Just how useful are Social Bookmark Sites for SEO Purposes?

[gky45]

With more and more Social Bookmark sites using the rel="nofollow" convention after links it begs the question how vaild and useful are some of these Sites anyway?

Bearing in mind the whole sales pitch of the "Tag and Ping" Brigade was to get more and more links tagged on these directories, get them pinged and thus get Googlebot, msnbot and slurp to index the links and reflect back on the "linked to" site as inbound links creating "authority" sites etc.

With most sites now using these rel="nofollow" commands how can this system work?

If, the other side of posting to Bookmark directories was to get Human traffic then great and the the inbound relevant link effect that accrued as a by product of this then fine.

It seems to be that with rel="nofollow" the inbound link issue is now open to question?

Anyone got any views?

Patrick

[Feydakin]

Philosophically, if you are participating in social networking for the links and not the social side of it, then you are doing it for the wrong reasons anyway..

If the sites are driving traffic then don't worry about the nofollow tag.. If they aren't driving traffic than don't worry about trying to get the link..

[gky45]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

Philosophically, if you are participating in social networking for the links and not the social side of it, then you are doing it for the wrong reasons anyway..

If the sites are driving traffic then don't worry about the nofollow tag.. If they aren't driving traffic than don't worry about trying to get the link..

I agree with you there but the point that I was making was that not a day seems to go by without some idiot coming out with one piece of software after another all promising the holy grail of an endless supply of inbound links that will help you with your SEO and they all seem to be targetting the Social Bookmark Directories.

Now it seems to me that this is now pretty pointless. With the adoption of the rel="nofollow" command this makes this exercise pretty worthless.

My other point is this. If the engines are now trying to crack down on "link spam" / worthless two way links then if you had loads of tags and book marks to your own sites (as loads do) and now they are all covered with rel="nofollow" then how much damage is that going to do to you? Surely these links will now be seen as almost spam as the "nofollow" command effectively says that "this is a link but not anything to do with us / we can't vouch for the usefulness, worth etc."

If the latter is the case and the various bots discover all these previously existing links to now be worthless, how much damage is that going to do to the sites that they were pointing to? If you are to believe certain sources then too many of these worthless inbounds will almost certainly harm your sites ranking.

So in actuality, if the rel="nofollow" command actualy prevents the spiders from going any further then it will surely harm your site and if this is the case then surely it is yet another way for some sites to harm their competitors by actually creating links to them?

On the other hand if all the "nofollow" command does is prevent any form of "PageRank / trustworthiness" being passed on to the site but is still usable for spiderable purposes then at least there is no harm done.

[gky45]

As a follow on to my last post I received an email this morning about another new tool called Forum Equalizer doing the rounds. Now this tool apparently posts unlimited postings to forums thereby creating one way back links via signitures etc.

Now there isn't a person on this forum (alright there may be a few) who doesn't appreciate the odd benefit of the one way backlink from their sig when the post on the board.

How long before the rel="nofollow" is taken up on most forums thereby negating the accrued benefit of the links.

My beef is still over the crap I have to tidy up each morning on a couple of my blogs that have been targetted by low life using a comment spamming utility. One blog I have to remove in excess of over 100 pornographic comments / links etc every day.

[Feydakin]

I agree that the spammers ruin everything that they touch.. But social bookmarking is just the latest in a long list of things overrun by spammers.. All the way back to paper direct mail, thru usenet, email, etc etc etc.. They are everywhere because it works.. It makes them money..

As for the side effects of the rel-nofollow, I don't expect to see anyone penalized for their links having this on them.. But I do expect that the loss of links that count will hurt their rankings.. It's no really a penalty, just that they no longer count..

[incrediblehelp]

Remember these websites purpose is to serve a a facilitator of your info/article/posts out others that can lead to a great one-way links.

[gky45]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Remember these websites purpose is to serve a a facilitator of your info/article/posts out others that can lead to a great one-way links.

But how can they be great one way back links when (if Matt Cutts and his treatise on the use of nofollow tags is to be believed) the existence of "nofollow" commands negates any implied or accrued benefit these links for Bookmarks might otherwise have had.

[incrediblehelp]

Just because he says for blogs to use them doesnt mean they do. Many blogs dont or havent even heard of a nofollow attribute. Many bloggers never heard of SEO!

[gky45]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Just because he says for blogs to use them doesnt mean they do. Many blogs dont or havent even heard of a nofollow attribute. Many bloggers never heard of SEO!

I agree with you on that one, my point was more geared towards the Social Bookmark Sites

[andyf]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Just because he says for blogs to use them doesnt mean they do. Many blogs dont or havent even heard of a nofollow attribute. Many bloggers never heard of SEO!

IMO those blogs must be of personal type, not intended for getting traffic, but just to have their existance.

[bhopkins]

I'm not sure about the no-follow attribute in social bookmarking sites, so I'll need to check on that. I expect people to start gettting banned ( of course does not really do anything since most are signing up with multiple email accounts anyway. I social bookmark my sites but mostly for traffic, but I've noticed that once you Bookmark a site the search engine spider always seems to follow close behind.

My main purpose is not to just get the SE to come( I can always just throw a link on one of my PR6 sites and make that happen anyway), I do it more because in the early days of a site before you get indexed, then if you bookmark correctly and have interesting content, then you can get some traffic and maybe even a few backlinks from the blogs and sites of people that happen to see your site and maybe read an article or two.

Bruce

[janeth]

Originally Posted by gky45

My other point is this. If the engines are now trying to crack down on "link spam" / worthless two way links then if you had loads of tags and book marks to your own sites (as loads do) and now they are all covered with rel="nofollow" then how much damage is that going to do to you? Surely these links will now be seen as almost spam as the "nofollow" command effectively says that "this is a link but not anything to do with us / we can't vouch for the usefulness, worth etc."

Sounds like if your thinking was correct we should start bookmarking our competition sites.

The bookmarking site want hurt you. (- ;

[janeth]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Just because he says for blogs to use them doesnt mean they do. Many blogs dont or havent even heard of a nofollow attribute. Many bloggers never heard of SEO!

The blog software comes with the nofollow tag already in place.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by gky45

How long before the rel="nofollow" is taken up on most forums thereby negating the accrued benefit of the links.

The spammers have been hitting the forums for years and some forums use the nofollow tag but the benefits in the forums, bookmarking sites, blogs and all the other social media sites go way beyond the search engines.

If your using them only for the search engines then your not using the tool properly.

[gky45]

Originally Posted by janeth

The blog software comes with the nofollow tag already in place.

Wordpress doesn't

[janeth]

Originally Posted by gky45

Wordpress doesn't

Yes it does, I've had to remove them from several of my wordpress blogs.

[gky45]

Originally Posted by janeth

Yes it does, I've had to remove them from several of my wordpress blogs.

It only does if the comments are not approved and by someway they are visible. I've just tried on a few of my blogs on Wordpress 2.0.2 and when you approve the comment there is no tag at all (which makes sense)

[janeth]

Wordpress nofollow

WordPress 1.5 (a Weblog/CMS software) comes with “nofollow” enabled by default, with no option to disable it! This plugin provides an option to disable “nofollow” in the most efficient way possible without altering any WordPress code.

Wordpress has nofollow tag

To make it worse, out of the box content publishing systems, like WordPress, have the nofollow tag turned on by default (in the comments section).

And if all that's not good enough we can go to WordPress

It's added automatically by the WP software.

I've removed it from some of my blogs and I know it comes with the blogs.

[kcire]

I don't quite get it...Can I turn off theWordPress rel?

[Webnauts]

I fully agree with the excellent posts of Steve (Feydakin) and Janeth.
We use social bookmarking for driving visitors to our web sites and not for IBLs.-

[lkcheng]

If you have links from many social bookmark sites giving you no traffic, I suggest you remove your links from those social sites that have 'nofollow' features because they do nothing but hurting your rankings in search engines especially in Google.

My website disappears in Google once when I have just got about 40 links from different high PR social bookmarking sites. Fortunately my site come back to the original position after 8 days.

High PR site like Delicious, magnolia, scuttle and more (have nofollow) are helpless to SEO.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by lkcheng

If you have links from many social bookmark sites giving you no traffic, I suggest you remove your links from those social sites that have 'nofollow' features because they do nothing but hurting your rankings in search engines especially in Google.

What???

[ditto]

I can't remember where I picked up the information but it was solid. Yahoo and MSN don't take note of the no-follow link!

Before I get jumped on. I'm sure that all links count for something. Even if it's on a page with the tag above. You'll most likely score less for a link on one of these pages but I'm sure it has some significance in your in-bound link count.

Logically as more sites take the no-follow tag up, more and more of the web will be 'closed off' or ignored by the search engines and this will interfere with their relevant results. This is definately something they do not want.

All links count for something.

[Webnauts]

IMO, the abuse of the "nofollow" attribute is what sucks.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by lkcheng

If you have links from many social bookmark sites giving you no traffic, I suggest you remove your links from those social sites that have 'nofollow' features because they do nothing but hurting your rankings in search engines especially in Google.

Here is a comment made with nothing to back it up.

Sites disappear everyday and to decide that the site disappeared for one reason and one reason only with with no testing being done is crazy. But then to come to a forum and post in a forum that it's because of the nofollow tag is just irresponsible.

According to you, Matt Cutts is now punishing everyone that makes comments on his own blog?

Google is targeting everyone that uses bookmarking sites?

Google is targeting everyone that leaves comments on blogs?

Google is targeting everyone that post on a forum that uses a nofollow tag?

To rank your site number one for a keyword you only have to bookmark your competitions site. SEO's from around the world can now rank your site number 1 for any keyword you want without doing anything to your site.

I hope my post does not come off as being rude or out of place but I wish people would test a little before making post.

[Chris]

if social bookmarks were so "bad" for your site, then every SEO provider and search engine employee would not be telling conference attendees to create link bait and focus on sites like Digg and Redit and Delicious.

[meinking22]

Originally Posted by Chris

if social bookmarks were so "bad" for your site, then every SEO provider and search engine employee would not be telling conference attendees to create link bait and focus on sites like Digg and Redit and Delicious.

Exactly. Judging from the recent conference video interviews and feedback, social search, bookmarks et al, are the crest of the new SEM wave. How many times did Matt Cutts say linkbait in his interviews?

Steve

[lkcheng]

To make thing easy and safe. When you build inbound links using social bookmark sites. Avoid social bookmark sites that use 'nofollow'.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by lkcheng

Avoid social bookmark sites that use 'nofollow'.

Why should we do that? We all want people to find our sites and services, and not only the search engines. Why do we use search engines anyway? To be found, too, or?

Another thing is, if it is true what some say that the nofollow attribute in a link to a site can hurt the targeted site, then I will just setup a page on a free hosting with all links of the posters of this thread, and add the nofollow attribute in the links to hurt them all. LOL

So I do not get your point here.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by lkcheng

Avoid social bookmark sites that use 'nofollow'.

I agree this should not matter. You looking for the people that "digg" you to post on their own blog as well.

[lkcheng]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Why should we do that? We all want people to find our sites and services, and not only the search engines. Why do we use search engines anyway? To be found, too, or?

Another thing is, if it is true what some say that the nofollow attribute in a link to a site can hurt the targeted site, then I will just setup a page on a free hosting with all links of the posters of this thread, and add the nofollow attribute in the links to hurt them all. LOL

So I do not get your point here.

When building backlinks for SEO. It's better to avoid the social site that got 'nofollow' because you might getting a lot of 'nofollow' links in short period of time which might affect your rankings.

Since Google’s rel="nofollow" method is to prevent comment spam. When Google notices that you have a lot of nofollow links to your website and may conclude that your site are spamming and may be (who know) hurt your ranking.

That's all my opinion.

[Webnauts]

OK. Then I can setup a number of sites on free hosting providers, adding links of my competitors on them, using the "nofollow" attribute. Sounds like a great idea to boycott them. :)

[janeth]

Originally Posted by lkcheng

That's all my opinion.

With no facts to back them up. (-;

[Feydakin]

Originally Posted by lkcheng

Since Google’s rel="nofollow" method is to prevent comment spam. When Google notices that you have a lot of nofollow links to your website and may conclude that your site are spamming and may be (who know) hurt your ranking.

That's all my opinion.

As Webnaughts said, this would put a lot of power in the hands of everyone to negatively affect the rankings of a competitor's website.. And even if, in theory, your opinion were something that could be done, it wouldn't be done.. It would simply put too much power to harm in the hands of the bad guys..

So it's simply not done that way..

But, even with the nofollow tag, the traffic those links could possibly generate far outweighs any potential harm..

[lkcheng]

Originally Posted by janeth

With no facts to back them up. (-;

I don't have a solid facts yet. But my site once disappear in Google when I just got a number of high PR nofollow links.

On the other hand, people can use nofollow links to sabotage their competitors if the above is correct as mentioned by webnauts and Feydakin.

If we can contact Google to ask about this. All this puzzle can be solved.

[lkcheng]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

OK. Then I can setup a number of sites on free hosting providers, adding links of my competitors on them, using the "nofollow" attribute. Sounds like a great idea to boycott them. :)

Originally Posted by Feydakin

As Webnaughts said, this would put a lot of power in the hands of everyone to negatively affect the rankings of a competitor's website.. And even if, in theory, your opinion were something that could be done, it wouldn't be done.. It would simply put too much power to harm in the hands of the bad guys..

So it's simply not done that way..

But, even with the nofollow tag, the traffic those links could possibly generate far outweighs any potential harm..

So in logical sense, nofollow should not be hurting and helping website ranking in Google.

[meinking22]

Originally Posted by lkcheng

So in logical sense, nofollow should not be hurting and helping website ranking in Google.

Not only shouldn't it hurt your Google ranking...It doesn't...Unless you established a link exchange with someone that used the "nofollow" on the page they placed you on. Then your site would not get credit for their IBL and you would be giving them a freebie...one of those dirty underhanded kind of tricks...

Go back and review the first interview with Matt Cutts by Mike. In it, Cutts recommends the use of "nofollow" as an alternative strategy for social bookmarkers that are concerned about spam issues. I seriously doubt that a Google heavyweight like Cutts would be actively promoting something that would "hurt" website rankings...

Steve

[kimber23]

here is an interesting blog post in which a co-worker of mine tested how the engines treat "nofollow". the results were suprising. google apparently ignores it according to his test. check it out:
"nofollow" - Does it Really Work Like Google Claims?

[bhopkins]

I downloaded a tool named SEOQuake which is a Firefox plugin. This is a great tool and helps put part of this debate to rest. The tool shows you links that have the no follow attribute link set up. I've got hundreds of links on various social network sites and almost everyone one of them add the nofollow attribute. In everyone of these cases I found my sites listed as backlinks in yahoo and most of them in Google. Google is to be expected since it does not show all backlinks any way.

Looks like people may set nofollow but it does not seem that the SE's pay any attention to the tag. The robot may not follow the link to find your site, but they are still counting as backlinks. This is actually how I found this post that I had not thought about in a while

[Feydakin]

I think a great many people mistake seeing it in the SERPs with helping or hurting your site.. Google may be aware of the links, and may even show you the links, but that doesn't mean that the links count for anything..

The nofollow tag doesn't say don't index, it says don't allow my PR to pass to this site.. Not something that neccessarily needs to be shown..

[Michael D]

Using Yahoo's link domain feature I have found several links from social bookmark sites to competitors sites (one site is less than 3 months old). I not sure what kind of link juice they are getting, but I can tell my site gets spidered more often post bookmark.

[trooperbill]

rel nofollow only affects google... Tip: when doing this, look for RSS feeds of your profile which typically dont have rel tags!

mark

[coolguy27]

Originally Posted by gky45

With more and more Social Bookmark sites using the rel="nofollow" convention after links it begs the question how vaild and useful are some of these Sites anyway?

Bearing in mind the whole sales pitch of the "Tag and Ping" Brigade was to get more and more links tagged on these directories, get them pinged and thus get Googlebot, msnbot and slurp to index the links and reflect back on the "linked to" site as inbound links creating "authority" sites etc.

With most sites now using these rel="nofollow" commands how can this system work?

If, the other side of posting to Bookmark directories was to get Human traffic then great and the the inbound relevant link effect that accrued as a by product of this then fine.

It seems to be that with rel="nofollow" the inbound link issue is now open to question?

Anyone got any views?

Patrick

It is because Social Bookmarking Sites have trust in Google (meaning popular)...

It generates traffic and Google still crawls on it even it has with nofollow tag...

Many searches comes from social bookmarking sites...