I have just integrated Disqus comments service on my blog. Main reason is Google’s PageRank flow NoFollow change that Matt Cutts recently announced:
So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed?
Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (Nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page).
Google has now changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.
For background information on Google PageRank, internal linking and PageRank flow please read: Optimize Link Juice Flow To Improve Google Rankings.
NoFollow links now take away your PageRank juice
Nofollow links still don’t pass PageRank and still don’t pass anchortext so they don’t help sites rank higher in Google’s search results. But nofollow links now take away PageRank juice from your blog. By default all the links in comments section in WordPress are nofollow.
This means that your nofollow links in comments of your blog, and in my case I also had links to Twitter usernames of commentators, will be leaking a lot of PageRank value from your non-nofollow links.
And they are leaking your PageRank to no use as they do not help anyone rank. The result is that your blog is losing valuable PageRank value flow and your important internal links get less PageRank juice.
Less links means more rankings
The more links you have on a page, the less PageRank value each link will get. The more links (follow or nofollow) you have in comments, the less PageRank value is passed onto your normal, non-nofollow links in your blog navigation, blog sidebar and your blog content.
In regards to optimizing your blog’s chances of ranking well in search engines, the solution seems to be to keep nofollowing links you do not want to pass your link juice to but more importantly to try to restrict and limit the number of links as they all take away from your pagerank value.
What does Disqus have to do with this?
Disqus uses an external javascript in the comments section, the so-called iframe. The comments actually reside on a different page and Google doesn’t crawl / follow that.
So now it means that I will have a lot less outgoing links in my blog articles to take away my pagerank juice as Google will not follow any of the links from the comments section. Majority of my pagerank will be distributed within the links in my internal blog linking structure which means that I may be able to rank better.
The problem created with the PageRank flow change seems to be solved with this implementation or is it?
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All I can do is laugh. Its funny how those of you such as yourself care so much about your PR. As long as it doesn't mess with your page ranking in google for the #1 spot you shouldn't care but you guys and gals really care about getting a PR5 or PR6. Give me a break.
Whoa. Lots to discuss here.
First and probably most importantly: Please ignore the comment from Deneil Merritt. It makes no sense and is insulting and rude.
Now … to get serious here.
I have concerns about your theory of using Disqus to avoid “leaking” PR from your site. Googlebot is not reading the *files* in your home directory. It is crawling your site's post-PHP and / or post-Javascript parsing HTML. That means, basically, that Googlebot sees exactly the same thing that I see when I do a “View|Source” on your site. The fact that you're using Disqus (or Javascript or AJAX or anything else) is irrelevant. You're still “leaking” PR via these links exactly as you were before you switched the comments system.
I just did a View|Source here and the link to Deneil Merritt's website is there and will be traversed by Googlebot, for example, just like it would have prior to implementing Disqus.
You'll do more to increase your site's PR by making sure all of your HTML is valid than you will by obfuscating the (minimal) outbound links in your comments section. Right now the 75 errors — http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A//www…. — in your site's code are making it tougher for Googlebot to read easily. That impact is greater than anything related to your comments.
I will quickly note that of course you want to be running Aksimet (or some similar comment SPAM detection system) because a ton of outbound Viagra links will certainly harm your reputation.
But you must balance that with the fact that the majority of people leaving comments on your site are more than likely going to leave links to similar content. (My blog is not a good example of this, sadly.) Let's say you have a site all about Hemingway. Most of the people that leave comments are probably talking about Hemingway on their site's too. Googlebot is going to note that the destination of the outbound links in your comments are to site's with similar content and therefore think favorably of you as a resource for information about the author. That — and I'm just theorizing here — seems like it's more valuable than any amount of PR that you're “leaking” by including those links.
Just my two cents …
@Deneil Merrit – Anyone who is serious about making money online should care about their page rank (it determines how much google traffic you will get, and search traffic is the most valuable there is). The more pr you can flow form your homepage to your subpages the better.
The only reason I don't like the nofollow changes are that I think nofollow links did used to count a little but, but now iframe links don't count at all(or so 'they' say), so now commenting on other peoples blogs for traffic and links isn't as effective(but still is effective for the traffic if you do it well and a lot).
I wish google didn't have such a giant share of the search market share so that they didn't have so much say in how people constructed their websites, but then again its nice having to only really optimize for one engine.
@Marko – You might consider switching off 'link to full article' in Thesis Design Options > Teasers. Those make up the bulk of the nofollow links on your homepage. I just did that on my thesis blogs.
Peace
DVG is absolutely right – and in both ways. First – that the fully rendered HTML is all Googlebot is ever going to care about. Second – that caring about your PR is more important than a few #1 rankings. Why? Because I can make a PR3 sote rank #1 for “Rhinocerous Nipple Piercings” – guaranteed. Higher PR means you'll rank for HARDER keyphrases. So yes – ignore Deneil's post, because he clearly doesn't know what he is talking about.
Thanks for that link. Somehow majority of those errors came from Feedburner links and the “comment number” in Thesis teasers on the front page. All fixed now. 0 errors! Need to make this check a regular routine.
Good tip! I was thinking of that. I will test it out without “full article” links for some time to see how it goes. I am more concerned about usability in this case than SEO as many people click on “full article” instead of the article headline.
I agree with not reacting to the nofollow scare just yet as this update has been in place over a year and to be honest I have seen no difference to my blog or the amount of PR/Traffic it receives.
HTML Validation is a minor ranking factor if it is one at all. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-fa.... I have ranked blogs for competitive keywords with over 650 errors and had no problem getting google to crawl the content and no crawl errors appeared in my webmaster tools. Blogger a Google owned platform, never validates, yet blogger blogs sit at the top of Google in some powerful niches.
There are hundreds of factors that cause a sites PR to decay and I think nofollow links have a minimal effect. Look at the big sites filled with no follows, wikipedia, twitter etc etc… You don't see their PR evaporating?? Also the great Matt Cutts himself still has nofollow comments and uses the attribute on his rss feeds.
I really think there is no need to worry.
This is my point you care far too much about your PR.
Wrong. There are a lot of webmasters that make a nice income from their websites that have PR0. I can name name a person that did and still do it. I even did it for awhile. PR means nothing until you give it meaning.
But with PR we easily get new traffic for their new updates.
PR + Great Content = Traffic
More Traffic = More Money
I think I know what your trying to say Deneil, that PR is a different concept to SERP position. This is correct and there are many other factors that go into the Google ranking mix other than PR. However PR still counts and a higher PR shows a higher level of trust from Google. A higher level of trust helps you to rank for keywords on deep pages as you have a greater domain trust.
If you have a home page your targeting at one or two keywords, you optimise it and anchor all your texts in links, yes you will rank highly for that keyword, but if you have a low PR you will rank for less keywords on your domain as a whole.
I'm sorry Kelly but your wrong on this one.
“DVG is absolutely right – and in both ways. First – that the fully rendered HTML is all Googlebot is ever going to care about.”
Html is a minimal factor, if one at all. You will find this backed up on any authoritive SEO site. I have a site with 632 html errors, guess how many crawl errors I get? none. Guess how many 'competitive keywords I rank for? Over 100 in the top ten results.
“Second – that caring about your PR is more important than a few #1 rankings. Why? Because I can make a PR3 sote rank #1 for “Rhinocerous Nipple Piercings” – guaranteed. Higher PR means you'll rank for HARDER keyphrases.”
PR is a ranking factor but it is far from the major one. Relevant links, link age, increasing content, anchor text, link popularity, link diversity and on page optimisation are some of the many things that make up higher rankings.
eg.
Alan liew – http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/ – ranks number 1 on google.com for “make money” (actually might be number 2 now)
His PR is 2
His blog template has hundreds of validation errors
“make money” is one of the most competitve key phrases on the planet
I don't mean to sound stroppy or cause offence, just trying to clarify some incorrect points that have been made.
Many would think so. Build the right amount of backlinks with author text for any page and you will be on the first page of google for your given keywords. No matter if you have PR0 or PR5.
People should focus more on their position in google rather than what PR google gave them. This is just my view on things.
Good points Tim!
Just to clarify, I didn't change to Disqus because I was afraid that I might start losing the rankings I have now, I changed because I think that if I already rank for stuff like “how to make a blog” that by optimizing my pagerank flow I might rank better and also rank higher for other keywords and not only those that come from my domain name. So basically proactively trying to improve my SEO, not just trying to defend what I have now.
And from what I see until now it also improves my comments section and the community feeling. Will write more on Disqus later.
Great I look forward to hearing more about it.
It's strange because it shows error for stuff like “align justify” and shows an error for each time I use it in my formatting. And I do use it a lot in every post.
I've checked other blogs and each one has 100+ errors so maybe not something to concentrate for SEO, but more for speed / performance of the blog itself.
Ye I got 19 or so errors for similar things.
To be honest it makes little difference to speed and no difference to rankings/SEO, insignificant.
A lot of SEO companies claim part of their job is to validate html, but it makes no difference to rankings and it's a way for them to bump their prices up. Plus all they give you is report you could create yourself, they don't actually waste time amending it for you.
Tim you have some really good points there. I totally agree.
Ranking for “make money” is a serious thing to do. I can't picture how long it took to even get in the top 10.
18 months if your prepared to build links daily
18 months of backlink building for that key phrase. hmmm… no thank you. I rather focus on other keywords that will take me month to 3 months before I take on that big task.
Hold the phone here.
My comments are getting misunderstood.
(1) The most important thing I said was that your implementation of Disqus is irrelevant. The fact that Disqus uses an external javascript file to display your comments in no way changes the way Googlebot views your site, so you had not changed anything. Your original post asked, “The problem created with the PageRank flow change seems to be solved with this implementation or is it?” The answer is definitely and 100% certainly, “No.”
(2) Anyone who says valid HTML has no impact on a site's ranking is foolish. I in no way claimed that valid HTML is the most important thing in the world when trying to get a page to rank highly. (Don't twist my words!) It may actually be of only *minor* importance. But it obviously has an impact. Googlebot is not a person; it's a script. It has to follow rules when it is parsing your HTML so that it ca determine where to go next and — more importantly — how to categorize and prioritize your site. If you make its job harder by having poorly-formatted HTML, it will have an effect. The effect may simply be that your site takes longer to crawl than someone else's site, but this fact — that well-written HTML is more easily parsed than invalid HTML — is one of the very, very, very, very concrete and 100% facts that we as webmasters know about Googlebot. Almost everything else is *theory*. And since having valid HTML is so simple to do, why not? (I always get a kick out of people that *brag* about having poorly-written HTML on their site. You're proud of this why?)
(3) And finally, backlinks are — as far as I'm concerned — the most important factor in determining how well a site ranks in SERPs. But this is only a *theory* and it is not very well-defended. There is very little definitive proof that this theory is anything more than a theory, and counterexamples abound.
Oh, and PS: My site has displayed PR0 for well over a year and yet I continue to get the majority of my traffic from Google SERPs, where I rank very highly for many terms.
Full disclosure: I spent four years (2002 – 2006) working as the VP of Technology for a search engine marketing firm.
Tim: Kelly wasn't supporting my comment about well-formed, valid HTML. He was supporting my statement in regards to the implementation of Disqus being irrelevant. Because googlebot reads the fully-rendered HTML of a site (and not the PHP or any other files), the fact that Disqus is an external Javascript call is not having any impact on the presentation of the comment links to Google.
Also: “Your” is a pronoun. “You're” is the contraction for 'you are'.
@DVG First of all thanks for the English lesson.
Second my response in this line of comments was a direct repsonse to Kelly's comment. The fact is html is the last thing any SEO should worry about. Here are some of the thought's of the most respected SEO's with regards to validation.
“If you can get designers to think that your stuff is better because it validates more of them will pay attention to you, subscribe to your feed, and link at your site. Otherwise, I believe validation is somewhat overhyped.” Aaron Wall
“Validation? Please, oh please, make it go away. Validation zealots just plain freak me out. Walking under ladders, breaking mirrors and stepping on cracks probably has more influence on your SERPs than validation.” Mike Mcdonald
“Adam Lasnik from Google mentioned that rewarding validation & accessibility of documents would be a 'slippery slope'.”Lucas Ng (aka shor)
I'm not bragging about validation, simply saying that from an “SEO” point of view it is irrelevant.
The fact I have a cheap blog on PR0 that out ranks PR 4 and 5 sites was not meant as a way of making my statement an authority, it was simply giving an example of why PageRank is only a minor ranking factor.
I have been working in the SEO inustry for nearly 7 years now, in house and freelance and specialise in ranking sites highly in Google. Having a fully validated site has never made any difference to a site I have worked with.
I appreciate your comments were directed at the plugin, all I was clarifying was;
Validation – Is a minor issue
PageRank – is again a minor ranking factor
@Tim,
Ah, okay. I just wanted to make sure that my original point was not lost: The implementation of Disqus for comments is not in any way changing how much PR may (or may not) be getting “leaked” from links in comments.
And as one more follow-up … If anyone has any idea why *my* site's PR has been zero for well over a year now, please give me a clue! I'm stumped. (And I say that with the caveat and full understanding and agreement with Tim and — shockingly — Deneil — that a site's PR is, for all intents and purposes, apparently arbitrary and meaningless in relation to its status in SERPs.)
@dvg
I had a look at your site with regards to the PageRank issue.
It lloks to me as though it is a simple toolbar error. Do you switch your theme much or have you in the last 6 months? Also have you set your preferred domain using webmaster tools? If not it can effect your PR profile and Google doesn't award PageRank as it's not sure where it belongs ie http://www.davidgagne or //davidgagne.
I have found that linking to “your” homepage from each post helps establish a consistent flow of PageRank, this might be something you want to try.
Apart from the above I am about as clueless as you, another Google mystery.
According to my tools your PR should be 4 and your domain trust is 4.37, so there is no problem with your link structure. Next update is due in August, if you haven't already update your preferred domain, link 10 – 20 posts back to your homepage and fingers crossed it will update.
All of my single post entry pages link to my home page via the header (and the “Home” link in the header), so I am not sure what you mean.
And yes, I updated my preferred domain a long, long time ago …
Very strange …
Yes of course, I nofollow my home link in the header and use the post content to anchor a link. Just preference.
It's really strange but if your ranking for keywords and pulling in search traffic, you don't have much to worry about.
Agreed. I of course want me code to validate but it really has little effect on search rankings.
Marko,
I've considered trying services such as disqus or intense debate but something about having my comments essentially hosting by a third party doesn't really site well with me. I'm just going to site tight and see how things work out for the time being.
I've been reading a lot about SEO pageranking and the like, but after some of the comments here I feel like sinking more in the SEO mud. So I take Jons advice and keep the comments on board for the moment
I have a question: I'm using Intense Debate commenting in my blogger site. are your assumptions for disqus still applicable for intensedebate?
I didn't look into Intense Debate to be honest so I do not know, but I believe it's very similar to Disqus so should work. You can probably find more info on their site / forum.
Not to be rude, but I think the first comment was spot on. Really guys, what does it matter what grade uncle Google gives you? It doesn't affect your SERPS in any way. I have a PR0 site, which has been ranked in 3rd position for a very competitive keyword with over 83 million results.
All PR does is create value for those who think PR has value.
Besides, iframing your comments is great,but what if the disqus servers fail? Bye bye comments. Oh, and not to mention the fact that Google will not count any of the new user-generated content towards your site. All those comments are indexed through the disqus site by Google. I'd happily lose my linkjuice if it means I'm gaining new content.
I agree with you Bob, and I think that people who is interested on PageRank mostly are the advertisers.. So .. People who created websites or blogs for making money from it they should be working to get higher PR all the time!
I found your post informative, helpful, and easy to digest.
You have got my best recommendation on this.
Keep this coming!
nice blog, thanks for the post.
nice post, thanks for the share
I don’t really care much about PR although I check from time to time. And I do practice dofollow and pass on the link love.
Great post! I think that PR is important to having a successful money making blog and to be able to drive traffic to your blog. It’s easy for some to say that it don’t matter, but it really does make a difference in the income status. Great job!
Shouldn’t the real factor in deciding what kind of option to use for your comments section be the actual commentors themselves? I would think making your comments section more appealing and user friendly would take precedence over what rankings you get.
Just my 2 cents.
The problem with that is that only a small percentage of your visitors actually comment on your blog. I think it is somewhere around 2% or so! So by making something according to those 2% and kind of ignoring the rest, is a pretty large risk to take.
Sir you have mentioned the great point here. I have also installed disqus comment form on my blog. I did not know about it before. So I think I have done good by putting disqus comment on my blog.
I disagree. Having your blog comments on an iframe can actually hurt your rankings, because it’s less content for search engines to crawl.
No-followed outbound links on comments won’t neither hurt your rankings nor the PR flowing to your important links. Google is putting much emphasis on the link position on the page and context, so PR flow is not a matter of X divided by Y anymore, it’s getting more and more semantical.