I have been going back and adding "no follow" to years-old links so as not to dilute the value of my links.  I''m especially careful of the links on my front page since that seems to have the most impact.

- All links added to my comments seem to end up with 'rel=nofollow'. Every single comment I found a link in had the nofollow. I assume it's word press that does that.

- All the comments with links were useless comments with the intent to promote. I have followed SPF's initiative and contacted them to offer advertising opportunities instead. All such comments have been removed.

- My commentluv settings are set to nofollow

- I review all comments at the moment so I am fine with my process ...

This discussion was good for me as I will draw the line on who I accept comments from with respect to non-useful or pertinent comments.

Cheers!

Isn't it selfless promotion of each other?

 

Unfortunately, commentluv also leaves an incentive for people to take advantage and leave their links when they wouldn't otherwise come to your site. I'm not talking about fellow bloggers, like those of us here, I'm talking about those with spammy sites that do searches for sites with commentluv just to leave their links.

Agreed.  I'm noticing more search results with comment:"xyz".

As bloggers we should discuss more often, and employ, the use of URLs to cool articles in the links in our names instead of relying on a plugin.  If you have an article related to the one you are commenting on, or, an article you want to promote - then instead of linking to your home page in the "URL" part of the comment, leave a useful link!

Now that being said, i'm still attacking URLs to businesses with advertising solicitation and removing those links.  Lucky for us we don't get thousands, even hundreds, of comments daily.

Isn't it selfless promotion of each other?

Unfortunately, commentluv also leaves an incentive for people to take advantage and leave their links when they wouldn't otherwise come to your site. I'm not talking about fellow bloggers, like those of us here, I'm talking about those with spammy sites that do searches for sites with commentluv just to leave their links.

Isn't it selfless promotion of each other?

When you link to posts with low authority (read: no/low PR) you are stating you are giving them klout/props/whatever.  Your site's "rep" is being put out there.

So when no/low PR sites comment on your site (ever notice the "big" sites don't comment as much? - at least at our site!) you are spreading your authority thin.  Likewise, when a commentor puts their URL in their name, they are linking to their site - including business sites!  I've been contacting posters who use business links that links on our site are reserved for bloggers and business relationships and have been trying to convert some sales.  I've had 5 commentors inquire about our rates and may have just made a $500 sale today.

Link love is link love is link love - give it out judiciously.

@JT_McGee - What's the timeframe of your observation? It may be coincidental since I have been observing changes since June 6th. Things are moving around quite a bit since then and there's a rumor of another "Panda" release coming soon.

At any rate, I think you're making a good long-term decision getting rid of CommentLuv.

Addressing what you said second, first: you're probably right.

I discounted the data with correlations.  However, they aren't perfect, and I don't have any sites that would be direct competitors with MM, so the correlation is statistically weak, but relevant.  If you could, tell me, in general, what you experienced yesterday and through today, Tuesday, June 14.  If you're up, then I'll dismiss this.  Your input is very much appreciated.  

@JT_McGee - What's the timeframe of your observation? It may be coincidental since I have been observing changes since June 6th. Things are moving around quite a bit since then and there's a rumor of another "Panda" release coming soon.

At any rate, I think you're making a good long-term decision getting rid of CommentLuv.

 

I don't believe the rumors.   Google modifies their algorithm twice a day, on average.  Yes, they are updating what they did with Panda, but there won't be anything as major for a while.

At any rate, I think you're making a good long-term decision getting rid of CommentLuv.

MoneyMamba is a testing ground for new concepts/ideas.  So anything I learn from it will be applied on clients' sites that make more in a month than most people might make in their lifetime.  I am a perfectionist when it comes to learning and adopting SEO, but that's because I have to be.  

Bloggers generally don't need to concern themselves with small SEO issues, because engaging content is the product.  That isn't the case with commercial sites; only a few sites sell a product because they have good content.  They sell product because they get in front of the buyer.  Totally different thing, really, which makes me sound like a paranoid loon when I post here. 

CommentLuv by default was nofollow. Only recently they changed it to allow the webmaster to control (dofollow all, nofollow all and dofollow only registered users are some of the options if I remember right and the default was still nofollow). And links in the comment section were always discounted by google? as the whole section was byfault nofollow unless you went out of the way to make it dofollow (I am a novice, so I might be wrong). 

 

I am NOT disagreeing with your analysis, but I have to say I am a little skeptic. If one nofollow link in the comment section could diss the site so much, how come all the sites that sell links are still doing fine? Google might catch up, but they might also be doing gazillion different things, right? How can you find out exactly 1 thing that is hurting the blog? Panda update didn't only hurt some sites but they were good to some sites as well. So the other sites which you didn't see might have come up? If I learned anything from the panda update, it is just this – it was not a one day process. Google seem to be constantly updating stuff. One day I rank higher in SERP for a specific phrase and the other day I go down for the same phrase and come up for another. I am not doing anything different, so how can this be explained?

 

As you said having any plugin is the webmasters choice. So I am not questioning your analysis (which is great, I always wanted to learn more about my traffic but never managed to do it) or about anyone wanting/removing any specific plugin. I just have an academic interest.

For the record: I had mine set to dofollow, which I had adjusted early after installing it, and long forgotten recently when I removed it.  I should have noted this–I forgot this was an option you had to tick, and even that it was an option you could tick.  This answers a lot of your questions.  All comments on my site got a dofollow.

The major realization for me was that the site as a whole had been performing poorly.  Also, where this commenter had left their link, these pages had dropped 30-40 spots to stay there as reported by webmaster tools, and my own daily tracking.  (I database all daily position changes for all my sites.  I can tell you how any of my sites ranked for keyword X on one specific day, and in 12 different geographic areas.)

I'm interested academically, too.  Criticism helps us get to the truth of the matter, which is definitely my goal.  Peer review is important in every study.  I should have mentioned that CommentLuv on my site was set to do follow.  I wish I had remembered that I could go back to nofollow.  At any rate, I'm going to leave the site as is for at least another 2 weeks to gather more data.  I've already made the switch…might as well make it worth it.

SPF made important points there.  Any time you give link love, you give link love.  Comments are discounted in their benefit to the commenters, but not in their cost to the site.  Low PR isn't really the deciding factor in quality, though, as a high or low PR is not based on authority, but links.  There are plenty of high PR sites (pharamacy sites, for example) that have a high PR, but are considered "bad neighborhoods."  In general, PR is pretty worthless.  Linkbuyers still go stupid for it, though.  Pagerank is green crack.