Google warns bloggers over comment spam

Google has taken a moment to warn bloggers over the potential harm that could be done to their blogs search rankings if they don’t take a proactive stance against comment spam.

We’ve all seen those annoying comments on blogs telling us where we can buy cheap Viagra, but did you know that Google takes a dim view of blogs that allow those comment on their sites?  Google announced this very fact on the Google Webmaster Blog this week, and says that if bloggers are letting it through, their search engine rankings could be negatively impacted.

While most bloggers do have some sort of anti-spam measures in place, Google does have a list of suggestions of what you can do to make sure as little as possible gets through:

• Disallow anonymous posting.
• Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming.
• Turn on comment moderation.
• Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field.
• Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
• Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.

All seem fairly easy, and isn’t it worth it to keep your good search rankings?

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