Can having dofollow comments on my blog affect its reputation

Okay. We have a question from Brett in Michigan who asks, "Are there negative

SEO implications to having a blog with do-follow comments? What about commenting on do-follow blogs?" It's a good question.

So, let's break it down.

The first part, "Are there negative SEO implications to having a blog with do-follow comments?" The short answer is that there can be.

So, we just did a post on our Google Webmaster Blog where we specifically talked about blogs that get comment spam on them and how that can affect the reputation of your site if your site has a ton of comments spam on your blog or forum or site in some way.

So, if you have do-follow comments, what that means is the comments on your blog flow PageRank.

So, you don't have no follow every single comment flows PageRank.

So if a bunch of people who were spammy or scuzzy or generally low quality are commenting on your blog, then the sites that you're linking to can--in thatway be spammy or scuzzy or low quality.

And that can affect the reputation of your site.

So that's something to be aware of it.

Ifyou let it be a complete free frawl and scuzzy people show up and point to their cheap Viagra, debt consolidation, porn, whatever sites and there's no editorial discretion on your part and you just link to all of that, that can affect your reputation. So, the second half of the question is, "What about commentin on do-follow blogs?" Well, typically not because you can't really help who links to you.

So it could be some other guy commenting on a do-follow blog and trying to send some spam anchor text to your way.

So typically, you really--because you can't control who links to you and how they link to you that's something that being out of your control, we try to be very careful about to try to make sure that it doesn't affect your site's reputation or hurt your site in some way.

Now, if you do want to comment on do-follow blogs, be aware that there aren't that many of them and so they tend to get a ton of comments and so the actual PageRank that's flowing out gets divided between all those different commenters.

So, the value of those comment may not be worth as much as you would like.

So, just a couple of factors to bear in mind there, but if you allow anyone to have PageRank from--just leave a comment on your blog and your website gets deface and a bunch of spammy stuff gets linked to, that definitely can affect the reputation of your site overall.