"nofollow" - Does it Really Work Like Google Claim

[kimber23]

my co-worker posted this great blog about using "nofollow" with Google.

basically he ran a test to see if google treats it like it says it does. the results were, let's say, unusual.

what do you all think?

[meinking22]

Originally Posted by kimber23

what do you all think?

Excellent article! I dig it when webmasters get down and dirty in cracking the egg...

It appears to be obvious that Google IGNORED the "nofollow" parameter in this case. It will be interesting to see how the history on this experiment plays out. The only chink in the armor appears to be time and age of the link. I wonder if the link may not get filtered down the road by other Google algorithms. It would be interesting to see if a revisit of the test in a few months still matches the original findings.

Steve

[untmarkb]

Originally Posted by meinking22

The only chink in the armor appears to be time and age of the link. I wonder if the link may not get filtered down the road by other Google algorithms. It would be interesting to see if a revisit of the test in a few months still matches the original findings.

I was wondering if time would be an issue with this as well. This is why I waiting to publish the results of this test. I posted the comment on June 16, 2006 so the search engines have had over 5 months to filter this type of thing out.

-Mark B

[incrediblehelp]

Just like the robots.txt tag, we can only hope that the bots follow our direction.

[adisonedu]

"nofollow" - Does it Really Work Like Google Claim

Yes Virginia, it really does work. I am what you might call a linkmaster and during tons of research I have found that the "nofollow" aspect is used by the top 3 search engines. There is a backlink formula and while using the formula I have found that links using "nofollow" or any aspect of no follow like "no follow" "external nofollow" etc. are not to be found in any link searches.

If you guys have more onfo on this matter please let me know.

Preston

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by adisonedu

"nofollow" - Does it Really Work Like Google Claim

Yes Virginia, it really does work. I am what you might call a linkmaster and during tons of research I have found that the "nofollow" aspect is used by the top 3 search engines. There is a backlink formula and while using the formula I have found that links using "nofollow" or any aspect of no follow like "no follow" "external nofollow" etc. are not to be found in any link searches.

If you guys have more onfo on this matter please let me know.

Preston

Well if you call him "linkmaster" then please let us know.

Thanks

P.S. Nofollow sucks! See here why: No Follow links for the Internal Pages

[kevsta]

a "linkmaster" eh? what does that involve exactly?

[incrediblehelp]

Preston dont tell me you believe in PR Sculpting to?

[activeco]

Rel="nofollow" and Google.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by activeco

Rel="nofollow" and Google.

What do you think about this thread?

MasterLink Search Marketing: "nofollow" - Does it Really Work Like Google Claims?

[mjtaylor]

I think your friend made an error when referring to SEW instead of Google to determine what G will or will not do when it encounters a no-follow. In Official Google Blog: Preventing comment spam it reads,

"From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results."

It doesn't say anything about not following the link, and never has ... it is just about not passing PR.

The anchor text is an interesting note, though ... but for a non-competitive term, it is not unreasonable that the page would be returned.

That's what I think ... MJ

[activeco]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

What do you think about this thread?

There is nothing strange in the results.
If you look in the Google's cache for that search term, you will notice the following:
"You can also find good deals on Warranties from companies online such as The Auto Club (www the autoclub com). "

The url in the text was associated with the author of the comment and not the 'nofollow' link below it.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by activeco

There is nothing strange in the results.
If you look in the Google's cache for that search term, you will notice the following:

I guess I am confused. Havent you said Google will not follow a link with a nofollow attribute?

[activeco]

Well, it did not follow the link.
Have you found the sentence in the cache?

There can't be "nofollow" attribute in a non-linked textual url.

[incrediblehelp]

I see what you mean now Activeco. I was confused.

[incrediblehelp]

I had a recent coversation through email with Aaron Wall. I sent him a few of my points concerning PR Sculpting and how much I thought it was a load of crap:

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.


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:
Yes, Virginia, your contact page DOES need 500 links - SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

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?

[incrediblehelp]

Some actual testing with the nofollow:

MasterLink Search Marketing: "nofollow" - Does it Really Work Like Google Claims?

[pomra]

Great read incredi.

Google and others seem to still note the link but whether they value it or not seems to be the major question. Most seem to believe the answer is no.

[subhzash]

Originally Posted by kimber23

my co-worker posted this great blog about using "nofollow" with Google.

basically he ran a test to see if google treats it like it says it does. the results were, let's say, unusual.

what do you all think?

Good Article. And its real example how google behaves. Even most of the time unexpected things we have to see from Google

[powsurfer]

My understanding of the rel="nofollow" on links is that the links are followed, but they don't get any PR benefit from the page linking to them, therefore they can still be indexed.
noindex would surely be the instruction not to index a page?

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by powsurfer

My understanding of the rel="nofollow" on links is that the links are followed, but they don't get any PR benefit from the page linking to them, therefore they can still be indexed.
noindex would surely be the instruction not to index a page?

They also still get crawled from what I can tell as well.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

They also still get crawled from what I can tell as well.

Not from Google.

[powsurfer]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

They also still get crawled from what I can tell as well.

Mine have but there are other links to those pages which I have added to ensure they get crawled

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by activeco

Not from Google.

Um sure they do. Add a the attribute to a file that actually gets crawled on your server activeco and I bet you will see googlebot crawl the file.

Don’t you understand nofollow is not a do not crawl directive. It supposedly a do not pass juice directive. Googlebot doesn’t go through a website and look at attributes when crawling. They bring all the data back to the googlebot servers for analysis. Analysis is not done "on the fly". Now once Google crawls your website and sees the nofollow on a link, eventually they may take it off their crawler schedule.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Don’t you understand nofollow is not a do not crawl directive.

Yes 'nofollow' is the 'do not crawl' directive.
I bet you have read my related post:
Rel="nofollow" & Google.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by activeco

Yes 'nofollow' is the 'do not crawl' directive.
I bet you have read my related post:
Rel="nofollow" & Google.

Well whatever you want to think activeco. I am not going to argue such point. I have tested it myself so I know.

I bet if others out there add the nofollow attribute ONLY they will still see crawling on their links.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I have tested it myself so I know.

You have to be sure it is the one and only link on the web.

Actually it is almost a year I put the linked file (03/31/07) and I just checked the stats. No Google, no Yahoo, but many other bot hits.
I'll spend some time to find all the non-complying robots and post it here or in a new thread.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by activeco

You have to be sure it is the one and only link on the web.

OK now I see your problem. See it doesn't work that way. You cant say nofollow is a nocrawl directive and then say your test can only have one link pointing to it...the one with the nofollow on it. The other links should not matter if the nofollow is doing its job and the spider is following its instructions as you see it.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

OK now I see your problem. See it doesn't work that way. You cant say nofollow is a nocrawl directive and then say your test can only have one link pointing to it...the one with the nofollow on it. The other links should not matter if the nofollow is doing its job and the spider is following its instructions as you see it.

Won't matter how many links you use. Could be 1000. If all of them are nofollow'ed the target page won't get crawled via those links. If a single link to the page is "live" the page will get visited.

It's a no crawl directive for the link it is attached to.

Dave

[activeco]

Originally Posted by crankydave

It's a no crawl directive for the link it is attached to.

Exactly. It seems you Dave have a problem too.
Why are we so strange?

[incrediblehelp]

OK then we will agree to disagree. If a page has one back link to it with nofollow (internal or not) and 10 without it, the page is GOING to get crawled.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

OK then we will agree to disagree. If a page has one back link to it with nofollow (internal or not) and 10 without it, the page is GOING to get crawled.

Yes it will. Noone has suggested it won't.

A nofollow link will not allow the target page to be discovered, get crawled, via that particular link.

It is a no crawl directive assigned to a link.

Dave

[activeco]

Originally Posted by crankydave

It is a no crawl directive assigned to a link.

True, in exactly the same way as the 'nofollow' in meta 'robots' headers instructs bot not to crawl ANY link on that page.
The links simply don't exist there, which doesn't mean they can't be found somewhere else.

[activeco]

As promised: rel="nofollow" (non)complying bots

[incrediblehelp]

Everyone here have a read:

Why your nofollow testing sucks

[crankydave]

I had a read Jaan.

Here's my capsulization...

You can't test nofollow and definitively say "it works" because you cannot eliminate external influences. Fair assessment?

If so, you cannot say nofollow does not work for the very same reasons.

Now, some things we can, IMO, safely assume to be true...

The nofollow attribute, when applied to a link, has the same effect as simply removing the link altogether when it comes to PR. This will cause more PR to be passed by the remaining links.

IF PR is a ranking factor in any way, shape, or form, then pages receiving more PR receive an increase in their ability to rank better because of it.

Whether or not that increased ability (IF PR is a ranking factor) actually manifests itself as higher rankings that can be seen cannot be definitively proved, or disproved, because it is not the only factor that influences rankings and many of the other things that do remain fluid and in a constant state of flux and cannot be discounted.

I understand MM's point but the very same thing can be said about anything at all when it comes to ranking. You cannot "test" and then definitely say "this alone makes me rank better" because you cannot eliminate extraneous influences over which you have no control and point to a single thing the as the sole cause for the result.

"I added more anchor text links and my rankings went up, therefore those anchor text links caused me to rank higher"

"Really? How about other sites losing anchor text links? How about an algo tweak? How about the value of existing links changing?"

I could go on and on...

Dave

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Everyone here have a read:

Why your nofollow testing sucks

Me not! The nofollow attribute is far beyond suckability.

[TolkienLibrary]

I'm not really convinced about the nofollow attribute not working, so I keep using it all the same. Nothing lost by adding it?

[onlinetv]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

It doesn't say anything about not following the link, and never has ...

The rel=nofollow was added on to allow webmasters to post links they otherwise would not. Links you do not agree with but post as reference. If I have a nofollow I expect that the link never show as coming from my pages. I don’t care what they do after that. They would be expected to go see, just not report, link it to you, or pass on your reputation.

Google has usurped the tag, changed the meaning and obscured the fact that they cannot program a decent search engine to enforce adsense or die policies on their affiliate link farm webmasters. The nofollow tag is not to alert search engines to advertisers.

Frankly we use nofollow on political sites quite often. I would never put a nofollow on an advertiser. Online is the same as real world. Advertisers like to be seen in good places and be reflected in those terms and reputation of where they are advertising. Advertisers look to be associated with prestige and where you see the advert should reflect to the advertiser your reputation.

Coca cola does not give the bars free refrigerators to cover their signs and sell Pepsi. The yellow pages do not stop listing you for selling Pepsi either. Google’s problem is it is in too many inter-competitive businesses. It is trying to fool you that it is a search engine when it is a link seller matching content off its carefully groomed affiliate web farm

Google is going to fail in trying to change the tag and force sites to capitulate to only use the failing adsense affiliate network. Their stock is falling, as are the revenues to their affiliate link farm sites and their income from the suckers that arbitrate adsense sites to death in a never-ending circle of adsense senseless sites is also falling.

The least funny thing is to see? Google advocate some outside link sellers like adbrite. Adbrite sells full-page interstitial google adspam site pages for .001 per 1000! Talk about arbitrage! Imagine buying 100000 interstitial pages stuffed with your google ads for a buck? Go to adbrite and get on it. That is the type of spam Google likes to see.

[Webnauts]

Nofollow here, nofollow there, everywhere a nofollow.

What happen with Googles parameter "?googlebot=nocrawl" for internal linking? Googlebot: Keep out!

[Peter (IMC)]

"Mark Warranty Peterson" - Google Search
Doesn't show theautoclub.com

inanchor:"Mark Warranty Peterson" - Google Search

Shows nothing.

That domain is now 301 redirected to paragonmotorclub.com (which also doesn't show up in the 2 searches above) which by the way is completely Grey in the toolbar.

oh alright, that test was done in 2006. So that might explain why it's no longer showing.

Seems like it's too old news to really be useful.