Google, Submission AdSense and NoFollow Letdown

John Battelle is reporting on his blog that word has leaked about a possible new API from Google that would allow sites to distribute AdSense earnings to individual members based on submissions or participation. From the article: "To toss a bit of cold water here, however, I've never seen UGC sites as the least bit driven by money. They are driven by pride, the desire to be first, reputation, whuffie. But dollars? That often screws it all up. I guess we'll get to see soon enough..." Relatedly many users are calling the 'nofollow' tag "Google's embarrassing mistake". Justin Mason is just one of many to take a look at the current status of nofollow and what may still be in store for that particular tool.

Comments

Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly

[Kelson]

There are three main reasons nofollow has failed to stop webspam:

1. It misjudged the root problem -- page rank isn't the only thing spammers are looking for. This is the main point of Justin Mason's post, if I remember correctly. (I read it at home a few hours ago, before it showed up on ./, and of course now I can't pull it up here.)
2. It relied on near-universal implementation. If even 50% of blogs, wikis, etc. used nofollow, it would still be worth the spammers' effort to blast comment spams to the entire net.
3. It got applied incorrectly, as a blanket label on all links from non-admins.

What nofollow could have been useful for is a simple "I don't endorse this link" statement so that you can link to sites you dislike without adding to their fame. But applying it to all user-supplied links in blog comments, slashdot threads, wiki pages, etc. diluted its meaning, and as a result, diluted its usefulness.

Re:I know of sites that already do this.

[DrEldarion]

Imagine it at work @ Slashdot though: 5+ Funny == 5+ bucks.. I could get into that..

Sure, but it goes both ways. -1 offtopic? Pay up, bucko.

Incidentally, that would do wonders for spam...