If you notice on the right hand side I added a top commenters. I wrote this wordpress plugin last night. It basically gives a link (not nofollow) to the top 10 commenters over the last 7 day period. So people who comment frequently get a reward. I mean you are adding value to my site with your input so why shouldnt I give you a link?
This is also a fun thing for me to keep my somewhat php skills alive. That also means you might see some errors as I play with formatting.
Also if I think you are just trying to rack up your comment count you will be blacklisted.
I do not mind giving people a link but those spamming comments just to get SEO value will not be tolerated. You know what you are doing dont make me explain it.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
Images provided by ShutterStock
Progress and Completion 
Perception is Everything (or “Fake It ‘Til You Make It”) 
You’re Too Sensitive to Be on the Internet 
{ 228 comments… read them below or add one }
Jeremy don’t you worry about search engines penalizing you for ranking to so many outbound people ?
I dont think that google will penalize a person who appears in the top commenters list and anyway we are not paying to set the links. So there isnt any problem
BTW where is Jeremy??
I write my blog for people not search engines. I am always shocked peoples first instinct when making a site is OMG WHAT WILL THE SEARCH ENGINES THINK!.
To answer your question no. I am not worried.
I’ve always worried myself with Search engines… so lets see!!!
Screw Google- over a year later, a great post from Shoemoney
The Screw Google Mentality
I love this idea of writing for our visitors and not our Google Rank. I am inspired by Shoemoney’s nemesis John Chow. Google slapped him and everyone in the blogosphere pointed predicting his demise. He has more RSS subscribers than ever, more visitors, all while being on the outs with Google.
For grins, I recently looked at “Shoemoney” and “John Chow” as keywords, and discovered people searching for those terms are ridiculously low. I think “toe nail clipping” gets about as many people searching. Yes, I am actually thinking of starting a toe nail clipping site as a long-tail endeavor (no, I do not have a foot fetish).
I discovered Shoe and Chow via Top Affiliate Challenge. Other MMO blogs I follow extend from that show. Following about 5 contestants, Shoemoney, and John Chow, I discovered other good blogs when they would reference or highlighted those blogs/sites. Like Neil Patel, I learned of because of his Black American Express card and a post about just that. Now I subscribe.
I think one of the few times I Googled a blogger directly was when I found out about John Chow’s slap and wanted to see for myself. The other times I have come across bloggers on Google are when I am searching for something else. And then I only go to those sites when I already know the blogger. Like when I Googled “money making ideas” and a Shoemoney post was number 2.
Thanks for adding such a good plugin
Sites don’t leak pagerank, they simply ‘share the joy’
Free pr6 link! I can dig it!
I like this feature a lot. I’m seeing it integrated into more and more blogs, and I think it’s great for growing the community aspect that makes blogs so popular.
I’m already getting traffic from it
Haha
This is awesome!
funny I don’t have a website worth linking to, and don’t list one, but I do comment.
Are you going to make this plugin available for others?
Sounds like a pretty useful add-on maybe make it available for others too
Great way to grow your blog “community” IMHO.
EDIT: I’m guessing that you did it for the last 7 days so that it’s constantly changing and not ratings overall because some people would be at the top forever… ?
-Todd
That’s interesting – you’re right though, people design websites for people, not search engines. If you design it for people then the search engines will like you anyway… however this ties in with the “top x lists” seem to go well down on the internet. I remember in the early days of my website the BBC’s site reprinted my top ten list of games on the site – seems people want to know what/who’s popular (or in this case commenting).
This is a great idea. It will be interesting to see if your overall contributions go up with this new incentive to comment. You should track it for a few weeks and see if the trend goes up.
Nice idea, should work well
I love how these small “ideas” we (programmers) have turn into huge pieces of software by the time we’re done with them.
You start simple then keep adding on and on to the point whre you just give-up! Well, that’s what I end up doing!
Nice idea (already done, thought).
I think you have to adjust the html code or maybe check it with Firefox 1.5.x
Excellent idea. Very noble of you to share the love. Still, you are right, this could help the community flourish by inspiring more interaction.
Thanks for rewarding us commentors for contributing to the blog!
OH NO NOT THE EVIL SEARCH ENGINES!
Great idea, and my personal opinion is that you should embrace your top commentator whores:
http://www.ryanjparker.net/why-you-should-embrace-top-commentator-whores/
I hope you don’t mind me becoming a whore.
I’m sure you’ve already seen it but PFA has one called “Show Top Commentators” that a lot of sites already use.
The only complaint I have is that the URL filtering doesn’t seem to work right.
Yeah with the amount of traffic he gets here this is a good turnover ratio. I use 1 month on my site, and a lot of sites do this, too, but at some point if you left it on forever new people would never be able to catch up.
Great plugin! Let us know when you release it
I know this is version 0.1 but for a performance boost, you might want to break it down to two queries. This one EXPLAINs as “Using temporary; Using filesort”
Yee,
it’s time to start commenting more seriously
I know I’ve left more than 3 comments. I want to be on the list!
Very, very cool. I would love to run such a plug in, but right now, I’m not locating the section. Do you have it down for revision?
Sweet idea Shoe. I think you’re going to see your comments shoot up a little
.
That’s a pretty good idea.
awww I liked it better when it had MBL faces
I agree. You write for your target audience. You don’t see automakers making cars based on what the police think do you?
Very good idea – wonder how long it will take to be more trouble than it’s worth thanks to spammers.
I like the concept but are you not worried people post useless comments just for the link?
There already is a Wordpress plugin for this feature. I’ve been using it for a few weeks and it helped stimulate some comments on my growing blog.
I added this at Marketing Pilgrim last week and have been happy with it so far. You will have some try to game the system, which is why I added a comments policy.
Nice Feature!
Hi,
Are you still going to force OpenId, Won’t this make the benifit of being a top commentator redundent?
Hmm… I want that link. Who doesn’t? Don’t you want to be linked by highly ranked, viewed and read blog on the planet. You must be out of your mind if you don’t! Seriously – I read shoemoney – almost daily now. Kinda like his writing style – very informative and speak his mind out loud. Perhaps – those are the skills to pay bills.
I wonder if this will spawn many “this is my comment.” comments, ie, meaningless ones. But definitely a way to get more comments, something every blogger wants. The collaborative aspect of comments is often a great way to get new ideas.
And last but not least: this is my comment.
Homepage only.
You will get an increase of comments for sure… I know I’ve never commented before but now I’m going to say what I think more often.
Thanks shoe… as usual
CRAZY IDEAS
great way to reward people for posting good comments… as you have in past, I continue to impressed when some of the big guys in the internet marketing world willing give back.
Pretty neeto of you to do this Shoe.
Anyway, you took the thumbs off? I can’t see them anymore (and OpenID causes problems for me… it always asks me to sign in when I try to post…)
Quote Shoe:
“well that will be very easy to tell… all comments are moderated so people will be blacklisted fast.”
I want to post comment here and want to received that link from your top commenters but I can’t because until now I am preferred to post comment about your blogpost through my blog.
Awesome idea shoe!! I’m in!
BAH! I will make the list without a URL just to piss off 50 people.
I have been seeing this type of thing pop up on other site recently. Not totally sure what I think about it. I mean it is great to get a linkback, but if folks are busy just saying, “great job!” or “good post” or “You’re right on – keep up the good work!” that is exactly what 99.9% of my spam comments are – what is the difference even if a human being is typing it?
…although, you notice, I did list my URL – ah well, I guess I can be bought for the price of a quality backlink *sigh*
Not sure if there is a way to connect URLs to an open ID. Although I’m sure Shoe could write something.
Layout looks nice.
Pooh.. didnt make the list !
Oh look, now everyone’s commenting… Couldn’t have predicted that!
Just a quick thing though… “A bunch of monkeys took 0.143 seconds to build this.” – I never noticed that bit before!
Is it just me? I don’t see the top commentors list…
I understand the principle, but I’m sorry to say I’ve seen the noise to signal ratio, going wild in all the blogs adopting this list/reward. Well I guess I’ll quit reading the comments here, no biggy.
Just look at the comments above and you’ll see see what is coming.
I have not seen a traffic increase but my Technorati ranking sure shot up fast!
It’s because we (programmers) get paid by the line and not the results!
George – I don’t see the list either. Maybe Shoemoney took it down for testing / configuration?
Guess I should start including one of my URL’s in my replies from now on!
It’s only on the home page.
Very slick, I’ve found that doing this leads to a lot of conversation… which is the point of blogging anyway.
On a couple other pages too I think, just not in single posts.
Jeremy you are already delivering so much to webmaster community for ‘free’ and now this is like “bonus’ama”
Good Luck.
did you actually write the plugin yourself? It looks like a really clean plugin. The one I’m working with has some bugs so all my recent commentators are all jumbled up. Will you be releasing your version any time soon! Keep up the great work!
Is the comment list based on daily? It looks like it changed from total to daily.
I think that’s a great plugin idea.. look forward to implementing it as well..
Suprised you didn’t use an already coded wordpress plugin, I need to use this on my blog.
I have the same thing (except pulled out to the last thirty days) by taking this plugin and modifying the select query so that it only counted comments in the last thirty days.
It’s a brilliant idea.
Shoe , This was really cool of you man!!!
I planned on adding a Top Commentors section to my sidebar as well. But my server is down for the time being. Shoe, I trust you don’t mind if I use your 7 day “mod”?
I was putting up comments, but not all are showing, and I’ve certainly added more than 4, yet not on the list. Any restrictions or time limits going on? Thanks.
My comments aren’t usually serious, neither are they of 2 word “good job” variety.
Tending to post comments only when I think they are relevant, maybe I will post less comments knowing that they will scrutinised more closely.
Great Features from you again..
I plan on adding a feature like this on my blog as soon as I start getting comments
It’s a good way of getting people interacting when you are already established but how does one get readers to comment on a newer blog?
Jeremy, it would be cool if you could report what kind of increase on the number of comments per post you noticed after implementing the plugin
I agree. Running a top commentators plugin does increase comments. There is probably also a correlation between the blog’s PR and whether or not the links are “no follow”.
Just my $0,02 cents
instead of
unix_timestamp(comment_date)>unix_timestamp(NOW())-(60*60*24*7)
try
comment_date > NOW() – INTERVAL 7 DAY
You comments probably were in moderation, they go in there if you haven’t had an accepted comment before or if it’s got a link.
Ive been doing this too and its workign well.
Look forward in you releasing the plugin.
Don’t think it’s related to the Top Commenters implementation but there is some kind of distinct issue with the comments in general. Most of the time when I log in the “normal” way … I read your comments on the OpenID issues .., and have some of my own, have no idea whey you are actually uisng it, makes MBL look secure
… anyway. the server just sits there afyter I click the Add Comment button and doe snothing … even an hour later nothing will have happened. A few weeks ago I pressed the button more thna 100 times and the next day saw that my comment had actually gone through … twice, sorry ’bout that.
It’s aWordPress infrastructure, so sthings should work the same as other blogs (using Windows XP and FireFox 1.5.0.10 …. wonder what’s up?
Hmmm, just to add some info to the hunt, it appears the problem might be relates to CoComment. My comment above sat more thna 2 hours without a response, I turned off coComment, refreshed the SM page and reposted … instant gratification.
ok, indeed it seems to be a conflict with CoComment. Eeven though I am signed out of CoComment the CoComment bar still appeasrs in the comment box and the submit comment process seems to hang forever… physiclaly clicking the “x” on the Cocomment bar and then pressing “Submit” makes the comments work correctly … shame, though, becuase CoComment is very much a part of my blogging … ideas from the rish and famous … or just somebody who knows how CoComment and WordPress interact?
hook me up with that job…
I did the same thing and it’s helped stimulate conversations a good bit. Actually, I had top commenters before, but it was top of all time, and there were a number on the list that had long since stopped coming by. So I shortened the window to make it more representative.
When will you be releasing this script? I’d love to add it to my blog.
This has been creating a lot of recent activity b/c people love backlinks from your site. Great addition, I just hope it doesn’t get to the point where people are commenting anything just for the backlink.
It is an interesting idea. Can you publish your results about the effect of this marketing technique?
It’s so cool, I should leave more comment
This is a great way to pay back loyal readers. Thanks for the plugs.
i am wondering can we have link that show all time comment stats aswell. so that i can see all time comment poster here. Just an idea.
I’d like to install it on my blog too. Seems a great way to promote comments. Can you share a link to the plugin?
Regards, George
Comments have gone up.
Are you going to release this for others to put on their blogs? I like the concept.
That’s cool Jeremy. thx I’m trying to hook up something similar on my community site.
Are you going to make that plugin public? It’s a great idea and I can’t belive no one else has come up with it yet. Is it for sale?
very nice and kind of you mate =)
This is a great way to increase comments. I now feel rewarded for when I leave my useless input.
When does this script update? I have seen other adaptations of this script and they seemed to b real time, but yours doesn’t.
This is a really cool idea! I really admire people who come up with stuff like this.
This is certainly better than enabling dofollow for all commenters. Encouraging comments is one thing, but yes, it should be watched for people trying to simply bolster their sites with one word comments
Definitely a good idea – I have even removed the nofollow attribute from people who comment as standard. This has dramatically increased user interaction over at my blog.
- Martin Reed
Nice one shoe. I’d consider putting it on my blog when I start getting comments…haha.
This is a great way to increase comments.
Good idea.
Would you be willing to give this little plugin out? I think it would be a cool addon to my blog as it grows.
I think that I’ve found a bug of sorts. There seems to be more than one Paul. I suppose this is my own fault for not choosing to respond under a more unique name (I’m now including my last name) but – sometimes the top commentator links to my site/blog, other times it links to another member.
niceee, i didnt know about this, i found out from technorati saying im being linked from shoemoney =0D
This is awesome. I can’t seem to post though, maybe it will work this time. And I’m unsure of URI haha.
Any word on the plugin?
I like this plug you wrote, it’s helping me for my blog
I love this idea!…I just grabbed the code you posted in hopes to apply it on my site…ehhhh…maybe i need to go to rentacoder ;/
Thats impressive.
Bloggers also should think about the readers not only about the search engines and monthly revenue.
Good work!
Hey, is this free plugin?
I also want to use it in my blog. Where can I get it?
You know you really don’t need to worry about seo at this point.
really nice plugin.. saw it on quite some blogs already, but didn’t know that you wrote it.
This is a great plugin! I have a different version on my blog and I think that its a great way to reward visitors
Nice plugin, works good! Will you post it to the public?
Google is your best friend!
pfadvice.com/wordpress-plugins/show-top-commentators/
Great plugin, nice design on it to. Would be nice if you could release the one you’ve wrote.
thats not what i use
That’s a great idea! top commentors every 7 days? wow, I see the competition is enormous
Thank you shoemoney. I didn’t realise you had this plugin until I wound up on the list. It’s a great idea.
This is a great idea Jeremy – I didn’t even notice it until I appeared on it but this is a great treat
I see lots of people are asking, so I need to join them. Are you going to offer the pluggin to the public? I’d certainly like to use it. I downloaded one recently but the thing didn’t work.
Any chance you might release that plugin?
Was it written from scratch or did you base it off of another plugin? Just curious as I’m going to be fiddling with mine shortly too and might not want to start from scratch completely.
I think top comentators is a great idea but it’s still broken in a sense.
I see people posting as “home improvement” and “search engine optimization” and such but they’re getting no value for that anchor text because the text is REALLY “home improvement (16) “. You sadly dont get credit for “home improvement” with the numbers attached. Simple fix, move the number generator outside the tags and voila…. real shoemoney made cred!
outside the tags, sorry, the last comment ate the tag.
lol, outside the “a” tags…. this blog is tough, it eats spaces and symbols too!
these plugins already exist, why would you need to make one yourself?
Thats an awesome idea! To attract more commenters and popularize your blog! It could be very useful for new blogs. This script u wrote.
Can you tell me your CTR?
Thats cool man. I really like it. Gives some people some advertising on a site they would never usually get on.
I like the idea as well, have you though about releasing the plugin, I’d sure like to add something like that to my site. If you haven’t released it, feel free to email it to me, and I can add with a permalink to any site of your choice. Deal?
Time to get to #1 spot! Least this gives me something to do whilst my server is down.
~ Dave
Im not much of a coder…I really like this feature though, do you have any post on how to add it to the ones own site easly.?
Very nice tool
This will improve comments
That’s awesome more bloggers should think about the people rather than the search engines.
Now does it to CurrentDate-7 or does it do say, Sunday-Sunday resetting at the same time each week?
Hmm… the idea is not bad but be careful. You can attract a lot of spammers with it!
Many people do crazy things for a stupid link back to their sites.
Great idea! This is a really great resource of informations.
Great way of getting more comments and rewarding your visitors, also improves traffic since i’m now bookmarking your site, pure genius! i promise to post only relevant comments
You are right, there’s been lots of blogs who added the plugin but now disabled it to prevent spam
What a great model for encouraging content generation. As soon as I figure out how to pull that off with blogger I will apply that myself. Right now I am not for sure but thanks again for the example.
Rob West
This is an excellant idea! It’s one good way of getting extra content added to a blog without having to create it yourself. I like it.
This is definately a cool feature that many blogs should implement into their sites. It gives some incentive for people to return more often and contribute to the discussion, which is one of the great things about blogs.
Thanks for this feature. It boosts me to be active on your blog.
Yep, I like this feature. Paul Stamatiou also uses it, and I believe it works!!
This site rocks
This is really awsome. I will try to be in top 10
I’m seeing that the number of comments that the top ones have made is about 35 something. Within one week, isn’t that spammy? Or is there any problem with your widget?
Very glad to say you have utilized this plugin,
Actually I love your blog!
dont it gets spam attack
Hi webmaster!
good thinking, but pay attention to spam messages
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/new-meme-tag-five-friends-to-register-to-vote/
He’s watching you. Rukus, trouble maker apparently, eh?
Hey,
is the plugin ready yet?
Man you are smart! Nice idea! That will increase a lot the comments in your blog!
Awesome and great idea
They is a problem in my URL when I comment URL is http://www.seocreations.com/ but when profile comes on homepage under top commentators it showing http://www.websitetreats.com/.
Why it showing http://www.websitetreats.com/ ? as my URL is http://www.seocreations.com/
Please check it and make it correct.
This is a cool way to keep people reading being a part of the community here. Every 7 days is an interesting way to do it. Really keeps people back early and often. Pretty neat stuff Shoe.
Excellent idea. Very noble of you to share the love. Still, you are right, this could help the community flourish by inspiring more interaction.
For some Odd reason i was top commenter before and i just vanished of the list? when people had less comments then me were still on it.
7 days – holy cow! I thought it reset each month. I was thinking I could get in near the bottom with about 1 comment per day which seemed decent. But 30 odd comments (hopefully not too odd) in 7 days. I’ll give ‘er a shot.
This will definitely help increase your site’s comments. Great plugin by the way.
Good plugin..!! Now lock your previous posts after 30 days or your going to face alot of spam lol
I thought the Top Commentators plugin was a new thing but looks like you have had it for nearly 2 years!!! Very pioneering!
I read somewhere that the top commentators plugin is great not only for the people posting, but it also good to have on your blog because it will encourage more people to post comments. Thanks for using this plugin.
Thanks for this feature. It boosts me to be active on your blog.
Thanks for this feature. I will try comment at Shoemoney to get more traffic.
Hi,
Thank for the Top Commenters Plugin.
This is nice. Thank you
Well thought out post. Been lurking around on your website for some time now…
Just thought I would finally reply on one of your posts to let you know I exist
This article is actually really helpful – some of the other articles here are great as well.
I will definitely keep tuned to here since I am just setting up a blog myself.
Great Post Thanx.
Thanks for this great and very useful plugin.
You need to identify Industry trends and also needs to do a little bit of a research work before targeting the market.
How Much Value we Put Into our PageRank ?
Its really cool man. And hope you got how cool it was by comments from lot’s of people.
Will definitely visit this site again: )
I must say that your post is very informative. I enjoyed reading it. Keep up a good work. Thanks
Thank’s, Great Share !
somewhat, it is something i never figure out, why you do it…
what is your true intention by doing such thing?
Nice informative site, thanks for sharing with me. Enjoyed reading it.
Thanks for your great article. There is so much junk on the internet it is hard to find good quality information when you really need it. I just came across your site and have bookmarked it. Look forward to reading more in the future keep us posted.
I love this plug in
Thanks for the info! Great post.
Yeah i noticed it was buggy also, the pages here load very slowly. I guess it happens from time to time with sites
How to Make Your Website Appear Top in Search Engine ?
What is environmental rating system for suppliers?
here i am, i am joining yours now,
Wow I wish I had thought of this. Thanks for the post, I definitely like!!!!
Atlanta Locskmiths
Great Blog, I am definitely a fan. Did you design it yourself?
Great blog.. than ks for sharing
Locksmiths In Charlotte | Locksmith Charlotte
The article is very interesting! Thanks!
Wow! that’s an excellent blog. it’s very nice and informative. Thank you!
good news,nice，it’s so hot!Wow! that’s an excellent blog. it’s very nice and informative. Thank you!
Bonjour
un trés bon article
on apprends des choses qui pourraient interressé plus de monde.
Merci
I savored reading your post.
exellent blog i wish i was finding it long time ago
but keep writing such an good posts it’s always good to know that there is some free stuff out there
Nice… I should try this also.
Nice plugin Jeremy! May well have a use for something like this on my own blog site. Is it available on the WP plugins site? I’m going over to have a look..
Joe
cool
Hi, I just wanted to mention that you have a fantastic site with some rich content. I
bookmarked your site and now you have a reader for life….Well, for as long as you have this site:) …looking forward to more content in the future.
this was the best post i read today.
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Thanks for your great article. There is so much junk on the internet it is hard to find good quality information when you really need it. I just came across your site and have bookmarked it. Look forward to reading more in the future keep us posted.
Great idea. This would work good for forums. They could have contests on who makes the most posts and give them rewards and things…
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It seems I’m a late comer, anyway, better later than never. Your idea is just great giving the chance to people to comment on your blog and reward them with a backlink. It should be implemented on more blogs.
Thanks.
Great info. I implemented it on one of my new blog but feel my blog a little slower. Still figuring what’s caused it. I think it happened due to other plugins or I might use too many plugins.
I like this website it’s really cool
Thanks for the information
kloy
Locksmith Charlotte Nc
What a wonderful post! Thank you, have a great day!
Really great article, worth the read many times over !
Thank for this.