Does Spam Comment Links on Blogger effect your Blog SEO or Traffic?

Bloggers probably know more
about comment spam than
anyone else. It is really
annoying to write an article
about one thing, and see
completely off-topic
comments, possibly spam
ones that make no sense
whatsoever. People usually
do it in order to increase
backlinks to their own
websites. But does that work?
And how do these spam
comments effect your
website? In this post, we'll
address some of the popular
questions regarding this
topic, and will look at how
you can help reduce
comment spam.
Effects on SEO
Speaking from a SEO
perspective, if you nofollow
blog comments, there will be
no consequences for spam
comments on your blog.
Whenever Google sees the
attribute rel="nofollow" with
a hyperlink, that links doesn't
get any credit with search
ranking.
This doesn't mean a negative
vote for the site where the
comment was posted; it's just
a way to make sure that
spammers get no benefit
from abusing public areas
like blog comments,
trackbacks, and referrer lists.
However, for the spam
commentators, if Google sees
that you have a sizable chunk
of your backlink profile
dedicated to link comments,
you're bound to get
penalized. If these links come
regularly in an unnatural
amount/manner, you'll see
your site get penalized.
What can you do?
Not much, apparently. Just
make sure that your blog
software is upto date. Major
platforms such as WordPress,
Blogger, Flickr, Live Journal,
etc have all implemented the
rel="nofollow" attribute for
comment links.
However, if you're more than
just a blog, it is
recommended that you use
the rel="nofollow" attribute
anywhere that users can add
links by themselves, including
within comments, trackbacks,
forums, testimonials, etc.
Comment areas receive the
most attention, but securing
every location where
someone can add a link is the
way to keep spammers at
bay.
So, should you put this
attribute on the link t any
comments page? Probably
not, because lots of
interesting discussion can
happen there. Also, if other
people link to your comments
page, a spider can follow that
link and find any spam that's
lurking on the comments
page.
The best places to add this
attribute are the actual links
that other people can create.
So on this page, for instance,
only the links within
comments and the link
immediately after "Posted
by:" would get the
rel="nofollow" attribute.
Google will recognize the
"nofollow" keyword even
when it's part of a space
separated list. According to
the HTML spec, the value of
the 'rel' attribute is a space
separated list of link types.
For that, Google practices
what can be described as the
"be liberal in what you
accept" philosophy, which
means recognizing spaces,
commas and, in fact, most
punctuation. But it is strongly
recommend to use spaces as
separators to follow the
specification.
So, what're your thoughts on
this? Leave your 'good'
comments in the section
below. Cheers :P