4 replies to this topic

[JoshFoster]

I recently went through all the directories my company is listed in to check if the links are nofollow. To do this I simply looked at the source code to see if the <a> tag had "rel=nofollow". After doing this for every directory, I looked at our backlinks report from Google and Bing. There were a handful of links that showed up even though the source code clearly had the link marked as nofollow.

For example our link on Manta is listed as nofollow, yet it still appears in Google's Webmaster Tools backlink checker.

I can only think of two reasons for this. First, maybe we have another link on Manta somewhere that isn't a nofollow. Second, the backlink checkers are returning links that are both good links and nofollow.. but Google still isn't counting the nofollow's.

I'm sure there is some explanation for this that I'm just not aware of.

Thank you for your help.

[Jill]

They don't say you're necessarily getting credit. Just that those URLs are linking to you.

[JoshFoster]

Thanks Jill,

Does that mean the traditional "link:www.website.com" method returns nofollow links as well?

- Josh

[Jill]

Not sure about that as that command hasn't been useful in like 10 years anyway.

[chrishirst]

Links with a rel="nofollow" attribute are still "followed", which means they are used for "URL discovery" so are still "back links", and as such are going to appear in pointless list of backlinks.