News About The Nofollow, Now that the dust has settled (a little) Options

[nethy]

Not so much news. More like opinions.

I'm curious to know what people think about nofollow links, including the announcements that webmasters are free to use it to shape pagerank, are required to use it to designate advertising & encouraged to use it generously in web 2.0 type sites now that the dust has settled a bit.

Has the move (or some follow on effect from the move)...
..reduced spam?
..increased the quality of SERPS?
..reduced the prominence of sites containing user generated content in the SERPS?
..had the opposite effect?

I would imagine that the wide use of the nofollow on a whole range of user generated content sites inculding youtube wikipedia etc. actually means that pagerank cannot be used (by Google) in the way it once was. If you think about it, wikipedia is more or less what Google's pagerank concept had in mind when it was thought up. Credible (important, authoritative etc. ) authors publishing credible resources would lend credibility to other credible authors by referencing their work with a link in the way academics reference credible (important, authoritative etc. ) sources who's work they is important their own.

Wikipedia is authoritative and credible in the eyes of all those linking to it (giving it such prominence in SERPs) but this is not passed to other credible sources referenced in the articles.

This post has been edited by nethy: Mar 25 2008, 08:55 PM

[incrediblehelp]

I am not a fan of the nofollow especially when being used to "sculpt PR" which I think is a bunk concept anyways.

Here are few opinion points on the topic from me:

Point 1 - We live in a bubble. 99% of the world doesn’t know what nofollow is and probably will never know until the W3 add it as proper markup. So are we to believe that Google has granted SEOs ONLY this special attribute that can help us rank better. No. It is only for Google benefit, not ours.

Point 2 - The theory has not been tested enough and probably can't be properly tested since to many outside forces effect rankings. That is why this 2nd order effect has no bearing. No has proven that spending a few minutes using nofollow helps your website do any better. Google is simply telling you that is will. Google said it was OK to do it, doesn't mean you should or even if it works. Remember the end benefactor of nofollow is Google themselves, NOT your website.

Point 3 - External nofollow: The web and Google's algorithm was built on the concept of linking one document to another. Now we should continue to do this, but in way that does not pass search engine value through the link? Who is benefiting here? The SE algo only. This really goes against why the web was built on links.

Point 4 - Internal nofollow: I simply default to this post by Michael Martinez:

<a href="http://seo-theory.com/wordpress/2008/03/05/yes-virginia-your-contact-page-does-need-500-links/">Yes, Virginia, your contact page DOES need 500 links</a>

Point 5 - PR is not tangible. One page doesn’t have 100 PR credits that you can feel free to divvy up as you like through internal linking. It is not that simple. The point I am trying to make is that these SEOs are trying to say they can sculpt something like PR. We all know toolbar PR is crap and internal PR is not known so…..where does one get off saying they can sculpt something they don't know?

[Randy]

Has the move (or some follow on effect from the move)...
..reduced spam?
..increased the quality of SERPS?
..reduced the prominence of sites containing user generated content in the SERPS?
..had the opposite effect?

In order:

No.
No.
Certainly not.
I can't tell that it's had any effect in the SERPs I watch or any other searches I've made since nofollow was put into place.

Which leads me to believe it's a total bust.

[1dmf]

And it's unlikely to affect YouTube, as G! owns it and now expects everyone to start their own video / viral advertising campaign via G! Adwords.

I was digusted to attend a G! University Master Class in February and all they did was ram Adwords & YouTube down your throat, i have never felt so dissapointed and let down, not to mention won't be attending TFM&A ever again thats for sure!

I've decided unless i'm specifically trying to give a page some page rank, i put no follow on all my links regardless by default.

Sod it if G! don't want link juice, it aint geting it , for nothing, ever, and if everyone did the same, I'd love to see where G! would be then!

(And yes I know, I like to go against the grain - it's in my nature (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_tongue.gif) )

[EDIT]

Oh and is there a reason why the links from G! adsense don't have the rel='no follow' attribute on them? after all they are paid advertisments.

This post has been edited by 1dmf: Mar 26 2008, 09:18 AM

[Scottie]

I think nofollow sucks.

Why would you put ANY link on your page that you don't trust? Are you sending your visitors someplace you don't endorse?

It just doesn't make a bit of sense to me and it never has. Google is welcome to count or not count whatever links they like, but a page full of spammy links (paid or unpaid) is unlikely to be a useful page, no matter if it's tagged nofollow or not.

[incrediblehelp]

I might be able to see some of the point of nofollow for external links, but all this bologna out there abut RP Sculpting is crap.

[1dmf]

Why would you put ANY link on your page that you don't trust?

having rel='no follow' has no bearing on my trust of a site. I thought the point was not manipulating PR , now that I know links count to PR , not putting no follow could mean i'm manipulating PR, as I know the link *may* pass on PR juice.

If G! wants to play this stupid link game, then sod it as you say

Google is welcome to count or not count whatever links they like

so to that end bugger it, i'll put no follow on all links, makes no odds to the link, doesn't affect its job as a link or detract from the users ability to click it, and having no follow doesn't change the relevancy of the link on the page, so as far as i'm concerened G! can go use someone elses site and links to gauge what ever they want with, i couldnt care if they require my vote to accurately rank someones site or not, i put links on my site for my visitors and my benefit not G! , G! can ignore all the links on my site for the rest of the sites life for all i care.

It aint gonna affect my PR as it's inbound links that matter not who i link to (though I know there is a new debate about this), but for now sod if if I could get penalised for forgetting or missing a no follow on a link, simple solution , put it on all of em, G! can't penalise you for that, can they?

[Copywriter39]

Good or bad, it does seem as if the nofollow tag has gained acceptance with many webmasters. It seems like more and more pages I land on when I'm using Firefox have the red links. Sites as big as ESPN and as small as the local news station I rely on for weather updates.

[jansie]

man, i love you guys! i agree with incrediblehelp that the web was made for everyone, not just SEOs subscribed to matt cutts' blog. the web is information linking to information, and what's important to one group of people is not to another. so why should this be dictated by a little rel attribute called nofollow?

use the nofollow sparsely.

[1dmf]

use the nofollow sparsely.

Why how does this detract or stop a link from doing it's job?

Or make any difference to as you say ' information linking to information'

Can someone please explain to me the HARM nofollow can do to a link on my page if i do use it, because all I keep hearing about is the HARM it an do if you don't use nofollow.

and if it's only dangerous to NOT use it, surely it's better to err on the side of caution? wouldn't you say.

This post has been edited by 1dmf: Mar 27 2008, 05:42 AM

[MaKa]

I haven't really been following the whole nofollow stuff. I thought it was introduced to mark links in user editable content (forums, blog comments, etc.), basically meaning: "the website owner does not necessarily endorse this link".

But to answer the initial question, I don't think the nofollow has had any positive effect.

[jansie]

Why how does this detract or stop a link from doing it's job?

Or make any difference to as you say ' information linking to information'

Can someone please explain to me the HARM nofollow can do to a link on my page if i do use it, because all I keep hearing about is the HARM it an do if you don't use nofollow.

and if it's only dangerous to NOT use it, surely it's better to err on the side of caution? wouldn't you say.

i think nofollow could be useful for comments on a post. from what i can gather, one of the original reasons for using the nofollow was to discourage comment spam. there's one good use of it.

[incrediblehelp]

Why how does this detract or stop a link from doing it's job?

What job would that be exactly?

[1dmf]

taking you to another resource when clicked via the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol , what job did you think i meant?

[Jill]

Can someone please explain to me the HARM nofollow can do to a link on my page if i do use it

There's no harm, per se. The problem arises when the website that you are recommending to your website's visitors won't receive your vote of recognition from Google. Which kinda sucks for them.

If you don't want to give someone links (no you 1dmf, the collective you), then don't give them links. Don't go ahead and give them one but nofollow it. To me, it's sort of hypocritical!