"Fantastic post. I will certainly be returning to read more."

[Tom]

Some clod must be advising that putting this remark on somebody's blog post will gratify the blogger and earh the writer a free link. This is untrue: it gets you marked as a spammer.

[David]

True, net etiquette dictates that any comment or reply to a blog article or forum post should add something to the dialogue/debate. Comments such as the inane example here would (in most cases) be considered spam. There are exceptions, such as where a respondent is thanking a poster for information given in response to a previous question or as part of ongoing dialogue between two or more individuals.

So, thanks Tom.

[Tom]

I get so many blog comments on these lines, always with a retailer as the URL, that I think some imbecile must be recommending them in a book. Anyway, I mark them all as spam using the Askimet filter in Word Press.

[Will]

It's the fault of these self-proclaimed SEO experts telling all of their customers in their 'ebooks' and newsletters to build a following by posting in blogs everywhere and anywhere they can. These are the same geniuses who then email out to everyone and sundry asking for a link back to their page, however irrelevant the page may be (David gave some excellent examples this week in Website Planning). I don't think they're aware of the prevalence of the no-follow links either (that suck the link-juice right out of the links) which hamper their attempts at PageRank sculpting via blogs/forum spamming.

[Tom]

Illegitimi non carborundum.

[David]

Fantastic thread Tom, I'll recommend it to all my friends .

[James]

I run a few Wordpress sites, they all get this comment sent in. I am going to sign up to Askimet although I often wonder why Wordpress does not come with Captcha.

If these people think there is SEO benefit in this, they are sadly mistaken. I have established that no PageRank at all is passed through links to unrelated websites. So assuming the retail links are not garden retailers, they are wasting their time.

Perhaps they hope to get click throughs rather than SEO.

Going off topic, if I link to a photography/design related site from my website, PageRank minus one is passed on. If I link to something in an unrelated industry, no PageRank at all is passed on.

[David]

if I link to a photography/design related site from my website, PageRank minus one is passed on. If I link to something in an unrelated industry, no PageRank at all is passed on.

Interesting James, do you know this for a fact? Surely, part of the algorithm is to do with the number of inbound links too. Otherwise, all you'd need was one link from one PR6 site to give your own site PR5.

[James]

I linked to two sites about 6 months ago:

http://www.easyphotobook.co.uk - it went from PR0 to PR6 in a few weeks with no other link building activity. There have been a few more minor links acquired since then but it definitely went to PR6 on the strength of the one link.

http://www.oakleafgardening.com - this is a site my wife Sam is putting together. No PR was passed on after 3 months and I removed the link in the end. I assumed this was because there is no relationship between stock photography and gardening.

AND

http://www.royaltyfreephotos.tv - another domain I own that went from PR0 to PR6 after I linked. I have recently removed the link as I want to see if/when the PR is lost. It is still PR6 and I removed the link about 3 months ago.

[Tom]

The stats are amazing and I much look forward to hearing the results of your experiment. There is a great need for empirical research on the web - what do you think about doing a PhD on this?
I got this enlightening comment today: 'I am really thankful to this topic because it really gives up to date information'