One of the things that happened over the summer while I was on my blogging hiatus was the launch of the “Do Follow” movement. For those that haven’t heard about it, it’s basically a group of bloggers who have realized that having comments and trackback links automatically default to “No Follow” isn’t really a good thing. (And it certainly hasn’t stopped the number of people attempting to spam comments).
The core concept behind the Do Follow movement is something I genuinely support. I’ve always moderated my comments, so anyone being a jackass never makes it live. Those that do make it through are either personal friends or trusted colleagues who I wouldn’t have any problem “vouching” for.
But the overall implementation of the idea in my opinion has been pretty poor. When I browsed through the many Do Follow Blogrolls or Do Follow directories, I found quite a few blogs that I would consider either poor quality or sites that are promoting things (selling text link ads or blog reviews) that I personally don’t want to be connected with. (From a linking standpoint).
I also noticed that for the most part, being part of the “movement” hasn’t really helped improve the level of participation in the majority of the blogs on the list. I think the biggest reason for that is the fact that the only real requirement to get on the list was to install a Do Follow plugin, and then put a copy of the list on your site. In the end, that just created a clever link swapping scheme. So once people got their sites added to the list, their support for the concept went away.
When everything was said and done, I found that the highest quality “Do Follow” blogs I cam across were ones that I found by accident. They weren’t on any published list, and they also weren’t displaying any kind badge that announced to the world that they support “Do Follow.” They were just great blogs being run by people who took the time to remove the link condoms, install the appropriate spam plugins, and dedicate some time to proper comment moderation.
Blogs with those qualities are the type of sites I’d like to spend time on. And those types of blog owners are the kind of people I would love to have comment on my blog, and in exchange for their commentary, I’d be more than willing ditch the love glove.
But there really wasn’t any easy way to find and connect with these types of sites. So I thought I would borrow an idea from Lee and try and put something together.
We have begun the process of collecting and categorizing feeds from quality sites that are not on any of the published Do Follow lists, and do not display any information declaring that they are a “Do Follow” blog. Once we have a good quality list built, we’ll turn it into an OPML file so it can easily be uploaded into any feed reader. The Do Follow OPML file isn’t going to be available to the general public.
So how can you get a copy?
Pretty simple really. Just help us build the list. If you have a blog that you think would be worthy, just visit our submission form and submit it. We will review your site and then make a decision on whether or not we will include it. If we do decide to include it, we will provide you with a copy of the OPML file, plus provide you regular updates as the list grows.
In the meantime, if you would like to start the process of going Do Follow, you find a great list of plugins here.
Comments
29 Responses to “ The Do Follow OPML Project ”
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Greg, the community on Bumpzee will soon have OPML, we are just waiting for Jangro to get bored of making money with all his affiliate sites.
We have to give the guy a break because he makes serious cash from his Halloween costume site this time of year.
http://www.bumpzee.com/no-nofollow/
Yes I can spell “board”, but it is 5am
In fact ignore that, I did spell it right for the correct context
lack of sleep is almost the same effect as a night on the town
I remember that movement starting a few months ago. I thought of doing this on my blog, but since most of my competitors comment on my blog I have been reluctant to do so.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 25, 2007…
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web…….
Greg, how about submitting good blogs of others that match your requirements? Will that put the submitter on the user list of the OPML list? Or just your own blogs and no exceptions?
I’ll consider submissions from people other than the owner of the blog. But it would need to be a new blog that we don’t already know about.
[...] The Do Follow OPML Project, Greg Boser [...]
The Do Follow OPML Project…
The core concept behind the Do Follow movement is something I genuinely support. I’ve always moderated my comments, so anyone being a jack#@& never makes it live….
[...] Boser’s Do Follow post posted on October 27th, 2007:Written By: ShoeMoney [...]
[...] applaud Greg Boser's efforts to create a hand picked selection of Dofollow blogs around a specific niche, though he will find many of the blogs in the Dofollow community on Bumpzee are high quality, but [...]
Out of curiosity Greg, how are you going to use this list? Are you going to post it, there by creating another published “dofollow” list–this time with some sort of “quality” stamp?
[...] jerk” of brandnew or low quality blogs “dragging on for months”, announced that Greg Bozer is setting up a dofollow list for ‘quality’ blogs, and then tells us she’s [...]
I just “Bumped” my own blog and another local Portland search marketing blog out of a certain Dofollow community (sorry Andy) in an effort to comply with your requirements for inclusion.
Neither blog ever advertised with a graphic or published a list, and both have now been submitted through your form…
Thanks!
Just added my blog. Don’t know why anyone hasn’t done this earlier. The use of OPML seems to be picking up though. You would think when it involves blogs, it would be a given though.
It is too bad spammers ruin things for the rest of us that don’t participate that way. I am curious about the no follow/do follow. This is 1st I have heard of the movement (glad I visited
How does someone know whether or not the blog has a no-follow protocol?
@Bill,
The best way to see that a blog has a no-follow protocol is to use the firefox browser with the searchstatus extension, visit the blogs and look for pink boxes around the “author” links, If the pink boxes are missing on some or all of the author links, the blog is dofollow.
There are a variety of plugins permitting bloggers to dofollow to a greater or lesser extent, so you will either see absolutely zero pink boxes, or only a few, as at my blog. I dofollow only after a visitor leaves 3 links, and the comment count displays, so you’ll see the comment count next to visitors names.
We just posted a new DoFollow plugin. http://www.gregboser.com/dofollow-plugin/
[...] you won’t have to worry… Greg Boser has been working on the DoFollow OPML project and is offering a WebGuerrilla Version (download) of a plugin called DoFollow for [...]
Cool. Better get cracking on my new blog. Sounds like a cool list.
[...] (AKA Web Guerrilla) here here and here. You know what I was just thinking? Real Estate Marketing Do Follow BoDog Social Media Santa Clarita. Did I mention his [...]
Greg are you getting bombed with a lot of spam comments since you went to do follow? Or do you have something installed to take care of that specifically? I know some do follow bloggers only do follow those commentors that visit them regularly.
I have been thinking about doing a do follow blog but I want real conversation on my blog not people writing stupid shit just to get a link back to their site. If I thought I could prevent that I would do it in a heart beat.
[...] Do Follow OPML Project [...]
I have been running a manual follow/nofollow system so I will certainly give this a tryout.
[...] rant on about all day, but it is 30′ and sunny outside & I want to go surfing). These people in the know have started the dofollow movement, where they properly moderate their blogs/sites and manually [...]
I changed over my blog from NoFollow to DoFollow about 3 months ago. I believe that it was a very wise decision.
Yes. Of course I get spam… but that was expected. Some of the spam is actually pretty funny to read. But, I don’t mind the spam comments so much. I just mark it as spam and then move along. Takes me all of 10 seconds.
It has boosted my traffic and the amount of comments that I receive. I like the fact that I am giving back to the Blogosphere, by giving people some link-love who actually take the time to read what I wrote. But most importantly, It has made me care more about my blog and what I write.
I would encourage everyone to switch their blog to DoFollow
[...] I could rant on about all day, but it is 30′ and sunny outside & I want to go surfing). These people in the know have started the dofollow movement, where they properly moderate their blogs/sites and manually [...]
Its a good thing more people are starting to switch on their do follow blogs, the only thing u will get is more traffic and spamm