With above mentioned problems with paid advertising options why would you initially pay for customers, website hits, overpriced and unproven advertising techniques when you can get “traffic” for free and get paid for your involvement with an autosurf program.

Paid autosurf programs are a type of advertising co-operative where members get paid for viewing websites. After logging into members’ control panel, members click on a link to “Paid to Surf” section. This opens a window which automatically rotates website “ads” automatically with no clicking required. It is just like watching “ads” on your television. Members get paid usually 1-2% of their membership level for autosurfing daily required number of websites (usually 100-200).

Autosurf programs have short viewing times, between 10-25 seconds. As a website owner you want your site to be very quick loading so viewers will see your page load completely before timer is up and they move on. If site you want to promote via autosurf programs is very slow loading; such as those with lots of graphics; you will need to create a doorway page. A doorway page is a simple page with text and colour but no graphics, hopefully intriguing enough to entice viewers to click through to your main site.

If you don’t have html access to main site you wish to promote (such as those provided by many affiliate programs) use a free website host or your personal website space provided with most internet service providers. Autosurf members will not see actual URL of page you put into rotation and many will view websites without any graphics being displayed. This means that any banner advertising which comes with many free sites won’t even be visible.

An excellent discussion of this new tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728

Google announced new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/

And Microsoft added their support to new tag in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx

At first blush, anything that can help cut down comment spam that most bloggers are daily subjected to would seem to be a good thing. It can be pretty upsetting to access your blog in morning and find 50 junk comments with links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your blog has any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage polluting your site every day. Fighting spread of comment spam has become a necessity.

But after first cheering proactiveness of search engines, many bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don't like what they see. You can read a sampling of their thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797

Brian Turner's incisive article "New Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs" discusses some of potential abuses of new nofollow tag: http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/new_nofollow_ta.html

And Jim Pryke's article "Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet" makes it very clear that not only will this NOT stop comment spam. But it will actually hurt bloggers as a community: http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet

For an hilarious take on new tag and how it will get abused, be sure to take a look at Link Condom: http://www.linkcondom.com

I have to agree with these bloggers that nofollow tag won't even put a dent in problem of comment spam. You have to realize that comment spammers who cause most problems are ones who use automated bots to spread their spam onto every blog they find. The fact that they find a blog using nofollow tag won't stop bot from posting. If you have a popular blog, you'll still wake up every morning to find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You'll still have to spend time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.

You see, problem to bloggers isn't that those comment links pass PR. It's fact that those spam posts make your blog look like garbage. Whether links pass PR or not isn't big issue for bloggers. It's time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and detraction to their sites. The nofollow tag won't do a thing about that problem. You'll still have problems, even if you use tag.

Think about this: how effective have email filters been in stopping email spam? As most of us know, they've hardly done any good at all. Email spam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers really don't care if some of their emails are blocked. They just send more of it to compensate. The same will be true of automated comment spam bots.

The fact of matter is, there are already much better tools in most blogging software to fight comment spam AND save time and effort of blogger at same time. There are already a number of plugins for WordPress, Moveable Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly be more in future. These tools are already more effective at fighting comment spam than this nofollow tag will ever be.