Frequently people who I consider to be bad actors say things that I want to note.

In a blog, of course, you are supposed to link to them, that is what the World Wide Web is supposed to be about.

On the other hand, I do not want to drive traffic to their site.

One way of handling it, as I do with Associated Press stories, is to find alternate links. (here Google News is your friend)

Well, our good friends at Tech Crunch have provided an alternate, and somewhat less severe way to handle this, the nofollow tag, which tells Google not to follow the tag, so you won’t boost their google page ranking.

Here is an example from the Wiki:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>discount drugs</a>

The tag was created by Google, but Yahoo, Ask.com, and Bing also follow this convention.

I’m not sure under which circumstances I would employ this tag, as opposed to finding an alternate link, except, perhaps, when there is no alternate link.