When should I use no-follow on internal Links?

[Morricone]

I often saw, that serveral websites put no-follow on some internal links.

For example:

Let´s take a submenu with articles:

Articles
- one (http://xyz.com/one.html - Linked without no-follow)
- two (http://xyz.com/two.html - Linked without no-follow)
- three (http://xyz.com/three.html - Linked without no-follow)
.
.
.

Now, there is a spot with new articles on the website:
Recent Articles:

One (http://xyz.com/one.html - Linked with no-follow)
Two (http://xyz.com/two.html - Linked with no-follow)

Should I always keep it that way?

Should every link to a site just appear one time visible to google? (i don´t mean duplicate content! Just duplicate links to the same page from different sections on the site!).

Could it be, that google perhaps don´t like it, to follow the same link to the same page over and over?


Thanks for any answers,
Marc aka Morricone

[AVC]

No follow should be used on a lot of links like affiliate links, log in, search functions and so on if it is logical, if you want pages to be indexed they should be followed, if not use no follow.

[bobitza]

Hi Mark,

The purpose of no-follow for internal linking is to steer link juice the way you want/need it. So, if for example you want to push a specific page, don't use no-follow on the links to that page and viceversa; if a page like sitemap or contact is not important but still has a link present in all the pages, do use no-follow to preserve link juice for other links.

[torpengkute]

We used Nofollow tag on our internal links for many reasons, like we don't want to crawl important page on our site...

[Webnauts]

Marc take the advice of AVC.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by AVC

No follow should be used on a lot of links like affiliate links, log in, search functions and so on if it is logical, if you want pages to be indexed they should be followed, if not use no follow.

Are you sure that you don't change the link so you don't get commision? The same applies to code from Affiliate providers that are not valid, not even well-formed.

A tiny change may be to your disadvantage.

1. The URL redirects you to the correct site.
2. But it may not track your affiliate Id correctly.

A computer (program) is plain stupid. It does exactly what it is told to do. Read about the concequences of a, comma error:
The camelot, the straw man and the faceless community.

Syntax, sematics, imperatives and pragmatics etc. are all important in computer programs. You must decide what is most important in different situations, e.g. valid code or valid tracking. I prefer valid tracking.

[innominds]

Use no-follow particularly for affiliate links and for other sites that you do want to give the link juice.

[AVC]

Originally Posted by kgun

Are you sure that you don't change the link so you don't get commission? The same applies to code from Affiliate providers that are not valid, not even well-formed.

A tiny change may be to your disadvantage.

1. The URL redirects you to the correct site.
2. But it may not track your affiliate Id correctly.

A computer (program) is plain stupid. It does exactly what it is told to do. Read about the consequences of a, comma error:
The camelot, the straw man and the faceless community.

Syntax, sematics, imperatives and pragmatics etc. are all important in computer programs. You must decide what is most important in different situations, e.g. valid code or valid tracking. I prefer valid tracking.

You can tell if you are getting credit for the link by looking at your stats for the affiliate program, one reason to no follow affiliate links is the fact that Google might penalize pages that have a ton of affiliate links that are followed or those that are not using redirects.


I'm not an expert on the topic, but there are some great tools and articles out there on how to run affiliate links properly so you are not penalized by the search engines.

[bobitza]

I don't know why everybody talks about affiliate links and other sites that you do want to give the link juice ...

The OP stated quite clearly: INTERNAL LINKS. Using no follow on internal links.

[jsbwebdesign]

It is interesting to see how the rel=”nofollow” attribute has been used and by whom since it was introduced.

Wordpress has the nofollow attribute as default on installation. (sidenote: Should you not reward those who put the time into commenting on your blog?)
Wikipedia has nofollow attributes on external links.
Many forums also have nofollow attributes set for signature links.
All of this to mainly combat spammers of course.

As far as I know Yahoo will still follow and even put the page in its index, even if it has this attribute.

Spammers aside, the no follow should keep more PR on that particular page. (if you care about such things).

I am wondering if using a noindex, nofollow attribute combination on pages such as logins etc. would be the way to go. The noindex seems to be a bit better supported, although last time I checked Yahoo was again the odd ball out.

Now what about this, you have links in your sidebar, and those links again in your footer. Would putting nofollow attributes in your footer links cause any problems?

[bobitza]

Originally Posted by jsbwebdesign

Would putting nofollow attributes in your footer links cause any problems?

Why whould they? In fact I'll go modify my footers right away

[Webnauts]

Just a tip to all in this thread:

Be very careful when implementing the "nofollow" attribute. A large and famous Australian SEO company advised one of my customers to use it and they were screwed up.

Playing with that attribute not being very sure when and where to use it, you are playing with the fire.

Good luck.

[AVC]

No follow has been a dilemma and a controversial subject that to this day is still a major mystery with many unanswered questions, so webmasters should use common sense in determining it's use to be safe.

One part of common sense is to use "no follow" on user generated content that is unmoderated by editors.

[inertia]

I add no follow on links to un important pages like terms and conditions and contact us pages, i figure this pushes the PR towards the rich content. But then ill add a sitemap with standard links to all pages just so they do get indexed. Any content that you dont want indexing is easily sorted with a robot.txt file.

I dont see the point of adding no follow tags to affiliate links coz i figure any affiliates will have relevant content to you. From what i can tell google likes you to provide visitors with resources external to your own site.

[Peter (IMC)]

When should I use no-follow on internal Links?

Never!

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by bobitza

Hi Mark,

The purpose of no-follow for internal linking is to steer link juice the way you want/need it. So, if for example you want to push a specific page, don't use no-follow on the links to that page and viceversa; if a page like sitemap or contact is not important but still has a link present in all the pages, do use no-follow to preserve link juice for other links.

Bad idea. You´re just deleting anchor text "juice", that's pretty much all you´re doing.

If you want to steer link "juice" in the right direction then you have to come up with a better link structure for the website. Faking it with nofollows is not recomendable at all.

An optimized website also has the best link structure. If you feel like you need to use nofollows then you have the wrong link structure.

[Webnauts]

I fully agree with Peter.

I would rather use meta tags or robots.txt if I do not want a page to be followed, and for links I rather would use a server side temporary redirect (302).

About excluding pages like "Privacy Policy", "TOS", e.t.c just to avoid a PageRank dilution, I do not think that it is a good practice in terms of a site's credibility. I am not sure if that factor might be at some point considered by search engines, but still I would not disallow those pages as they are equally important like all other pages. If they were not, why should I have them there anyway?

[bobitza]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

...
About excluding pages like "Privacy Policy", "TOS", e.t.c just to avoid a PageRank dilution, I do not think that it is a good practice in terms of a site's credibility. ...

Why not? With nofollows I'm saying that the page is not important and the bot will only loose time going through that link, time that can be spent indexing other more important pages. Well, at least that's what I'll say to SE if they ask me

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by bobitza

Why not? With nofollows I'm saying that the page is not important and the bot will only loose time going through that link, time that can be spent indexing other more important pages. Well, at least that's what I'll say to SE if they ask me

So the bots will not loose time going through that link?

No, no my friend. For such cases Google requires the implementation of an If-Modified-Since HTTP header for that.
304 (Not modified).

[bobitza]

Hey, who's side are you on?

[AVC]

Webnauts is right, most forums have a robots.txt file to block spiders from pages they don't want indexed, you can look at the one on this forum and see this.

http://www.webproworld.com/robots.txt

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by bobitza

Hey, who's side are you on?

On mine and of my customers.

[bobitza]

Hehe, I thought you were on SE's side

Anyways, we're going offtopic here so I guess we'd better stop. Although we should have some fun from time to time ...

[kgun]

Originally Posted by bobitza

The OP stated quite clearly: INTERNAL LINKS. Using no follow on internal links.

Agree, sometimes I read too fast.

Here

Does rel no follow work for internal links too?

is a classic thread at WMW.

Note the last post:

"This is one of those cases where we can debate the use of the tag for days or weeks without getting one single authoritative response.
Google is the only one that can truly tell us if using it this way would raise a red flag or not.
Any thing that any one else says about the topic would be pure conjecture on their part.
I for one would love to be able to add the no follow attribute to on-site links. Most of them are all ready dis-allowed in robots.txt but they still show up in the SERPs and it has been said here that PR would be passed or waisted on the pages you have blocked in robots.txt".

Newer thread:

"Matt did say to put "nofollow" on pages that you don't need pagerank juice going to, such as privacy policy, admin pages and so on.
Another new use for nofollow?"

"No thanks. My contact us page is trusted content. Does nobody here ever do a search for a business by phone number or street address, or even 'company name city name"? I do it all the time. Pull that info out of the index and suffer the loss of probably the finest of targetted traffic. Personally, I want that information up high on my site's list of important pages so that I rank at the top for those kinds of searches. Not ranking right at the top for a search like that gives one kind of an icky feeling. This nofollow thing has some serious bite-back potential. It's been pushed by the SE's, then twisted by them for their own purposes, and is now being twisted again. What if some bright SEO person figures out a way to twist the use of it to get better rankings (this thread being a small step towards that)? Then they'll have a monster on their hands. And I AM going to say 'I told you so' ".


rel="nofollow" for internal links

with this

SEOmoz | Matt Cutts on Nofollow, Links-Per-Page and the Value of Directories

link.

Latest story (may be you must be a member to view that thread):

Nofollow - a tragedy of the commons?

Last post:

By default, nofollow everything, but "whitelist" internal links plus important industry-related sites.

"!No, not at all, at least not in my opinion. Stop worrying about controlling PR so tightly. If you feel that adding links to external sites is of value to your users, then by all means go ahead. It makes your site more useful, and one of the byproducts of that is that you enjoy more one-way inbound links as a result.
The engines have an uncanny way of sorting this all out. How do you think that some big directories rank so well? Most of their contents are outlinks. IF bleeding PR was that important, these guys would be having trouble. Niche directories also still rank well if the directories are truly high quality.
Also, you seem to be assuming that straight PR is very important. That was true years ago, but if FAR less true now. I've got sites with low PR and less than 200 backlinks beating sites with higher PR and thousands of links.
Focus on quality and it will all come back to you".

My bolding.

For those with enough time study this too.

Using No-Follow on Internal Links Cause a Drop in Rankings?


Note this:

"Miamacs wrote:

In short, rel="nofollow" will not keep your pages out of the index".

"Not exactly correct.
Again, rel="nofollow" behaves in the exactly the same way as "nofollow" meta tag, which means the linked pages will not be crawled at all.
So, if that is the only link on the web, the linked page will never be crawled.
The problem arises when the page is normaly linked from some other place, where the bot gets the green light for crawling, unless the indexing of the linked page is forbidden in robots.txt or in meta's using "noindex" attribute".

Notet the last post Mar 31, 2007, by Drew_Black that has been a member since Jan 4, 2003

"I have a question for the people who used a lot of nofollows and found it hurt their site in search results. Were You using nofollow extensively? What % of the links in your site were nofollow?"

"On my site it was only 1% to 4% depending on the page".

Reason why I think the WMW world forum is an authority on this topic, GoogleGuy posts there:

GoogleGuy Says - Google Ranking Info

No secret (thread indexed by Google) if the story above is correct.

GoogleGuy Definition From The Glossary of Internet Terms - Strategic Web Ventures

Generally, to stay updated on what happens there, Google:

no follow internal links 2008 site:WebmasterWorld News and Discussion for the Web Professional

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by bobitza

Why not? With nofollows I'm saying that the page is not important and the bot will only loose time going through that link, time that can be spent indexing other more important pages. Well, at least that's what I'll say to SE if they ask me

No, you´re telling the search engines that you don't want PR to pass so that other pages SEEM more important.

If you don't think a page is important, then why do you link to it? If it is important for your visitors to be able to find your contact page from all pages, then that page is equally important for search engines.

You want search engines to see your site differently from the way visitors see it. That's always the wrong thing to do. Cloaking and hidden text are a similar thing. I don't think you want to spam the search engines, but you are looking at SEO way too technical. Forget about nofollows all together. Just use them if you´re allowing people to advertise in your website.

Pagerank is at the heart of all Google algorithms, but that doesn't mean that more of it makes your rankings go up. If you'd focus on all the other important factors, you'll find that you can get a lot more results in less time. Pagerank focus is almost always a waste of time.

But PR is a fun subject to talk about,.. Ignoring it all together wouldn't be smart either. But you need to find a balance.

[AVC]

Peter is right, webmasters that focus on page rank end up selling page rank, then Google catches them and de-indexes their sites, that is why they want us to use no follow on paid links, because webmasters have been abusing PR selling links to the highest bidder.

That will get your PR taken to ZERO and your sites will be deindexed, use no follow if you want to sell links or on user generated content that is unmoderated.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

If you don't think a page is important, then why do you link to it? If it is important for your visitors to be able to find your contact page from all pages, then that page is equally important for search engines.

My bolding. Are you able to see a reason?

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

You want search engines to see your site differently from the way visitors see it. That's always the wrong thing to do. Cloaking and hidden text are a similar thing. I don't think you want to spam the search engines, but you are looking at SEO way too technical. Forget about nofollows all together. Just use them if you´re allowing people to advertise in your website.

Again my bolding.

Human beings are not SE and they are not in the business of indexing billions of pages.

Answer this important question:
JavaScript code that makes links more informative (semantic) for human beings, should that be avoided bacause SeBOTS have problems crawling them?

[bobitza]

Originally Posted by AVC

Peter is right, webmasters that focus on page rank end up selling page rank, then Google catches them and de-indexes their sites, that is why they want us to use no follow on paid links, because webmasters have been abusing PR selling links to the highest bidder.

That will get your PR taken to ZERO and your sites will be deindexed, use no follow if you want to sell links or on user generated content that is unmoderated.

The subject is internal no follows.

Anyways, in the end it's a tag. The only thing that it should say is don't go through that link. Period. If you (aka spiders) don't like how I use it then ignore it. I was reading through Google Blog and I found no restrictions on where you can use the tag. Only recommendations about where to use it.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by bobitza

Anyways, in the end it's a tag.

No. In the end it is an attribute.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by bobitza

The subject is internal no follows.

Anyways, in the end it's a tag. The only thing that it should say is don't go through that link. Period. If you (aka spiders) don't like how I use it then ignore it. I was reading through Google Blog and I found no restrictions on where you can use the tag. Only recommendations about where to use it.

I'm not against you, Bobitza. Just noticed you´re pretty new in SEO and are perhaps a bit too focused on PR. I mentioned before that I don't think you want to spam or use any other unethical SEO technique, but I think you´re focusing too much on what you already understand and are now forgetting a bit to learn more.

Using the nofollow on internal links will probably not hurt you from the point of view of being penalized by the search engines, but it won't help one bit either. And from that point of view, you´re hurting your self as you´re wasting time on unnecessary things. I'm just being blunt here, so don't take this post negatively. I wouldn't spend my time writing a post like this to somebody I dislike.

[bobitza]

@webnauts
you little ...

@peter
Don't worry, I appreciate constructive criticism. You're right, it's not worth it. I changed my mind about modifying internal links.

[Rovoo.com]

It's true use no follow in all affiliate links that's all I was told and I did.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Rovoo.com

It's true use no follow in all affiliate links that's all I was told and I did.

For such cases I prefer using server side redirects instead of the "nofollow" attribute.

[inertia]

This is going a little off topic but id be grateful of a few opinions. I'm in the process of re-designing my hip hop site and the new one is going to have a few ad banners to hip hop clothing companies. These companies aren't paying me but the idea is that i generate them enough business to justify charging in the future.

These are image links to highly relevant content, should i no follow them?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by inertia

This is going a little off topic but id be grateful of a few opinions. I'm in the process of re-designing my hip hop site and the new one is going to have a few ad banners to hip hop clothing companies. These companies aren't paying me but the idea is that i generate them enough business to justify charging in the future.

These are image links to highly relevant content, should i no follow them?

Google looks after banners and might will consider them as affiliate or paid links. If your partners are exclusively interested in traffic and not PageRank, you would be on the safe side if you would add the "nofollow" attribute.

I know that sounds like a crappy idea, but thats Google.

As I say all the time, I prefer using server side redirects instead of the "nofollow" attribute, since I hate that "link condom". Just check the links of the external sites banners on my site to see what I mean.

[inertia]

Cheers Webnauts. One thing i am still unclear about is whether the bots follow a "no follow" link. Or, do they just pass no page rank through it?

I have read that linking out to relevant content is a good seo practice and by adding no follow tags to out bound, relevant links you are actually harming your seo tactics? Any opinions on this?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by inertia

Cheers Webnauts. One thing i am still unclear about is whether the bots follow a "no follow" link. Or, do they just pass no page rank through it?

If it is true what Google and other SE claim, they do not follow and index pages prevented by the use of the "nofollow" attribute.

Originally Posted by inertia

I have read that linking out to relevant content is a good seo practice and by adding no follow tags to out bound, relevant links you are actually harming your seo tactics? Any opinions on this?

There we go. Obviously it is a great SEO practice to link to quality relevant web sites. But in this specific case you are talking about advertising. I agree it is weird, but that is Google and not me.

[inertia]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Obviously it is a great SEO practice to link to quality relevant web sites. But in this specific case you are talking about advertising. I agree it is weird, but that is Google and not me.

Cheers Webnauts, i think ill start a new thread about this.

[bobitza]

Originally Posted by inertia

Cheers Webnauts. One thing i am still unclear about is whether the bots follow a "no follow" link. Or, do they just pass no page rank through it?

I read somewhere else that Yahoo does follow the link, while Google doesn't. I think every SE uses the nofollow attribute (thanks webnauts) differently in its ranking algorithms.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by kgun

My bolding. Are you able to see a reason?


Again my bolding.

Human beings are not SE and they are not in the business of indexing billions of pages.

Answer this important question:
JavaScript code that makes links more informative (semantic) for human beings, should that be avoided bacause SeBOTS have problems crawling them?

Yes! You can probably get the same (or close to it) result by using CSS.

[kgun]

I don't think so, even if it is possible to create animations by only using CSS and CSS 3 is becomming more like a programming language.

Modern JavaScript DOM building is much more. You also use JavaScript to create new styles on the fly.

Semantic linking is beyond CSS. The XML family of thechnologies is well suited to that. Much can also be achieved by manipulating element nodes and styles with JavaScript.

[Peter (IMC)]

I guess you'll have to wait until search engines are capable of dealing with new technologies.

[inertia]

Aaaaah! I see!

[kgun]

Google are. See:

XML driven site: Read here

Post number 9: link to Wige's XML driven site.

How do the BOT's see DHTML?

We should not let SE's prevent us from writing semantic links and content that uses JavaScript or other modern technologies.

IMO, you and other members demonstrate that you do not know enough to understand this.

KW's

1. DOM building.
2. XLink using simple and extended links.

[kgun]

To be more constructive, here are three additional resource links:

1. Erik Wilde and David Lowe: XPath, XLink, XPointer, and XML: A Practical Guide to Web Hyperlinking and Transclusion All about a more advanced link model. Highly reccomended buy.
2. Web Development Articles by Christian Heilmann Click the link: "From DHTML to DOM scripting" and download the free PDF book. Generally a good site from a JavaScript expert.
3. The desktop is on the Web.

[subhzash]

Hi,

I suggest use no-follow link to improve your search engine rankings. If we use the no-follow link to all internal links except sitemap then in google give link backs with no internal links only unique link backs appears with that i can get more marks in search engines




Regards
Subhash

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by subhzash

Hi,

I suggest use no-follow link to improve your search engine rankings. If we use the no-follow link to all internal links except sitemap then in google give link backs with no internal links only unique link backs appears with that i can get more marks in search engines




Regards
Subhash

And I would suggest you to slow down with your misleading and destructive suggestions.

[subhzash]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

And I would suggest you to slow down with your misleading and destructive suggestions.

This is not at all misleading anyone. By using the nofollow link we can show the accurate link backs to search engines. More ever this is the forum to post their own reviews and everyone has the liberty. You post what ever you want. Iam very confident about my postings....


Thanks for your suggestion


Regards
Subhash

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by kgun

IMO, you and other members demonstrate that you do not know enough to understand this.

Since I do, what is the your point here Kjell?
Having a site providing the information as XML files, converted to HTML with XSLT?
If that is your point, the idea is damn cool.

[kgun]

John calm down man:

"Hello Webnauts,

You mix a lot of things here, which produces incorrect usage of the code. Please don't additionaly confuse some readers here.
"Rel" is related to individual link only and can have only one attribute, that is "nofollow". "Index, Noindex" doesn't exist here. "GoogleOn/GoogleOff" tags don't exist outside Google Search Appliances, so they don't work on Internet."

Source: Using No-Follow on Internal Links Cause a Drop in Rankings?

This is no exact science. Remember, when you hit carriage return, kgun has the story 5 seconds later: CyberWatcher Professional Norwegian site to watch your competitiors. I do not see you as a competitior, and I do not use the site, but your are in a more competitive SEO business. May be you should use it. But you only compete with yourself according to what you have said elswhere

ctabuk uses Google alert

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Since I do, what is the your point here Kjell?
Having a site providing the information as XML files, converted to HTML with XSLT?
If that is your point, the idea is damn cool.

It is about semantic linking using XLink and DOM scripting. It should have been posted in a more general link thread covering OBL's too.

I can highly reccomend the XLink book to you. Section 8.4.3 "Link semantics" comes with code that I think you as an accessibility / semantics guru will love. That example may be worth more than the price of the book.