Two New Tools in the Fight Against Spam: No Follow & Soft Blocking

[Eric Suesz]

We’ve been working hard to remove the ability for spambots to penetrate your Ning Network with bogus accounts. Beginning today, we have two new weapons in our arsenal: No Follow and Soft Blocking. These new approaches should make Ning even more safe and secure for your members. 

No Follow

Spambots attempt to create as many fake accounts as possible, which then attempt to post as much content as possible. Any content that is posted by a spambot will, of course, contain a link to some Web site somewhere. The more links a spammer can build up, the higher up in search those spammy links travel in Google search — until they are ultimately near the top of Google’s search results, competing side-by-side with legitimate businesses. 

One way to take away this incentive for spammers is to add a special tag which tells Google to ignore such links when compiling their search results. This is the “nofollow” tag. With No Follow, links work fine. Click on them and you’ll still go to the same place, but those clicks won’t be calculated in Google’s search results. This thwarts one of the major reasons behind a coordinated spam attack. It can be very effective. 

How will this affect your Ning Network? The No Follow tag will be added to all links posted by members on blogs (including comments), forum posts (including comments), and profile comments. There are a few key exceptions:

• Links from NCs and admins won’t get the No Follow tag. Obviously, there’s no danger of you posting spam on your own Ning Network, so the No Follow tag won’t be added to any of your links. 

• Links on the Main Page won’t get the No Follow tag. We want to ensure your Main Page loads quickly for your members and avoid performing any additional analysis that could affect your Main Page’s performance. 

Soft Blocking 

One of the unfortunate side effects of beating spam is that occasionally the rules that are created to catch spammers can catch a legitimate member. We’ve had reports of this, and we take it very seriously. We’re doing our best to ensure members aren’t blocked from using Ning even if their account is flagged in error. To help combat it, we’ve instituted soft blocking.

In the past, when suspicious accounts have been blocked for an excessive rate of posting, the account has been prevented from signing in to Ning. Now, when an account is blocked for excessive posting, that account will be prevented from adding comments, updates, blog posts, forum posts, and photos and videos — content. However, navigation and browsing won’t be affected, just the ability to post content. After a set amount of time, a soft-blocked account will be allowed to post again. Most important: Anyone who experiences a soft block will receive a clear error message, along with information on how to proceed. 

Of course, if you ever have problems signing in or participating on your Ning Network for any reason, we encourage you to open a Help Center ticket, and our advocacy team will investigate the details. 

[Jen]

Thanks for your comments Kris. I'm not concerned about my site. I'm concerned about member links. That's it. I don't necessarily encourage linking to my site, due to so many small networks. I like helping the small guys, if that makes sense.

I'm done with my opinions on this - - and I mean that in a positive way. I know I can't change anything. Ning knows how I feel about it.

Best Regards,
Jen

[FedMedic]

Wow yourself, that was quite harsh. I'm sure that's not at all what Jen meant, she's one of the best things that has happened to Ning and the Creators. She picks up the slack and offer information we all should be paying for. I'm sorry for butting in, but I just couldn't just let that one fly.

By the way, what was constructive and productive about the comment you made?

[Jen]

MJH, I simply cannot believe you would say this to me. I don't know how anyone could misconstrue what I just said "small business person", and come off with how you interpreted it. Make your battles with others. I don't deserve it, or need it.

[Jen]

Thank you very much FedMedic. I truly appreciate you recognizing the real meaning of what I said. And, I also thank you for your kind and supportive comments.
Best to you,
Jen

[Eric Suesz]

I don't think Jen had that intention, MJH. She's one of the most helpful people who are on Creators. I think you may have misconstrued what she means.

[The PL Team (d&e)]

MJH...

[Jen]

Thank you.

[Scott Bishop]

Here is what Matt Cutts (currently the head of Google’s Webspam team) had to say about the nofollow attributes that Ning has recently added: "I wouldn’t recommend it (nofollow), because it isn’t the most effective way to utilize your PageRank."
Ning has everything I want for a great looking and fun website but it's pretty useless if no one can find your website via Google search engines.
Ning needs to let us have control of turning off this nofollow attribute especially now that we have to pay!... and more SEO control.

[Phil McCluskey]

Hi Scott,

Matt Cutts isn't recommending that people don't use nofollow in that post; he's specifically recommending that people don't try to use it within their sites in what is known as pagerank sculpting. This would typically involve assigning nofollow to internal links in order to try to boost pagerank on particular pages.

I understand the desire to have control over whether nofollow is applied to profile page links though and I'm hopeful that at some point this will be handed over to Network Creators to manage.

Thanks,
Phil

[Scott Bishop]

Thanks for that Phil!
It's starting to make sense to me know.
-Scott

[Almir]

I'm a bit confused now... Eric, are "nofollow's" only for external links or for internal too ? If this is for external links only, then I don't see what's the problem unless some use the Ning as directory (Jen, I think) but it could be solved with creator posting the link as it would not be nofollow then...

Nofollow would keep lot of spammers folks, only tiny portion of spammers spam their links to get clicks from them, most of them do that for link building purposes

[Jen]

I strongly feel it should be the Network Creator's decision.
:-)