Tuesday evening, search engine company Google announced an initiative to foil so-called "comment spammers"--promoters who send comments to blogs or other Web pages. Such comments actually contain
links directing visitors to the promoters' own Web sites. Google, in its own blog, proposed that software developers agree to add a "nofollow" tag, which Google will then use to block certain
hyperlinks from getting extra credit in its search results rankings.
"This isn't 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," wrote the blog authors, software engineer Matt Cutts and blogger program manager Jason Shellen. Nine blog
software manufacturers have already agreed, according to Google.
--W.D.