several things:
– allows people to include a more meaningful label for their link
– restricts that link to a single line, so it doesn’t become overkill
– encourages to use of meaningful links.
To my mind, my name does not add anything to the link to my various blogs, but I’d still like my name on my comment. Posting an appropriately named link to my blog does me more good and is better for the potential click through; they have a better idea of what is on the other side.
IMHO
Anon-e-mouse because I don’t want to inflame a flame war. But I have to say it.
Adults share. The complaint is trivial. I think y’all should stop behaving like children.
If it bugs you, disable comments. See what happens to your traffic when you prevent people from leaving their effort and valuable contributions on your site.
It’s just a blog.
Paul,
I’m not saying I’m right, just offering an angle that might not get voiced.
I feel your pain, my friend, but I’m always looking at things from the standpoint of sales and customer service.
Doesn’t make me right, I don’t have a solution ( now I do, see the end of this post ) and I’m not looking forward to fighting this battle, when my turn comes. I just don’t want people to jump into stopping the interaction, which they need, without thinking about it from several angles.
A LOT of the people who read Darren’s comments, which is what even the original post is, will blindly do whatever he says, without even thinking. It’s human nature to follow a leader, it’s not like he’s doing anything wrong. They look for people to tell them what to do and will do it without thought.
As for them using auto-submission software, well, people will ruin everything, given the chance. They always have and always will. You can’t have a business without idiots getting in your way.
Why don’t we have a plugin for WP that makes people copy the image from a box to the form before they can submit their comment ? Wouldn’t that stop the auto-submission ?
Can you come up with that before my blogs get bombarded ?
I don’t want to go thru this hell, if I don’t have to.
Gee,
I just submitted the above comment and had to get my comment approved by the old image in a box trick.
Darren will not have any auto-submission problems and neither will you or I when he tells us how or what he used to do that.
Thanks for thinking along the same lines, Darren. Makes me feel almost Austrailian !
Darren et al,
And this is just my 2 cents… because of what happened with Aaron Wall, I decided to take a suggestion.
Make a decision about how you’ll allow comments, post a permanent comments disclaimer. A policy. Make it clear, concise and to the point. And then be firm, fair and consistent with it.
Something like the sign at the front door of a retail establishment – No Food or Drink etc. That is their policy. Unmistakable.
A customer who cannot comply with a store’s policy isn’t much of a valued customer. A reader who cannot comply with your policy isn’t that valued a reader.
Other customers see that you value their business and respect yourself. When you respect yourself you’ll earn the respect of others and those that don’t respect you, well, they have a problem and its not your problem.
Mark
I use the ‘Spam Karma 2’ plugin which if it considers a comment suspect for some reason (many factors are considered) it gives the commenter a chance to prove their comment to be not spam by solving a captcha (the image thing you refer to).
Personally, I don’t mind a comment sig. But lately, several of my blogs are getting spam comments. (Maybe it has something to do with being on blogger.com.) They’ll usually be something like “Awesome blog! I have an awesome blog too. It’s at …”. Sorry, but your comment, if it’s legitimate, is presumably about a particular posting or even an entire blog. It’s NOT a vehicle to tell people how great your own blog is (most of the links end up being splogs). But if you leave a link, I’ll go visit your site and decide for myself whether your blog is “also awesome”. Presumably, readers of my blog(s) will see your comment, maybe link, and decide for themselves.
Since these could potentially be innocent comments, I gauge whether they are so by what kind of blog the commentor has. Who the heck am I to do that? Well, i’s usually pretty obvious whether a blog is a legitimate blog or a splog.
The most brazen commenter left a long list of hyperlinks to their own sites. This list must have been 3 or 4 browser screens. Wow. The sheer gonads some people have. I AM an opinionated S.O.B. (though still open-minded), but I believe in some etiquette and decorum.
raj
Mark Wade (#60 above) pegged what I think is the only answer to this:
Allow signatures, or don’t allow them, but the important thing is to have a clear policy one way or the other. Then you’re not emailing people to ask them to stop doing something they had no idea was wrong—it’s either right or wrong, and if the policy is made clear, most people will obey it.
I think it’s bound to happen from time to time since some people spend time in communities (message boards, email lists) where signatures are commonplace and encouraged.
I’ve never had a problem with links, and allow them in our forum signatures.
My Blog doesn’t typically generate many comments- si it isn’t an issue.
It really is in issue of whether the comments are big part of your site’s draw.
In a forum, it is my belief that the more people post, the more they get their sig link viewed.
The more they post, the more content we get.
Oh- and the fact that nobody can be everything to everyone.
Links are what makes the internet what it is.
If, for instance, Darren was the only one doing this shtick then I’d have no need for a favorites button…HA
Granted, this site is at the top and in bold with flashing arrows and auto-generated on roll-over- but hey, we all need a little diversity in our lives.
Besides, we don’t need to create a signature in a comment box that doesn’t have one- our usernames serve that purpose just fine, and I’ve seen some very good sites becuase of it.
Go ahead- test mine to see how it works! ; )
LOL!!
I know myself I have done it in the past, and I can confirm that Darren did write a very polite email asking me to stop doing it for his blog (which I have). Personally I do it as I don’t want to have to remember which blogs have it where your blog address is in the title and those it isn’t. I find it easier just to add it to the bottom of the email and be done with.
If people have a problem with that, and ask me nicely to not do it anymore, thats fine by me.
JMTC
Molly
I see it this way: I want to participtate at a good, quality blog like ProBlogger (as well as a handful of others). I do this by commenting not on every post Darren makes but ones that I’m interested in. Hopefully people will see over time that I make useful comments and not just “Me Too” ones – I actually try to add my 2 cents worth.
And, as well, I see it as branding myself. As you see I use – Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) – in the name field. People can either click on it or hopefully remember my brand name.
BTW, Darren, what’s your view on how I use the name field as I do – it’s your blog so out of respect I’d be willing to change.
Having a sig, I’m with Darren here a little. I can see it getting out of hand pretty quickly. Can you imagine the “Me Too” or one line comments just so a sig shows up.
But then, the last thing you want to do is to turn people away. If you over-regulate then poeple might get shitty and just leave. There has to be a little give-and-take here. We’re here to comment on a post (add our 2 cents worth) but we are also here to promote ourselves, lets not beat around the bush here … it’s a win/win for all: Darren gets the accolades of having this extremely popular blog (as seen by the constant commenting) and we get our 15 seconds of comment fame.
I’d say lets give the sig thing a try but only 2 lines: the URL and a one line tag.
Hi Darren
What an interesting read.
I have a few thoughts that will stir up the conversation a little
From what I have seen, the blackhat SEO guys who are doing the most obnoxious spam, are targetting the most successful blogs, with the best traffic and PR. It is a major problem for you, and I fully respect that. You also attract a lot of people who pop by your blog to leave a short comment almost daily, just to get a backlink.
Now for some time I have been monitoring the results of one marketing guy, using some automated comment software. It doesn’t target WordPress at all, just Blogger.
I was doing it to learn a little about SEO, but I had absolutely no intention of using the software. I look on myself as an ethical blogger, even though some of my blogs are commercial, though many bloggers see any blog carrying an advert as polution.
Over the weeks, I saw increasing good results on Yahoo. Lesser so on MSN and Google, and it made me think.
The more I saw success the more I thought about a way to use such a piece of software in an ethical way.
You see it doesn’t just post a comment, it also pings the blog, thus keeping it fresh in the eyes of the search engines.
Because of the way that the person was using it, and the quality of his copywriting, bloggers were not deleting his posts, they were engaging him in conversation, and whilst the first post was automated, he followed thorugh with manual comments on those blogs that proved to be active.
But I still wasn’t convinced it is something I would use.
Once there was finally proof that it could work on Google and MSN too, I had serious sleepless nights thinking of a way this could be used ethically.
Recently I posted one possible solution on my niche website blog, and since then I have been discussing it on Warrior Forum fairly extensively.
Whilst some people think of this as 100% blackhat, I was still hovering in the grey area. It was enough for me to write about it on my blog, and I made clear it was not for people purely with the intention of spamming. Everything is down to how it is used, it is just a tool after all.
You see here is my problem. I have some of my blogs hosted on Blogspot.
We all know that Blogspot offers very little in the way of features compared to WordPress. You have no easy control of linking, no facility for contact forms etc.
I also thought if I was going to undertake a linking strategy with other blogs, I would do it in a similar way to submitting articles manually.
Pre-prepare some comments which are fairly generic, maybe even specific questions that would be suitable to ask on 20 or 30 expert blogs, and then use a set of bookmarks to visit the blogs and post comments.
At the same time I would encourage people to come and comment on my own blog.
I then argued that if what you did was then automated, there could be potentially an ethical method of doing it.
Now during the discussions on Warrior forum, it has been a fairly productive brainstorming session. That can happen during a prolonged discussion on a forum. It sparks all kinds of things in your head.
If I was to approach a link exchange with a Blogger hosting on blogsite, most likely the only form of contact available would be the comments.
So if I manually wrote the following in a comment, I would deem it ethical to make the following post.
“Would you like to swap links? Just post a comment somewhere on my blog, I won’t delete it, take care, Andy”
But I like to automate my business a little if I can, just like people use mail-merge in their autoresponders. We all know that the “Dear Andy” is automated, but we don’t mind, and it attracts our attention nontheless.
Thus if I used an automated tool to post the exact same comment to 20 or 30 blogs per day would that be ethical.
Remember you are using the preferred method of contact on the blogs. There are Captchas on email acconts now too remember – people then just don’t receive emails from your autoresponder that they requested.
So now we are getting to the whiter side of grey.
Ah but, they often will get more benefit than I do, my blog is PR4 and gaining, and I am using Haloscan which doesn’t have NO FOLLOW, so they get a greater benefit from the link on all search engines.
Even more so, I am pinging their blog after the comment, so if it had been dormant, it suddenly gets brought to life a little.
Now this still isn’t 100% resolved in my own mind. In the discussions people are still claiming that even a comment asking for a link exchange is “defacing blogs”.
What gets interesting is that my blog post is now 2 days old.
I used Technorati tags such as “splogging , blog spam , blogging , blogger” – I wanted people interested to read it and respond.
I haven’t yet received a single comment on the post, despite close to 200 visitors.
I am starting to draw some aditional conclusions from that. The average blogger whose blog is only read by a few people might actually welcome many of the comments, and might jump at a chance to exchange comments.
Maybe the professional blogging community is feeding their own fire. This is a problem for them, in the minority, and it could be said that is a penalty for success. Most are technical enough to at least install a plug-in that can help manage the spam.
So the pro-bloggers and seo experts are fighting it out with the blackhats, and the little guys are left with noone reading their blog.
Can proposing cross commenting be looked on as ethical?
If it can, then for a little guy to automate it might also be just as ethical
Hmm that is a long comment, I hope it gets through the filters
Take care
Andy
Hi Darren ~
Earlier in this thread you stated:
“Nice process Angela.
the other thing to factor in is that too many outbound links can actually have a detrimental impact upon your blog’s rank in Search engines….probably not a problem for most of us with small amounts of comments on blogs – but maybe it has an impact….
maybe I’m clutching at straws and should just let readers do what they want. :-)”
You are right ~ too many irrelevant outbound links can have a negative impact on your blog’s rank in Search Engines… but you have to remember that’s only part of the equation. There are so many other things that factor into the rank and in your case ~ I don’t think you have too much to worry about because you are clearly well established and have something good to offer.
On the other hand I do not feel you are clutching at straws and I don’t believe for a second you should just let readers do whatever they want to. You maintain and operate credible sites and if you allow them to become inundated with spammers, snake oil salesmen OR folks out to “self promote” at your expense then you may actually work at alienating good people that don’t want to wade through the mess.
What I do not understand is why people are not satisfied with the options that are given to them when they sign up on this site to leave a comment. Each person gets to fill out their name, e-mail address, and url of their own choosing. Why isn’t this enough?
Perhaps you should change the way your comments display:
68. Tyler (http://example.com) says
….
Displaying the URL (linked or not) would help those who don’t realize the name is a link. While it doesn’t ‘personalize’ the link with a targeted description it might be a sufficient compromise to signatures.
In email, forums, even the rabidly anti-commercial USENET newsgroups, having your URL in your signature has always been considered perfectly acceptable. My first experience with blogs left me wondering why no one used a signature in comments, though I did have the good sense to mostly refrain from commenting until I had a grasp of the medium. (It does seem a bit ironic that a blatantly pro-business website would be more anti-signature than the blatantly anti-commercial folks on USENET.)
For those coming from any of those other venues or even new to the internet completely, a signature URL is intuitive for the reader. Clicking on someone’s name when you see “Darren says…” is not intuitive. And since it’s for the readers and not the search engines, what’s intuitive for readers is what’s important.
Another minor point. Because the “website” form field in WordPress by default isn’t long enough to see the whole URL and because both Firefox and Internet Explorer autofill form fields, I keep leaving an RSS feed in the form by mistake. I would venture to say that I’ve probably been careless and left an address of someone else’s blog in comments on occasion at various places for that reason.
I could actually read a signature and see that I wasn’t doing that. :)
[…] I’ve been following the debate recently over using signatures in blogs and I’ve come to the following conclusion. […]
Aussie bloggers roundup
In his state of Australian blogging post, Trevor Cook has produced what looks to me like an excellent overview of the Australian blogosphere. There are links to a number of notable bloggers and some great comments.
SEO Myth Busting – Does Rank Leak Exist And Are We Suffering From PageRank Paranoia?
Rank leak is an often speculated, rarely proven concept within the search engine optimization community. The premise is that if you load a page with too many outgoing links you will lower the PageRank of that page. It is a reasonable conclusion given …
[…] I believe speculation on things like rank leak is symptomatic of a problem within the SEO industry, and I certainly exhibit signs of the illness myself. I call this problem PageRank Paranoia – an obsessive compulsive disorder where webmasters pay so much attention to their PageRank and search engine optimization practices that they become paranoid and overwhelmed, paralysing their decision process. I understand there is a need for anti-SPAM measures and we all know that good SEO practices lead to a better performing website, but when people start to question every little link placed on a page I think there is a problem. Campaigns like the no nofollow and Problogger Darren’s recent discussion of signatures in blog comments are further evidence of this potential epidemic. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be discussing the matters, but perhaps taking a step back and evaluating how much time we spend on certain activities is in order. […]
Signatures are ok if they are little and haven`t many links
I think that all aboth guys are said is true!
[…] 1. I love comments on this blog – they are as important as anything I write myself. They add to the knowledge and community that we have here. If you want to comment then you’re more than welcome – whether you feel you are a beginner or an expert – feel free to have you say. 2. I delete spam – I have spam filters in place which automatically catch the majority of automated spam comments. I don’t put up with it and if any slip through the filters I delete it immediately. 3. Relevant links in comments are encouraged – if you’re leaving a comment on my blogs and want to point to a link on your own or someone else’s site that is relevant to the topic then please feel free to do so. This adds to the conversation and improves the blog. 4. Irrelevant links are not encouraged – if you leave a comment with a link in it that has no relevance to the post you’re commenting on it will be deleted. This is a trend that I see happening increasingly on this blog. If you really want to annoy me then the way to do it is to do this on multiple posts. If you engage in this practice I would encourage you to think about the impact that such an approach has upon your reputation. Build your blog’s profile through genuine interactions and participation in the community here by all means – but spammy linking in comments could do more damage to your reputation than it is worth. 5. I allow signatures in comments – we had a debate over this a few months ago. My gut reaction to signatures in comments is that I don’t really see the need for them and see them as verging on the spammy end of comments. However after seeing the debate that came out of expressing this opinion I decided not to delete comments with signatures as long as the comments were relevant and added something to the conversation. ie if you write a comment that says ‘nice’ or ‘good post’ or ‘great blog’ or ‘try viagra’ and then leave a signature on your comment then it could well be deleted. […]
I meant to comment on this item way back when, but I seem somehow to have posted another comment, irrelevant to this discussion, for which I apologize.
Fascinating discussion, especially in what it shows about various assumptions about what the blogosphere is or should be, what annoys some people intensely and washes over others.
I actually like the idea of people being able to visit the blog of a commenter – any other attitude in my view indicates a disengagement from the concept of the blogosphere as a conversation.
I hink multiline sigs are inappropriate for blog comments but it seems to me we have a category problem here, in lumping in a linked url with a multi-line sig. And there is an underlying assumption which is contradicted by the system on at least one blogging platform, and maybe on others.
On Blogware which I and many others use through one or other reseller such as BlogHarbor, the link from the commenter’s name is not directed to the commenter’s url. It actually links the name to the commenter’s *profile* which they had the opportunity to complete – and include their url – when they opened a reader account or blogger account for Blogware sites. And guess what, not everyone completes their profile!
So I actually get frustrated for the commenter, especially when that person is a more dedicated blogger, when there is no way for me or my readers to find out who they are or where their blog is. So I am in the process of posting a request to people to *include* a url if they don’t want to go to the trouble of filling out their profile.
BlogHarbor are looking at whether there is a better way to manage all this.
Even so, I do not feel that the link from the commenter’s name is intuitively evident to the reader new to the world of blogging. Steve Krug wrote a great book about web design, called Don’t Make Me Think. I’m all for making it simple for people to follow through and not have to think about some insider knowledge about blog navigation. And if it is one of those “Awesome blog! Like mine at ….” I have a delete key which I use without compunction.
Help Me to Help You: Leave a URL Link in Your Comments
I’d be surprised to find a blogger who doesn’t like the idea of someone finding their site via a link …
Sorry, but your comment, if it’s legitimate, is presumably about a particular posting or even an entire blog. It’s NOT a vehicle to tell people how great your own blog is (most of the links end up being splogs)
A LOT of the people who read Darren’s comments, which is what even the original post is, will blindly do whatever he says, without even thinking. It’s human nature to follow a leader, it’s not like he’s doing anything wrong. They look for people to tell them what to do and will do it without thought.
I thought the comment from “David” on 26th December might refer to my comments, so wondered who “David” might be – when I clicked on his linked name I found an online pills store with a picture of a pleasant looking man in a white coat but no indication of a blog or of whether the man in the white coat might be David :) No doubt “David” has a curious sense of humour? Or is it just comment spam? Darren?
very amusing – not sure who David is – but I’m happy to leave the link mainly because his comment is relevant to the post. odd link to link to but in the scheme of things not too much of a worry to me as I have no follow tags in comments anyway.
I think people shouldn’t be allowed to promote their own blogs simply by replying to similarly related blogs. If they have a non blog site, then they should be able to leave that link for their efforts in responding to your topic, as long as the response addresses the topic.
Mark C.
The bottom line is that I’m feeling re-energized about blogging, more focused, and I’m looking forward to the remainder of the month in this makeover process. At the end of that month, I’m confident that I’ll know how to make my blog sizzle “ and I’ll proudly display that Blog Squad seal of approval!.
thanks
I think people shouldn?t be allowed to promote their own blogs simply by replying to similarly related blogs. If they have
a non blog site, then they should be able to leave that link for their efforts in responding to your topic, as long as the
response addresses the topic.
Your website is beautifully decorated and easily navigated. I have enjoyed visiting this site today and hope to visit many more times in the future.
Will Memphis win it all? I doubt it. My money is going on Georgetown, Texas, or Kansas. But ya never know..
Somebody could come up and win it all from nowhere. But please enough of Florida already!
I bet a lot of them don’t know about nofollow tags, so they just think they’re creating a bunch of backlinks.
Darren said – don’t most blog readers know that if they want to read more from a commenter that they just click their name?
No. Many blog readers don’t know that. I agree with a lot of the previous comment leavers who said it’s not intuitive, it’s not spelled out anywhere, and bloggers new to blogging aren’t going to know that, just like they’re not going to know a multitude of things we’ve all learnt and are still learning.
Also a lot of bloggers on “blogger” who comment, the link to their name leads to their profile if they are logged in to google when they comment. Considering I read blogs with google reader, I’m always logged into google when I’m commenting. ;) So I got into the habit of leaving a little cut and paste signature with my name and a link to my blog. People can copy and paste it if they want to, it doesn’t get turned into a link by blogger. I don’t use ahref to do it because some blogs don’t allow that.
At first most of the blogs I read were on blogger, but as I’ve branched out I’ve begun to read wordpress blogs, typepad blogs, blogs from many different platforms. Some of them were treating my comments as spam (akismet seems to be the major culprit) simply because of my signature.
Then I became a part of the no follow movement, and found out that some wordpress bloggers did not like me leaving the links because they were using akismet and it put me in the spam bin and they had to go to all the effort of digging me out. I felt like I needed to give them a tissue, just so they could get over it. ;) And guess what, I don’t visit those blogs or leave comments on them anymore.
I have now stopped putting the little link under my signature and I noticed an interesting thing – the search term snoskred has become the number one way people are finding my blog. I feel terrible that people have to google me to find my blog and wish I could go back to leaving that signature block on all blogs again.
It’s difficult for a blogger like me. It’s such a slap in the face when someone thinks I’m a spammer, I was just doing what I thought made sense. I even wrote a little thing about it and put it on my sidebar.
So just in case anyone is looking for me, you can find me at www dot snoskred dot org – and maybe that is the better solution for me long term. Nobody can accuse me of trying to get a link or be a spammer if I use that, right?
I won’t be surprised if I’m wrong on that one, too. :(
Snoskred.
Signatures are ok if they are little and haven`t many links
I think sigs in links are good, as it keeps a users web surfing experience interesting.
Think about this: If you visited 10 new websites per week for the next 40 years, it would only be 20,800 sites…there are millions onilne.
Here’s mine.
http://www.themodernman.com/top_5_mistakes_with_women_vid.html
Cheers
Dan
I’m definitely very late to this conversation, but I agree that signatures (and the inevitable links they contain) are completely okay. As long as the person is contributing to the discussion it doesn’t really matter to me.
I believe that when you comment in a public forum (and also give someone the ability to make those comments) there is the expectation that there will be some type of self-promotion. We run blogs so that people will read our thoughts, and we work hard to promote them. Well, if someone leaves good comments and helps to build the value of your site you shouldn’t be surprised when they do the same. The line, however, should be drawn when it’s nothing but link spam.
As far as knowing that clicking on someone’s name will bring you to their URL? For the most part I disagree with that. I think most people that are just browsing sites and not well versed in the comment realm will just think it’s an email link or something and not bother. Besides, I like to see a URL or description of where I’m going – you won’t find me randomly clicking on people links.
With that being said, here’s my sig :) A single link with a tiny description – not so bad, right?
—–
ForceTrainer
Find out how two geeks manage to get into shape without killing themselves at http://www.hardbodygeeks.com
ya i only leave my site if it has anything to do with the post or thread otherwise i don’t and i consider it as spam.
It is a general practice to put your site name in comments. i do not think there is any harm in this, if your comments are genuine.
I came across your discussion after doing a search on how to add a signature to a blog comment and I’ve found it very interesting. I’m stunned that it’s been going for over 3 years now and is still attracting interest. But having looked at different blogs it does seem that there is still no standard – some commenters do add signatures, some don’t, so maybe this one will just keep running…
I’m very new to blogging, just in the process of setting up my first blog to support a new website. Although I was aware of blogs before they aren’t something I’ve spent much time looking at until recently, and I can confirm that I didn’t know that clicking on the commenter’s name would take you to their website or blog. In fact I just discovered it today! And anyway sometimes it doesn’t do this, or it takes you to some sort of profile instead.
I do agree that someone’s name is unlikely to tell you much about their website/blog unless they’ve chosen a name that specifically relates to it (as some people clearly do looking at some of the earlier posts), but it does seem that blogging, and commenting on other people’s blogs is being promoted as a key way to generate interest and traffic, so in this context including your sitename in your signature would seem to make sense, as long as you don’t go overboard with it. It’s a lot more subtle than some of the other in-your-face methods that some people seem to choose.
Thank you for helping me build my knowledge about blogging. I hope I’ll eventually have a blog that people will want to read and make valid comments on too!
And I’ll be back for more lessons in responsible blogging…
Hi,
I don’t think that leaving a sign in blog is a bad thing. It is interesting . i think other visitors have no problem with it and they will also appericiate.
I just noticed what you said: “I have no follow tags on most of my blogs”.
So you expect US to bump up your blog without giving US anything in return? I am soooo outta here.
The ‘privelege’ of commenting really isn’t all that big a deal since that act also helps sell your blog.
Um… BillinDetroit? I just checked YOUR blog… Comments in your blog are nofollowed also.
By your logic, the only reason the majority of your entries don’t have comments is because you nofollow them? I doubt that anyone reading gardening blogs really bothers to check for that and then decides that no, you’re not worth reading what they have to say.
If you don’t want to leave comments on this or any blog, ONLY because the link you leave doesn’t get you any Google juice, then you’re not in it for the community effort, you’re in it solely for self-promotion, and well, that’s just kind of uncool. Especially when you make such a hypocritical statement like that one.
If you’re such a fan of followed links, I suggest you take a look at home base before you go attacking others for their (honestly, quite valid) reasons.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I am new to the ‘blogging/comment’ world and have left my site after I express my comments. I didnt realize it could be thought as a bit over the top. So going forward I will stop doing it. So much to learn…..