When setting out to do link building for this blog, I was quickly frustrated with the abundance of nofollow links I was getting. I sought out dofollow search engines and directories, but was disappointed. Each one I found had too few blogs listed, had nofollow blogs listed, or had only blogs with very low PageRank. So, I started a project to build an accurate list of dofollow blogs.
I collected over 2000 links from existing public sources and worked with a team of human judges to visit each blog and verify if it was dofollow. I have learned a lot and met a lot of great bloggers in the process. Not surprisingly, about half of the links we verified (which were supposedly dofollow) were actually nofollow.
Classifying blogs is not as easy as you might think. They must have comments. If they use a comment plug-in like Disqus, you have to verify that the commenter’s link goes to their blog, and not a Disqus profile page. Then there are plugins like Lucia’s Link Love that may allow dofollow links in the body of the post, or only allow dofollow links after a certain number of approved posts (I’ve been categorizing these as “somefollow”). And of course, any given blog could change at any time. So an important design consideration for this tool was to make it easy to re-check blogs on an ongoing basis.
As I’ve posted elsewhere, getting dofollow blog backlinks is not the only link building strategy you should consider. It is a strategy that mostly makes sense for new Web sites. Your site will only increase PageRank by getting links from sites that have a higher PageRank, so it makes sense to target blogs with a higher PageRank. Unfortunately this makes high PageRank sites more of a target, but we’ve found a healthy distribution of medium PageRank sites.
Lastly, I created a very basic categorization system for the blogs. Of course, when seeking backlinks from blogs it is best to comment in your area of expertise. Surprisingly, the largest categories are Technology and People. I would have thought that Marketing and Business blogs where the most likely to be giving away dofollow links, but I was wrong.
You can evaluate the list using the PageRush dofollow search engine. The search engine searches all of the blogs on the dofollow list. To get full access to the entire list on an ongoing basis, as well as OPML RSS export, sign up for PageRush Site Booster today!
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Success with Todd 02.25.09 at 1:18 am
Hi Adam,
I don’t find this surprising at all. I’ve actually seen a dofollow blog list on a big name marketer’s site, where all the links were nofollowed … how ironic huh?
Todd
becky 02.26.09 at 6:11 am
well nothing suprising in this Adam….its the same story for every one…i like your charts and analysis….i am sure very soon google is going to start noticing you….well another good thing is like article writing….from where you can get backlinks and traffic as well, as the both factors are necessary for PR. i hope it works for you….
Kampanye damai pemilu indonesia 2009 02.28.09 at 1:38 am
I am now hunting down each one of those dofollow blogs since I just joined a local SEO competition. I have used a lot of software to search for dofollow blogs. But like you said, some of it just gives me false alarms.
Reliable Hosting Service 02.28.09 at 4:31 am
Yes, Adam it is true that about 60% of dofollow blog lists are nofollow. I even found a blog that doesn’t allow comments at all. However, It will will be amazing when this project is complete.
J.Brett
Make Money Online 02.28.09 at 10:06 pm
I am also eagerly anticipating the project when it is completed. I will try out your do follow search engine to help me build more backlinks.
Mike 03.02.09 at 6:33 am
Cant we have a comprehensive list with PR , search the blogs in dofollow search engine is time taking and tiring process.
Any way thanks for taking up the job for creation of best dofollow blog list.
Kjamal 03.03.09 at 3:35 am
@mike
You are right mate there is need of having a open source kind of thing for dofollow blogs/forums where community members will update about any site they found which have dofollow enabled.
adam 03.03.09 at 11:31 am
Mike – a comprehensive list with PR is exactly what you’ll get with a paid subscription to PageRush: http://tools.pagerush.com/site-booster
David 03.03.09 at 3:13 pm
I’m definitely interested once you release a paid version. Looks like an amazing resource. Just having access to a good list of dofollow blogs is handy. Just like you said many of them are outdated.
adam 03.04.09 at 12:06 am
David – you can get access to the entire list via a paid subscription: http://tools.pagerush.com/site-booster
heartburn foods 03.04.09 at 12:15 am
I love dofollow. It really helps new bloggers because it is very useful for SEO and increasing a site’s popularity, thanks.
Business Logos 03.11.09 at 5:19 am
Excellent, I too have attempted to sift through do follow blog lists with little success. One tool I’ve found incredibly useful is the FireFox plug-in that instantly shows you if links are do follow or not.
Reliable Host 03.11.09 at 10:59 am
Thanks for taking up the job for creation of best dofollow blog list.You are right,there is need of having a open source kind of thing for dofollow blogs/forums where community members will update about any site they found which have dofollow enabled.Keep up the great work!
TitanExs 03.13.09 at 3:50 am
Dofollow blogs are hard to get especially since most of the templates or theme now days come with nofollow already incorporated.
Kai Lo 03.16.09 at 3:59 pm
I found a lot of DoFollow blogs to have false advertisement. Best thing to do is look up their HTML sources. Then type in nofollow in the “Find”, and you will be surprised how many DoFollow blogs have nofollow tags right in front of the link you submitted to them.
Diabetes 03.24.09 at 10:12 am
I know what you are talking about. I searched for many dofollow blogs and lists and everytime there were many links nofollow. I don’t know why they do it on nofollow, that’s not the way to fight spam. They don’t care.
God Is Good 03.26.09 at 10:25 am
As important as Do Follow links are, I really do think that more and more weight will be placed on No Follow links by search engines. Most social media platforms (Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.) dish out No Follows, but more and more they are dictating the trends of search. Google sees it, and knows it. The day will soon come when there isn’t much of a difference between the two.
sportzbuzz 04.02.09 at 5:46 pm
Is there a way you can ad my do-follow sports blog? Thanks. Now to make sure I have over 100 letters… o_O I think this should be enough
Lyrics Hawk 04.16.09 at 6:54 am
Thanks man there aren’t many good dofollow blog lists out there these times. Hope your one is good
. In my opinion it’s the best way to create custom Google search queries for dofollow blogs but I’am all the time surprised how many bloggers have the keyword and/or comment Luv plugins installed but NO dofollow links grr…
Link building from blogs can sometimes befrustrating
. (sometimes?!…)
Web design 04.29.09 at 12:23 am
We have been researching on do follow and we are thankful and feel really excited to come across your blog and the Nice graphical information, we love to follow your regular blogs, Thank you for your efforts.
Modern Technology 07.29.09 at 12:35 pm
I was also struggling finding do follow list. Do you have a complete do follow list? If you can share this will be very helpful for webmasters like me.
poker 08.21.09 at 4:02 am
Great information………I love dofollow. It really helps new bloggers because it is very useful for SEO and increasing a site’s popularity, thanks for sharing it.
Seo India 08.22.09 at 4:31 am
Wow, awesome post. I love the DoFollow. Maintaining a dofollow list or search engine is serious work. Most lists are about 50% nofollow with about 10% changing from dofollow to nofollow each month.
canyon gate country club real estate 09.02.09 at 6:19 am
You’re doing a fantastic job! Providing blog search engine for free is really good, thank you. Do you guys check the complete list weekly or monthly? Blogs get converted quickly from dofollow to nofollow. Btw how many unique blog pages do you provide each month?
Bakuri Software 09.03.09 at 2:01 am
Ya as all said we have been searching for do-follow blogs list, its really great work. And if you people got any good do-follow links please post out here so that all of them feel happy.
Business Logos 09.19.09 at 7:57 am
Interesting analysis, personally I think dofollows/nofollows are being handled differently now by search engine I think both are helpful.