Battleangel

Google announced that it would start spidering for the rel=”nofollow” attribute.
The idea is that users start flagging hyperlinks on comment pages (automatically obviously) with a rel=”nofollow” link attribute in order to alert search spiders that a particular link shouldn’t be factored into Pagerank calculations.
I.e. <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>test</a>

I’m using that nifty SEO Pagerank plugin which already distorts ALL outgoing links, so I don’t think I’m gonna bother with this for now. Also, comment spam has been deflected properly since I installed the Blacklist plugin.

However, The Register brings up the nofollow initiative as a prime example of how the wired world is starting to fall apart. They quote Karl Auerbach saying that “The Net is balkanizing. There are communities of trust forming in which traffic is accepted only from known friends.” I hadn’t really thought of it like this before but I agree that this could soon be a reality. I’ve contributed to the phenomena myself as I don’t link much to other blogs and don’t use trackbacks. And then there is that SEO plugin. I really don’t see how this concerns me, however it’s a development that I’d like to avoid on a large scale. I mean, splitting up the internet into secure zones is just what we don’t need in these generally paranoid days.