How to disable nofollow in WordPress

Post: How to disable nofollow in WordPress

Posted on May 27th, 2006 at 22:22 in Blogging.

11 Replies.

You maybe already heard about the nofollow tag, invented by Google to prevent spam. In fact, it doesn’t prevent or decrease spam at all, and a lot of criticism has been expressed against it. Some of the reasons why you shouldn’t use nofollow are summed up at NoNoFollow, and a recent post about Google’s mistake is available here. Below, I’ll explain how to simply remove the nofollow tag from WordPress, without the need to install a plugin.

All you need to do is edit three files, wp-includes/default-filters.php, wp-includes/functions-formatting.php and wp-includes/comment-functions.php. In default-filters.php, a filter is set which adds the nofollow tag to links in comments. You need to change the following line (around line 28):
add_filter('pre_comment_content', 'wp_rel_nofollow', 15);
Comment it out, so it becomes:
//add_filter('pre_comment_content', 'wp_rel_nofollow', 15);

In functions-formatting.php, the make_clickable() function searches for links in comments to make them clickable, but not followable by search engines. Search the following (normally from line 572 to 579):

function make_clickable($ret) {
        $ret = ' ' . $ret . ' ';
        $ret = preg_replace("#([\s>])(https?)://([^\s<>{}()]+[^\s.,<>{}()])#i",
> "$1<a href='$2://$3' rel='nofollow'>$2://$3</a>", $ret);
        $ret = preg_replace("#(\s)www\.([a-z0-9\-]+)\.([a-z0-9\-.\~]+)((?:/[^ <>{}()\n\r]*[^., <>{}()\n\r]?)?)#i",
> "$1<a href='http://www.$2.$3$4' rel='nofollow'>www.$2.$3$4</a>", $ret);
        $ret = preg_replace("#(\s)([a-z0-9\-_.]+)@([a-z0-9\-_.]+)\.([^,< \n\r]+)#i",
> "$1<a href=\"mailto:$2@$3.$4\">$2@$3.$4</a>", $ret);
        $ret = trim($ret);
        return $ret;
}

And paste the following over it:

function make_clickable($ret) {
	$ret = ' ' . $ret . ' ';
	$ret = preg_replace("#([\s>])(https?)://([^\s<>{}()]+[^\s.,<>{}()])#i", "$1<a href='$2://$3'>$2://$3</a>", $ret);
	$ret = preg_replace("#(\s)www\.([a-z0-9\-]+)\.([a-z0-9\-.\~]+)((?:/[^ <>{}()\n\r]*[^., <>{}()\n\r]?)?)#i", "$1<a href='http://www.$2.$3$4'>www.$2.$3$4</a>", $ret);
	$ret = preg_replace("#(\s)([a-z0-9\-_.]+)@([a-z0-9\-_.]+)\.([^,< \n\r]+)#i", "$1<a href=\"mailto:$2@$3.$4\">$2@$3.$4</a>", $ret);
	$ret = trim($ret);
	return $ret;
}

The last change is in the file comment-functions.php, where the get_comment_author_link() function returns a link to the website of a commenter. Edit the following line (should be around line 378):
$return = "<a href='$url' rel='external nofollow'>$author</a>";
And change it to:
$return = "<a href='$url' rel='external'>$author</a>";

Feel free to comment on this post, links will be displayed and followed by search engines!

This post is about how to prevent WordPress from adding the nofollow tag to comments.
Tagged nofollow, spam, and wordpress.
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Comments

There's a total of 11 comments to this post. Add yours below.

Replies

ptvGuy wrote:

On June 19th, 2006 at 9:54

What about the following function in functions-formatting.php?
function wp_rel_nofollow( $text ) {
	$text = preg_replace('|<a (.+?)>|i', '<a $1 rel="nofollow">', $text);
	return $text;
}

2.

JW wrote:

On June 19th, 2006 at 16:37

By commenting out the line
add_filter('pre_comment_content', 'wp_rel_nofollow', 15);
in default-filters.php, the function isn’t called anymore when a comment is displayed, so you don’t need to change anything in it.
You may comment it out if you want, if WordPress would decide to use it on other places in next versions too, but I don’t think they wil.
3.

Standard Warfare wrote:

On October 16th, 2006 at 18:24

Thanks for posting this information, I wont be punnishing my comment posters by adding rel=’nofollow’ to their links.
4.

Jan wrote:

On August 15th, 2007 at 13:15

Actually blogs with active nofollow will be losing traffic as more people spot the rel=’nofollow’ attribute within links to their sites. Right now I am moving one blog of mine to my own server and will remove the nofollow just today . It is not nofollow what protects from spam, it’s blog moderation what protects from spam.

In addition, w3 standards don’t know the nofollow thing since rel attributes may contain different values. For instance “next”, “index” or “Prev”.
5.

Anonymous wrote:

On October 24th, 2007 at 8:29

Hi, you have got a great post on how to remove the nofollow tag from the wordpress blog. This is a kind of information for the webmasters or whoever owns a site needed to increase their page rank. I would check it by editing these thing in wordpress by later. Thank you for your useful information and have a good day.
6.

jessie wrote:

On December 18th, 2007 at 20:34

i have written something about this in my blog since this is an issue concerning not just Worpdress users but also blogspot users…. for WP users, do u think it would be better to edit the template just to remove the NOFOLLOW tag or just download a plugin that will do the work?
7.

JW wrote:

On December 18th, 2007 at 22:30

jessie, I think that downloading a plug-in that does the work for you will be easier, especially when upgrading. WordPress releases new versions quite a lot, and if you always need to go hunt for these specific lines in the code, it’s simply much easier to install a plug-in. Plug-ins may add a bit of overhead when loading the page, but in the end I don’t think that matters much.
8.

Tom wrote:

On April 11th, 2008 at 14:08

I am trying to remove the nofollow tag from my wordpress now, and I’m really surprised there isn’t an option in the settings somewhere… Maybe I’ve missed it, but I can’t see one.

I’m using version 2.5 and things have changed quite a bit unfortunately so the above code doesn’t work anymore. Can anyone suggest a new way of doing this? Perhaps a plugin? I will continue my search now…
9.

Tom wrote:

On April 11th, 2008 at 14:10

Sorry, anyone reading this, just look at JW’s comment above. That hack still works!!!!

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Mike's Blog => Say No To Nofollows! wrote:

On June 30th, 2006 at 23:27

I also agree that nofollows are not helping

[…] So I think if people contribute to my blog by adding a comment they deserve a link, a real link without a nofollow! […]

Pingbacks

This Blog Has DoFollow Attributes | What Have You wrote:

On December 18th, 2007 at 20:46

[…] Related readings: JW’s Blog […]

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