[credo]

Interesting story on how search engine "flaws" (or limitations) reward bullying.

From the story, it seems like sites like GetSatisfaction, ComplaintsBoard etc. don't use nofollow on links in user-generated content. 'nofollow' should mitigate the SEO impact and I'm surprised that the sites aren't doing this.

[Matt_Cutts]

Agreed. That's an easy change that those websites should consider adding.

[brown9-2]

Has anyone tried to contact these sites to let them know about nofollow? Perhaps they are just ignorant of the technology, since it's not their core competency.

[inerte]

nofollow is a bad idea and I wish Google stopped using, Matt. You can't trust people saying "these are not bad guys".

Anyway, shouldn't getsatisfaction reward good customer service? You're just saying it's their problem to filter what's bad, for their your's users.

[Matt_Cutts]

"nofollow is a bad idea and I wish Google stopped using, Matt."

Note that rel=nofollow is just a mechanism to indicate to search engines "Please don't give this link weight in computing reputation or search results." If you're talking about a website that is doing shady things, that's a perfect time to use the rel=nofollow attribute if you link to that website.

[gregpilling]

no why is there no rel=badsite tag to indicate that you dislike a page/website?

[thefool]

Although, if google had an algorithm to account for the quality of reviews, not having a no follow, and having the ranking be a function of total number of reviews, and average feedback score, wouldn't be bad either.