Blogger abuses rel-nofollow due to ignorance

I had planned a full upgrade of this blog to the newest blogger version this weekend. The one and only reason to do the upgrade was the idea that I perhaps could disable the auto-nofollow functionality in the comments. Well, what I found was a way to dofollow the author's link by editing the <dl id='comments-block'> block, but I couldn't figure out how to disable the auto-nofollow in embedded links.

Considering the hassles of converting all the template hacks into the new format, and the risk of most probably losing the ability to edit code my way, I decided to stick with the old template. It just makes no sense for me to dofollow the author's link, when a comment author's links within the content get nofollow'ed automatically. Andy Beard and others will hate me now, so let me explain why I don't move this blog to my own domain using a not that insane software like WordPress.

• I own respectively author on various WordPress blogs. Google's time to index for posts and updates from this blogspot thingy is 2-3 hours (Web search, not blog search). My Wordpress blogs, even with higher PageRank, suffer from a way longer time to index.
• I can't afford the time to convert and redirect 150 posts to another blog.
• I hope that Google/Blogger can implement reasonable change requests (most probably that's just wishful thinking).

That said, WordPress is a way better software than Blogger. I'll have to move this blog if Blogger is not able to fulfill at least my basic needs. I'll explain below why I think that Blogger lacks any understanding of the rel-nofollow semantics. In fact, they throw nofollow crap on everything they get a hand on. It seems to me that they won't stop jeopardizing the integrity of the Blogosphere (at least where they control the linkage) until they get bashed really hard by a Googler who understands what rel-nofollow is all about. I nominate Matt Cutts, who invented and evolved it, and who does not tolerate BS.

So here is my wishlist. I want (regardless of the template type!)

• A checkbox "apply rel=nofollow to comment author links"
• A checkbox "apply rel=nofollow to links within comment text"
• To edit comments, for example to nofollow links myself, or to remove offensive language
• A checkbox "apply rel=nofollow to links to label/search pages"
• A checkbox "apply a robots meta tag 'noindex,follow' to label/search pages"
• A checkbox "apply rel=nofollow to links to archive pages"
• A checkbox "apply a robots meta tag 'noindex,follow' to archive pages"
• A checkbox "apply rel=nofollow to backlink listings"

As for the comments functionality, I'd understand when these options get disabled when comment moderation is set to off.

And here are the nofollow-bullshit examples.

• When comment moderation and captchas are activated, why are comment author links as well as links within the comments nofollow'ed? Does blogger think their bloggers are minor retards? I mean, when I approve a comment, then I do vouch for it. But wait! I can't edit the comment, so a low-life link might slip through. Ok, then let me edit the comments.


• When I've submitted a comment, the link to the post is nofollowed. This page belongs to the blog, so why the fudge does Blogger nofollow navigational links? And if it makes sense for a weird reason not understandable by a simple webmaster like me, why is the link to the blog's main page as well as the link to the post one line below not nofollow'ed? Linking to the same URL with and without rel-nofollow on the same page deserves a bullshit award.


• On my dashbord Blogger features a few blogs as "Blogs Of Note", all links nofollow'ed. These are blogs recommended by the Blogger crew. That means they have reviewed them and the links are clearly editorial content. They're proud of it: "we've done a pretty good job of publishing a new one each day". Blogger's very own Blogs Of Note blog does not nofollow the links, and that's correct.
  
  So why the heck are these recommended blogs nofollow'ed on the dashboard?


• Blogger inserted robots meta tags "nofollow,noindex" on each and every blog hosted outside the controlled blogspot.com domain earlier this year.


• Blogger inserted robots meta tags "nofollow,noindex" on Google blogs a few days ago.

If Blogger's recommendation "Check google.com. (Also good for searching.)" is a honest one, why don't they invest a few minutes to educate themselves on rel-nofollow? I mean, it's a Google-block/avoid-indexing/ranking-thingy they use to prevent Google.com users from finding valuable contents hosted on their own domains. And they annoy me. And they insult their users. They shouldn't do that. That's not smart. That's not Google-ish.

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