CommentLuv gives you backlinks, Feedburner Feedsmith steals them

I found this great post from Dexter where he suggests that we should not use the commentluv and feedburner feedsmith plugins together. Actually the reason why was very simple…

How CommentLuv Works?

CommentLuv is a plug-in the will get the title of your last post from your feeds and then add it to your comment when commenting on a blog that has enabled this plug-in. The purpose of this blog is to give backlinks to your latest posts. It’s a great plug-in and I should remind myself to add this to my list of essential plug-ins to add to your wordpress blog.

I better add this so that people won’t get confused…

If you install CommentLuv on your blog, you are doing a favor to your visitors because you will be giving them a free backlink (not the other way around). However, by default, the backlink is no-follow.

How FeedBurner Feedsmith works?

Feedsmith aims to redirect all feed request to feedburner. Basically, when you type silkenhut.com/feed/, it will automatically redirect to feeds.feedburner.com/silkenhut as long as you have this plug-in installed. The purpose of this plug-in is to consolidate all feed request into one place so that feedburner can record your feed subscribers more accurately.

CommentLuv + Feedsmith = Lost of backlinks

The problem here lies when you put together CommentLuv and Feedsmith together. Here’s a short step-by-step on how they work together:

1. You post a comment on a blog like on this post (note that comments like those will never last 1-2 days on this blog. ^_^)

Source

2. CommentLuv will be requesting for your feeds to get the latest post

Source

3. FeedSmith catches the request and redirects Commentluv to Feedburner

Source

4. CommentLuv gets the post title and the feedburner url of the latest post

5. CommentLuv will then add the following info to your comments.

Whew, adding those pictures took a while but I hope I have made my point clear. Do you see what’s the problem when you use CommentLuv together with Feedsmith? (Clue: look at the url)

CommentLuv gives you backlinks but feedburner feedsmith steals them

Update:

It seems that I got confused on what I was writing… Allow me to update what I was writing…

If you install them both, instead of giving your commentators a free backlink, you just gave feedburner a back link that they don’t need. Just to clear things up, CommentLuv is a plug-in that benefits your visitors and not you.

The common solution here is to deactivate (uninstall) feedsmith. However there are two sides on the story and it depends whether feedsmith is there or not.

• With feedsmith, you will have more accurate feed stats and (loss of backlinks) no backlinks to your commentators
• Without feedsmith, (you will have backlinks) your commentators will have backlinks and probable loss of accuracy in tracking your feed stats.

That was a bit techy so let’s make it simpler, if you comment on a blog that has CommentLuv enable and…

• has feedsmith, the url of your last post is http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Silkenhut/~3/249297144/ (free backlink to feedburner)
• has no feedsmith, the url of your last post is http://silkenhut.com/i-dont-like-an-increase-in-traffic/ (free backlink to your blog)

I chose to deactivate feedsmith. I’d rather have more back links than have accurate statistics… I’d rather give my commentators backlinks instead of having more accurate statistics. ^_^

Which do you choose?

Tell me your choices in the comments before.

My apologies for the confusion. I got confused myself too. I already edited the confusing parts and hopefully it won’t be confusing anymore. Let this be a good blogging experience. Thank you.