A Minor Tweak for the Top Commentators PluginWritten by Abdulrehman on November 24th, 2008
According to John Chow’s blog, a poll with a topic ‘Why do you comment on a blog?’ was conducted which had a total of 599 voters, 43% of them indicated that they comment on a blog for traffic. I suppose only 10% people comment with an intention other than getting traffic, and bloggers like me put up a top commentators widget to reward them for commenting. As a part of getting good ranking for keywords on search engines, people use those keywords instead of their name to get a good position on the search engine results for that specific keyword. But since the top commentator’s list shows the name used with the number of comments(which are the part of the link). If you don’t know yet, it will not help you in SEO.
For example, I commented on a few blogs with my name ‘Abdulrehman’ and after getting on the top commentators list of about 5 blogs, after a week I did a search for my name on google. Not even tenth page showed up my website, then I search for terms like “Abdulrehman(3), Abdulrehman(18), Abdulrehman(7)” and for each my website showed up first which means I was SEOing for these terms, which means that I can do little or nothing about it about ranking for the search term ‘Abdulrehman’.
So being a considerate blogger, I care for my commentators, and for their convenience removed the comment counter from being being a part of the link, it still shows up but as simple text, not a part of the comment. It will not do you any harm for doing such a favor for your commentator as it is really easy. All you have to do is make little changes to the Top Commentators plugin. Here’s what you’ve got to do:
- Open Dashboard.
- Click Plugins.
- Scroll down and look for the Top commentator plugin’s row, in front of it there will be a link ‘Edit’, click it.
- Right click in the text-area and click Select All, Paste the entire content from this text file into it and click ‘Update File’. Alternatively you can check step 6.
- You’re Done
- As in this image, look for this part in the text-area and cut and paste the code shown in the picture and then click on ‘update File’:
Once you’re done making the adjustment to the Plugin, and the number of comments with every commentator is not a part of the link. If you experience any problems, feel free to ask me. If it works without any problems, do leave a few good words! This is for the good of your commentators, now 3arn.Net is even better for commenting.
Update: An update of Top Commentators widget came on January 5th, the link to the text file in the article has been updated, but now there are two places where you have to make this changing in case you do not copy/paste the content of the text file. Search for the same thing 2 times on the document and do as told in the article two times, one will be for using Top Comentators with their Gravatar and the other for the simple text top commentators widget.
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23 People have expressed themselves on“A Minor Tweak for the Top Commentators Plugin”
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According to John Chow’s blog, a poll with a topic ‘Why do you comment on a blog?’ was conducted which had a total of 599 voters, 43% of them indicated that they comment on a blog for traffic. I suppose only 10% people comment with an intention other than getting traffic, and bloggers like me put up a top commentators widget to reward them for commenting. As a part of getting good ranking for keywords on search engines, people use those keywords instead of their name to get a good position on the search engine results for that specific keyword. But since the top commentator’s list shows the name used with the number of comments(which are the part of the link). If you don’t know yet, it will not help you in SEO.
For example, I commented on a few blogs with my name ‘Abdulrehman’ and after getting on the top commentators list of about 5 blogs, after a week I did a search for my name on google. Not even tenth page showed up my website, then I search for terms like “Abdulrehman(3), Abdulrehman(18), Abdulrehman(7)” and for each my website showed up first which means I was SEOing for these terms, which means that I can do little or nothing about it about ranking for the search term ‘Abdulrehman’.
So being a considerate blogger, I care for my commentators, and for their convenience removed the comment counter from being being a part of the link, it still shows up but as simple text, not a part of the comment. It will not do you any harm for doing such a favor for your commentator as it is really easy. All you have to do is make little changes to the Top Commentators plugin. Here’s what you’ve got to do:
- Open Dashboard.
- Click Plugins.
- Scroll down and look for the Top commentator plugin’s row, in front of it there will be a link ‘Edit’, click it.
- Right click in the text-area and click Select All, Paste the entire content from this text file into it and click ‘Update File’. Alternatively you can check step 6.
- You’re Done
- As in this image, look for this part in the text-area and cut and paste the code shown in the picture and then click on ‘update File’:
Once you’re done making the adjustment to the Plugin, and the number of comments with every commentator is not a part of the link. If you experience any problems, feel free to ask me. If it works without any problems, do leave a few good words! This is for the good of your commentators, now 3arn.Net is even better for commenting.
Update: An update of Top Commentators widget came on January 5th, the link to the text file in the article has been updated, but now there are two places where you have to make this changing in case you do not copy/paste the content of the text file. Search for the same thing 2 times on the document and do as told in the article two times, one will be for using Top Comentators with their Gravatar and the other for the simple text top commentators widget.
i was right....
I am Abdulrehman Agha, the guy behind 3arn.Net. I am 16 years old, study in grade 10 and live in Pakistan. I started this blog in the hope of making money on the internet, sharing my computer experiences and proving that despite many barriers, one can make money on the internet.
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This is very considerate of you. I’m going to try this on my site. Thanks for the code.
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Interesting tweaks for tc. But, I prefer to use the default as it is more suitable with the template that I’m using.
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I thank you for giving back to the commentators. Posting to blogs is a great way to meet people with like interests, plus the backlinks are also very handy. Putting up a top commentator widget helps keeping the posters coming back.
Jason
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I will do this straight away! Thanks for the heads up.
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good tip, but i always commented with my name MOin and whenever anyone search for ‘moin’ on google my blog is on first page :S
Thumbs up by the way
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Thanks dude, I implemented this on my blog
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The Top Commentators plugin I use already had it setup this way. I’ve been thinking about using the numbers as a link back to a list of comments made by the user.
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Got here from Moin’s website. You are quite correct about the usefulness of the Top Commentator plugin. I have been using it for a while now and it has been helpful. However, I never knew that the comment count could hurt the SEO benefit that my commenters are suppose to derive. Thanks for sharing the tips. Cheers.
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Good Point…….I like the Way you Think….:-)
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Ahh.. Good one! I didn’t realise this little tweek at all.. some good insights for me
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Awesome information (i never say that unless i mean it by the way, sometimes ill say great if im just being nice…)
I comment for any combination of these 4 reasons, im actually interested in the post, becuase they commeted on me recently (but i still have to be somewhat interested in their post), to intice them to comment on me, and for traffic.
This kind of information is really helpful and unique, never seen it anywhere before, just like your recent alexa widget post acutal. You seem to have a drive to dig for the truth which is great. Ill probably make this change on my blog and let my readers know about it, ill be sure to provide a link to where i got the information.
It does kind of surprise me that your name alone didnt tur up much results, but then again i its a common name i guess it makes sense
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Very informative. I’ll take note about that.
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The main reason I comment is for the link back to my site, but at the same time I don’t comment unless I’m interested in the post and have something to add to the discussion.
Having said that, I’m blown away by your generosity and consideration for your readers. So many blog owners get bent out of shape at the thought that someone might actually get an SEO benefit from commenting on their blog, and they make it as difficult as possible to do so. You’ve done what I have not seen anybody else do, and I thank you for it.
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Can you control whether a comment will have nofollow or not? if so why do all comments have nofollow? what is the reasoning?
Free Press Releases wrote a very interesting post..The Relationship Company launches local dating service in St. Louis, MO
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I have just tried this tweak on my website, but unfortunately it still shows commentors’ names as no-follow.
I’m checking if I have done something wrong, but your help was very clear.
Too bad.
Very nice blog, anyway!
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