The NoFollow Debacle...

I've been researching whether or not to utilize the "nofollow" attribute on my user-generated links for about a week now.

It is pretty amazing how many different valid opinions are out there on this topic.  From one perspective (Google), Doctor Matt Cutts insists that the world is indeed round, and that we are all safe to use the nofollow tag where ever user-generated content allows links to be added.  He then goes on to also say that IF you have the ability to filter trusted users over non-trusted users, you could then consider removing the nofollow on any links contributed by trusted users.

Easy enough right?  Google says use it, so we should use it? 

Well not so easy.  There also exists the viewpoint that applying such a blanket attribute to all your user-generated links may actually hurt your site.  Some believe that it is a red flag to Google that your site/content must not be that trust worthy if you have so many "unchecked/untrusted" links on your pages.  Then there is the theory that if you are not going to trust any of your outgoing links, well then karma will come back and bite you as no one else will want to trust a link back to your site.

Ok, so forget.  I'm not going to use nofollow.  Who wants to be flagged as untrusted content?  I want to be a good internet citizen.  I'm going to try something else.

 What about redirects?  WebmasterWorld does a nifty 302 redirect for any and all user-added links to their pages.  Is that legit?  Well according to Google, 302 redirects do not pass any PR, but is it safe to use?  Many feel you should avoid 302 redirects all together since they are often abused by spammers/hijackers.   Of course Matt Cutts himself stated that redirect scripts are one of a few recommended ways folks can "sell links" legitimately.  Since 302 redirects don't pass any PR juice, they are safe to use for that purpose.  Ok great, but if I utilize a redirect script, are I now labeling myself as someone who sells links, but legitimately?  Is Google going to view me as a potential hijacker now with all my new 302 redirects?  Well no, IF you make sure to tell robots.txt to exclude any access to your redirect script.  But how many webmasters actually know how to implement this correctly?  One mistake can cost you dearly in search rankings.

Why the hell is this suddening getting like 10 times more complicated.  I just want to know if it is okay to allow my users to add links in comments.  A basic fundemental aspect of the web, and I cannot come to a decision on how to do it!?!

Okay fine, let's just leave the links as natural links.  Heck, we trust our users.  But what if we get one rogue user that starts posting links to unsafe sites.  Or one of our trusted members sells out and starts offering links from our site to other sites for cash?  Who has the time or ability to monitor all that when you are getting hundreds if not thousands of comments a day? 

Ok, forget that idea.

So I'm back to where I started.  Comments full of links that are not really links (just text URLs) that totally suck for user-friendlyness... all because I am forced to give a crap about what search engines think about my site, instead of just having to worry about what my users think.

I guess I owe special thanks to all the comment-spammers of the world!  

UPDATE:  I've come to a decision.  I'm going old school javascript style.  I'm going to have a js function that does the redirect for any URLs shared by users in comments.   I avoid the no-follow paranoia, I avoid the potential 302 pitfalls, I avoid the naturnal linking risks... and I get to still offer "working" links to my users.  

Here is my simple solution:

Javascript function:

function goLink(o){

  var u = o.innerHTML;

  document.location = u;

  return;

}

[div class="link" onClick="goLink(this);"

]http://www.user-added-link.com[/div]

Then I simply made a matching style class to have the link appear as a link:

.link {

color: blue;  

cursor: pointer; 

text-decoration: underline;

}