Jonathan Leger has started a case study related to ONLY using links from blog comments on a completely new website to see what impact it has on search engine rankings. I was going to do this myself for you guys but heck, if Jon is doing it you might as well follow along with that. You’ll find it here.

Also, if you’re not sure about the “no-follow” issue, check out the second comment made…

“I can tell you from experience that it helps - and although you are ruling out the blogs that have nofollow on the comments - that more affects PR than anything else. If google finds a link to something that is flagged as “nofollow” - they have been known to still follow it and see what it was. It just means that they are not counting the vote for PR reasons.”

…there’s your answer. “No Follow” will help your rankings and link popularity but it’s not likely to do much for your Page Rank values. This has been shown to me time and time again. Anyone that tells you otherwise isn’t using the technique.

Best…

Duncan Carver