Search giants hook up to cut blog spam

Search giants Yahoo and Google have teamed up with a group of high profile internet firms to back a technique designed to help combat weblog comment spam.

Others involved include Google/Blogger, MSN Search, Six Apart (TypePad, MovableType, LiveJournal), and WordPress.

The scheme centres on modifying standard HTML 'href' link tags by adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to hyperlinks. This additional tag allows webmasters and weblog owners to tell search engines that the links are effectively untrusted.

"We think this is a good first step towards significantly reducing the spam burden on bloggers and weblog hosting companies," said Jeremy Zawodny, representative of Yahoo Search.

"It's great to see so many players on board. In the coming weeks you can expect to see the changes reflected in our web index."