How to: Get rid of the nofollow attribute on your Wordpress blog
Posted by Jean-Baptiste Jung on Jun 12, 2008 in WordPress • 23 commentsWordpress, like many other blog engines, uses the rel=”nofollow” attribute in comments for the so-called fight against spam. If this was a good idea, it is totally ineffective, and in addition, a link with this attribute will not receive any credit by Google when they rank websites. It is therefore clearly in the interest of bloggers to get rid of rel=”nofollow” attribute.
The little history of nofollow
The rel="nofollow" attribute was introduced back in 2005 by Google. The idea behind this concept was that if a link would not affect Google, spammers stop their harmful activities. If the idea was excellent , any blogger still receive dozens of spam comments daily.
If you own a Wordpress blog, there's a strong chance that the links in the comments are nofollow. Does this prevents spammers to try to post their links for Rolex and Viagra? Certainly not.
Moreover, when one of your readers leaves a comment on your blog, if he has a website, he'll probably fill the url field and make a link to his own blog. But as the link does have a rel="nofollow" attribute, it will not receive any credit by Google when they rank websites.
Of course, you leave a comment on a blog when you have something interesting to say, not just because you want to have more backlinks and a higher pagerank.
However, I think that when a reader writes an appropriate comment on my blog, he really deserves that his link should be counted as a backlink, and provide him – on the long term – a higher pagerank.
So, CatsWhoCode.com is a 100% dofollow blog. Any url on this website is counted by Google as a backlink. No nofollow either on my personal weblog.
Time to follow
You're convinced of the interest of turning off the rel="nofollow" attribute and you own a blog running Wordpress? Here's two ways to get rid of this non SEO-Friendly attribute:
Editing Wordpress core:
Modifiying Wordpress core is generally not recommended. However, this solution is kinda easy to implement if you don't want to install another plugin. The biggest drawback of this technique is that after you upgraded Wordpress, you must restart the operation.
To get rid of the attribute rel="nofollow" directly in the code of Wordpress, proceed as follows:
Edit the file-how template.php, it resides in the wp-includes directory.
Go to line 48. You should see this:
$return = "<a href='$url' rel='external nofollow'>$author</a>";
Then, you just have to delete the nofollow:
$return = "<a href='$url' rel='external'>$author</a>";
Just save the file, and you're done.
Using a dedicated plugin:
There are several plugins Wordpress that will work for you. The advantage of a plugin is that you'll not need to modify Wordpress core, and after you upgrade your Wordpress version, you'll just have to reactivate the plugin to re-delete the nofollow.
If a plugin is what you chose (good choice!), DoFollow 4.0 and Nofollow Free are both very good in my opinion. They're super easy to install: Just download the file on the author's site, upload it to your wp-content/plugins directory, activate it, and bye bye nofollow.
After you deleted the rel="nofollow" from your blog, don't hesitate to claim it! On my personal blog, I received more interesting comments after saying goodbye to this useless attribute.
Happy dofollow blogging 
Congratulations.
I made the same thing some weeks ago on an advice of alex (http://www.referencement-blog.net/) and his dedicated website for the dofollow cause
(http://www.dofollow.fr/).
I disagree. Comments should not get google cred. It complicates
things. If I want to follow someone then I will write a separate blog
entry with a link in it. Or put them in my blogroll, etc, explicitly
link to them. Otherwise people will always start putting links into
comments when they wouldn’t have before. You will have -yet another
layer to process- when moderating a comment. I like the level of
silence a link in a comment receives, I think it leads to more free
commenting. esp. since commenting is essentially discussion. What
about linking to things you hate? Then what? Blogging is noisy
enough, we don’t need to remove rel=”nofollow”.
There is still implicit value in the link because people will click on
it and the targeted people will see the referrer as well. So there is
value in that, not just in google cred. So I vote for keeping
rel=”nofollow”, it’s a good standard, but to each his own. I
generally assume (public especially) commenting uses rel=”nofollow”.
I will start not using rel=”nofollow” when it’s the default in
wordpress.
Thanks for sharing your opinions about the nofollow attribute.
I agree with you that people may use comments of a dofollow blog to only post link, sometimes without even any related topic to your post. It happens to me sometimes, and when it does, and when the comment looks like “Great! Thank you. Visite my site …” I just treat it as a spam.
But, I think an interesting comment like the one you just wrote have no reason not to be followed.
When you read lots of information online, it is an incentive to become more interactive with the blogs you frequently visit. I think if your audience is aware of DoFollow and NoFollow links then you should allow DoFollows. It may increase some spam, although I bet allot more genuine people will contribute as they are getting something in return.
If your audience is not at all aware of DoFollow links, then it probably won’t make any difference. I find most people who own their own blog/website and are regularly online, understand a bit about online promotion and links. So I’m sure they will consider these things before deciding to make a post.
I’m agree with you, Lee. Thanks for contributing
Hi Jbj,
I tend to agree with your take on the do follow comment. Yes, there can be more spam attacks, but for those who are ethical and legit, then they will make sure they are contributing to the discussion, and make on topic comments. I see it as a give and take, and you graciously give of the follow link, while the commentor, should be giving in adding great content to the post, and helping get more unique content for the spiders to crawl.
It’s too bad that people had to destroy a really good thing, but does’t that always end up happening?
Mike
Totally agree, Mike. A comment like yours totally deserves to be followed!
Thanks for the useful information. I participate in blogs ad forums on a regular basis. Whilst I frown upon spamming comments, I too believe that if a user has taken the time to contribute meaningfully and share his/her knowledge in web design, SEO or whatever the topic of the post, it is OK to expect a small reward in return in the form of a do follow link back.
I agree with the idea behind the dofollow movement and tried it on my blog for about a month, but eventually made the choice to return to nofollow. I want to reward my vistors with links, but it resulted in an drastic increase in spam. I had a lot of comment that weren’t “spam”, but simply the one line “nice post, thanks so much”. I’m not looking for anyone to kiss my ass for a link. All they have to do is leave a significant comment. I even allowed anchored linking as long as the comment was legit.
My current plan (once my site builds a little more authority) is to give my regular contextual links in some of my posts. This will help them more than the comment link anyways.
Not too sure if this is a silly question or not, but does blogger (blogspot) also have the nofollow attribute by default like WordPress?
@Grant: I heard that yes, but I think there’s a way to get rid of it on blogger too.
That is a nice Wordpress hack without having to use any plugins. Thanks for sharing the info. But does making a blog without nofollow hurt its search engine ranks?
I saw this tweak added on many blogs. Maybe to encourage users to comment ? who knows..
Anyway, that for sharing the MOD.
@VMOptions: I think not. I think paging those comments, like 20 per page will be ok. On blogs with too many comments, they were paginated. So the page will have as many outbounds as you allow.
dofollow websites are true life savers and rescuers of the web reason we know how diffult it is to gain good PR these days. and normally people go dull and hopeless within first 6 months when they see no pr progress of their website then comes the love of dofollow blogs they make hope and let people make their pr. if you ask me with natural link building these days it can take upto a year to make pr5.
but along with making dofollow blogs they take big risk of making their beloved blog spamhole so spammers should reconsider they kill the chance of benefit for normal people. i’ll also make my blog dofollow as soon as i get a good PR i am really scared that google may not panalize me for making it dofollow as for now, when i get a stable amount of readers that wont leave me ever i’ll make my blog dofollow. and there are many dofollow badges available that looks kool and really make you feel proud and the best of all they make you look different from many others
This is my special thanks to All Dofollowers you people just rocks bravo!
I totally agree, interlinking and using blogs as a social network is a great tool. The only way some of these blogs are found is by the extra credit they get from the “dofollow” via the search engines. There are some great blogs and dedicated bloggers out there, who put in a lot of hard work to get involved in the blogging community, not just to promote there own. Therefore this hard work should be rewarded. Good article!
hats off to you for making your website do follow.I’ve heard the debate back and forth for so long. Some people think that once you make yours site do follow the spam comments increase. But with the right plug-ins, I think most of those spam comments can be taken care of. Ask for keeping yours do follow.
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the website is
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Using no follow on comments will not damage your rankings.
I really like this article and I couldn’t agree more. The rel nofollow doesn’t stop spammers and using do follow doesn’t attract more spammers either if a blog is maintained the way it should be. And the no follow will not damage your rankings but they will not help either, because Matt Cutts has repeated over and over that no follow links are disregarded by Google. Spam should be fought with anti-spam measures and not with no follow.
i wonder when bloggers think that nofollow will help them with spam. they’d better use antispam plugins, akismet for example. or smth like this………
Anybody have a favorite between DoFollow 4.0 and Nofollow free?
I use the dofollow plugin, but haven’t added a badge yet… I just switched themes, so I’ll need to find a suitable spot for it
thanks. quite useful for me!!
but how to remove the dofollow attribute in posts and sidebars??