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Yahoo, Google, MSN Announce Joint Effort to Kill Comment Spam

Thread Title:
A Defense Against Comment Spam
Thread Url:
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000069.html
Thread Description:
Jeremy Zawodny is (i think) the first to announce the unilateral Search Engine initiative to cull comment spam.

'm pleased to announce that Yahoo! Search is one of several organizations in support of a technique that should help combat weblog comment spam. Others involved are: Google/Blogger, MSN Search, Six Apart (TypePad, MovableType, LiveJournal), and WordPress.
By adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to hyperlinks, webmasters and weblog owners can tell search engines that the links are effectively untrusted.

and

We think this is a good first step toward significantly reducing the spam burden on bloggers and weblog hosting companies. It's great to see so many players on board. In the coming weeks you can expect to see the changes reflected in our web index.

Six Apart - Google and MSN Onboard

Jeremy points to this announcement at six apart, the company behind TypePad and MovableType and also these 2 posts from Google and MSN

Jeremey, are you being a bad boy and breaking the news before the agreed time? hehe...

- Y! MyWeb

Y! Blog

I just posted this at the Y! Blog

Quote:
Jeremy, im impressed at the unilateral agreement between engines and 6A but im positive that this will do very little to cull comment spam.

MT will be shipping this as a plugin - spammers will just redouble their efforts to hit blogs without the plugin - even if in future releases they build it right into the system proper, im sure you can imagine the enormous amount of blogs that will not get updated - will not get the plugin - will not read any of these announcements, newsletters etc...

This is impressive. But as far as solving this issue goes, it will be ineffective.

By Nick W at Jan 19 2005 - 00:31

bBlog

bBlog will support this too. It already has a method of approval for comments, I think the way I'll do it is rel=nofollow for non-approved comments, and then for legit comments the rel=nofollow will be removed.

By eadz at Jan 19 2005 - 02:37

The Register, May 2003:

The Register, May 2003: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/05/09/google_to_fix_blog_noise/

It was a good idea then, it's a better idea now.

By rcjordan at Jan 19 2005 - 02:42

Unilateral?

Way to go eadz! I think that's the way that a lot of people will handle it eventually.

BTW, NickW I'm not getting where you're calling this unilateral? Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are all going to support this tag. And many of the blog software makers are signing on:
Brad Fitzpatrick - LiveJournal
Dave Winer - Scripting News
Anil Dash - Six Apart <-- This is TypePad and Movable Type and LiveJournal
Steve Jenson - Blogger
Matt Mullenweg - WordPress
Stewart Butterfield - Flickr
Anthony Batt - Buzznet
David Czarnecki - blojsom
Rael Dornfest - Blosxom

This is about as un-unilateral as I've seen the web be--everybody is getting in on this. I believe MSN Spaces will be signing on too.

The Google post is here: http://www.google.com/googleblog/

Looks like several people are already committing the patches:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_dev/669384.html

By GoogleGuy at Jan 19 2005 - 03:21

cool

I found a way to break the comments section! Other companies include

Steve Jenson - Blogger
Matt Mullenweg - WordPress
Stewart Butterfield - Flickr
Anthony Batt - Buzznet
David Czarnecki - blojsom
Rael Dornfest - Blosxom

sounds like MSN Spaces is signing on too.

Some people are already committing patches:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_dev/669384.html

The Google post is here:
http://www.google.com/googleblog/

By GoogleGuy at Jan 19 2005 - 03:22

Unilateral

Just my misunderstanding of the word is all, nothing sinister :) It's something you hear often but rarely get an opportunity to use - i didnt think i needed a dictionary for it: I was wrong heh...

Im siding with RC on this though: Non event of the year.

By Nick W at Jan 19 2005 - 07:10

Fighting Weblog Spam with rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;

Six Apart's Jay Allen writes about a new cooperative venture between 6A and search engine companies to deny spammers PageRank......

By 8 Ways to Sunday (trackback) (not verified) at Jan 19 2005 - 18:23