Friday, July 11, 2008

A Translation, if you will

So, after some befuddled commenters and confused phone calls, I guess I should clarify my last post.

As a blogger, your presence on the internet is tracked, and that's not a bad thing. If you consistently blog about a topic, someone could Google that topic and be led to your blog. That's advantageous because your experience can improve your reader's experience. For example, when I track visitors on my Site Meter account, I know a lot of people find my blog by searching keywords that lead them to information about Zachary's birth story. Perhaps as they're searching those scary things, my experience will prompt those people to pursue prompt medical attention. Because of certain information on my blog, maybe their baby will live where mine died.

The gathering of information or tracking topics for search engines is done by something called "spiders." Though they sound scary, internet spiders are little more than computer programs that track word usage.

What I explained in my last post is that spammers used to take over the comments section of blogs, linking people to their sites. While that still happens, it's more difficult and the no-follow attribute makes the process less desirable for spammers.

The "do-follow" movement essentially makes it better for people to comment on your site because Google search engines will track a frequent commenter, which in turn will benefit their blog. My changing the no-follow attribute will in no way send spammers to your site or jeopardize your blog in any way. Essentially, my last post was a lot of mumbo-jumbo that says "Commenting on my site is cool!"

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