Does PR Sculpting Work?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by activeco

And btw do you still use the 'googleoff' tags?

And I forgot the mention:

<!--googleoff: anchor--> 
<a href="http://www.example.com/example.html?googlebot=nocrawl" rel="noindex,nofollow,nsfw">Non-sense</a> 
<!--googleon: anchor-->

I know after that disussion that <!--googleoff: anchor--> and <!--googleon: anchor--> are not for the organic search. But I also never said that I am born SEO.
So how would google see or perceive those? As comments or?

So what is wrong with rel attributes?

Google does not support the noindex? What is the damage having that? NONE!
Google supports the nofollow? YES!
Google does not support the nsfw? Many Social Bookmarking platforms do. It is a microformat. So what is the damage? NONE!

Doesn't Google support googlebot=nocrawl? YES!

Does Google support Robots.txt? YES!

So after all what happens if I implement the above?

Google will not crawl or follow the link!!! Any problems with that implementation? NO!

WOW! What for a horrible mistake! What a disaster! Do you call that black hat too? I rather would call it Yellow hat!

It is like having markup warnings on my web site. RIDICULOUS!!!

Oh, and please do not come up with a story as you did already elsewhere, that you can only use one rel attribute in a link.

I just felt like clarifying! OK?

Activeco any further comments please?

[kevsta]

anyway...

so what did we decide in the end? that we think it probably does work, but not well enough, or predictably enough to spend time on ?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by kevsta

anyway...

so what did we decide in the end? that we think it probably does work, but not well enough, or predictably enough to spend time on ?

If you want my opinion, just do you work as that link condom does not exist. Spend your time on your site navigation structure and hierarchy.

And if you want to sell links, etc, then follow the technique I introduced above http://www.webproworld.com/368246-post158.html instead of the using that non-standard ridiculous attribute (nofollow).

I repeat: MY OPINION!

[activeco]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

I did not say that was from my secret lab. I said I did not want to share my technique writing a tutorial after the nice comments I got.

To clarify: Who else is implementing the method I mentioned in this thread (Redirects 302 and X-Robots) as I mentioned above, instead of using nofollow. Or where did you read that elsewhere?

You still don't get it, do you?
'X-robots-tag' IS THE SAME as the '<META name='robots'..>' tag. How many people do use it?

Why was it introduced? Well for a good reason. You can use META tags only in html documents. Putting this right in the header enables other application types to deal with robots, but for a html document it doesn't make any difference.

End of story.

The end of story for this thread was actually definitive answer Jaan provided:

Well what I take away from this is that sure PR Sculpting can work, it is not nearly worth all the hype that many of the SEOers out there are making it out to be.

Let me emphasize that PR sculpting DOES work.
The question about actual benefits of it deserves a new thread.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by activeco

You still don't get it, do you?
'X-robots-tag' IS THE SAME as the '<META name='robots'..>' tag. How many people use it?

I know that. And I use that. How many other people do that, I have no idea.

Originally Posted by activeco

Why was it introduced? Well for a good reason. You can use META tags only in html documents.

Putting this right in the header enables other application types to deal with robots, but for a html document it doesn't make any difference.

Do you mean that adding the X-Robots in the .htaccess file instead does not work for HTML files? I hope not!
Can you tell us why doesn't this page get indexed by Google?
Google & Yahoo Crawlability

I will show you why: View HTTP Request and Response Header

Originally Posted by activeco

The end of story for this thread was actually definitive answer Jaan provided:

Let me emphasize that PR sculpting DOES work.
The question about actual benefits of it deserves a new thread.

I never doubted that PR sculpting works. As a Web Architect I just consider the way it is presented all over the place as insufficient.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Just because you most probably cannot perceive or understand the discussed technical aspects in this thread, due to lack of knowledge or experience, or whatever that should be, does not give you the right to underestimate all of us here.

I was not the one asking for proof and if you could read you would see that I was on your side in the matter. To bad your not smart enough to see that.

Originally Posted by Webnauts

If that is your intention, and you are not willing to contribute in this thread, just take your sand bucket and play somewhere else Janeth.

Well maybe you should really study up on your English and go back and read all my post.

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Or can we stay on topic?

Or should I also go off topic and start a discussion about how people claiming to be professional SEOs making themselves ridiculous?

You've been talking about yourself a lot in the thread not sure why you should stop now.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by activeco

The end of story for this thread was actually definitive answer Jaan provided:

EXACTLY!!! That was my point at my previous post. I just read Jaan's post after posting my previous post!

Thanks Google Team for confirming.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by janeth

I was not the one asking for proof and if you could read you would see that I was on your side in the matter. To bad your not smart enough to see that.



Well maybe you should really study up on your English and go back and read all my post.



You've been talking about yourself a lot in the thread not sure why you should stop now.

Holy Sh...t sister. I am aware that my English is not so good and often I misunderstand some stuff.

I am terribly sorry! My honest apologies.


To all contributors of the thread:

I think that the discussion just began. And I think we should stick on the thread instead of starting a new one.

Don't you all think too?

[activeco]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Do you mean that adding the X-Robots in the .htaccess file instead does not work for HTML files? I hope not!
Can you tell us why doesn't this page get indexed by Google?

My intention is not to teach comprehension.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by activeco

My intention is not to teach comprehension.

As I just mentioned above my English is not excellent. What should I understand with this expression?
That you agree, or you disagree?

[janeth]

I said in the beginning that I would spend my time on something else. I don’t think it would make enough difference on smaller sites to do any good. And the time needed to be spent on the larger sites would not be worth the benefit in the long run.

I felt the problem with a lot of people was an understanding of how PR worked. I linked to several articles showing how PR worked and took the side of what Google themselves had said as well as most SEO experts.

But deepsand wanted more and more proof. I am sure he is one of the ones arguing that man never walked on the moon. He helped me remember why I stopped posting on forums.

That’s my two cents.

[Webnauts]

Well after all I created an alternative to the nofollow attribute, assuming after extreme tests that it is the safest way to keep Google out of your business.

I created instead a 301 redirect file with PHP, including there all external links that should not be crawled and followed, disallowed bots to access the redirects file in my robots.txt. and in addition I added in the .htaccess file X-Robots directives "noindex,nofollow" for that redirecting PHP file too.

In addition I have forbidden Google to access the redirect file in my .htaccess with a 403.

The links in the pages are masked in the redirect file, like for example for "http: //www. ratepoint .com" I use on the pages something like "http: //www. seoworkers. com /?m=ratepoint".

What happens is, if the crawlers would suddenly misbehave to the HTTP standards, which they often do, and they access the file, they get a redirect back to my homepage with a 301 redirect. If the visitor clicks on the link, goes to the targeted web site again with a 301 redirect.

I do not use 302 or 307 redirects, since search engines can get aggressive.

I can't remember where I read this, but what I mean it is perfectly posed:

Follow this URL and index the destination page with this URL. I'm not giving full credit to that page and I might change my opinion anytime. So keep my URL with that pages content.

Warning: here lies the problem. If you 302 to an offsite page then you simply claim that pages content. But, as you do not own that site, you will be penalized even banned as this is content theft. So keep the 302s insite.

Another reason for not using temporary redirects was not to have Dangling Pages. It would probably not have been such a big issue, but still it would took longer for Google to sort out where the PR should go.

I thought of sharing these news and I would love to discuss your opinion if I am not going too far off topic.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Just a quick point I'd like to make John.

While it is true that nofollow initially was for links to sites you could not, or did not, want to "vouch" for, that has since evolved.

More simply it's "do not consider this link" with no real definition as to "why" you don't want it followed attached.

As I have said, for my own reasons, I've chosen not to use it for internal links at this point. But I don't believe that anyone who does choose to use it for their own reasons, is somehow attaching a "negative" stigma to the target page.

Dave

Well lets make more clear:

Actually the nofollow attribute tells a search engine "Don't score this link" rather than "Don't follow this link." And my question: For what score?

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Well lets make more clear:

Actually the nofollow attribute tells a search engine "Don't score this link" rather than "Don't follow this link." And my question: For what score?

This would mean that any and all links would have a "score" attached to them for every search engine. I don't believe this is the case.

My post was about the fact that there is no negative stigma attached to the attribute. It simply tells any of the SE's that observe the attribute, not to consider the link for whatever they choose to use links for.

Dave

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

This would mean that any and all links would have a "score" attached to them for every search engine. I don't believe this is the case.

My post was about the fact that there is no negative stigma attached to the attribute. It simply tells any of the SE's that observe the attribute, not to consider the link for whatever they choose to use links for.

Dave

Dave can you have a look at this paper http://www2007.org/posters/poster997.pdf and then we discuss this further?

[activeco]

What exactly in that paper is contrary to Dave's statement?

Mukesh, from LookAhead decisions, tries to introduce a new type of link who will indeed carry a negative weight.
He recognizes that currently such links do not exist: there are only two types; positive and 'rel="nofollow"' as the ignored/neutral one.

Typical propagation approaches treat links as endorsement, that
is, a link from page a to b is considered an endorsement of page
b by a, except for one special case: links with attribute
rel=“nofollow” are ignored by many search engines, as if those
links do not exist. However, there is currently no way to create
links that censure other pages, that is, provide negative
endorsement. Such censure links would allow, for example,
page a to link to page b identifying b as a spam site. We allow
censure links by using negative trust values; the positive trust
values represent regular endorsement links, while trust value of
0 represents “nofollow” links.

[activeco]

BTW, this year's new papers are out there:

Index of /papers

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by activeco

What exactly in that paper is contrary to Dave's statement?

Mukesh, from LookAhead decisions, tries to introduce a new type of link who will indeed carry a negative weight.
He recognizes that currently such links do not exist: there are only two types; positive and 'rel="nofollow"' as the ignored/neutral one.

For my understanding, do the nofollowed links have value 0?

[crankydave]

John...

My post that you quoted was in reply to this...

Originally Posted by Webnauts
To
Originally the "nofollow" attribute was implemented for links to non-trustworthy, irrelevant sites.
Don't you think there is a conflict when 3 links are leading to the same page and the one link says that the site is ok, and the other two links say it is not? Don't you see the contradiction there?

This is not the case anymore John. The attribute has evolved. One can use it wherever they want. There is no "meaning" attached to the attribute that tells any SE why you are using it.

You're not telling them "non-trustworthy". You're not telling them "irrelevant". You're not telling them "OK or not OK".

All you are telling a SE when you use it is not to consider the link. That's all.

Dave

[Webnauts]

Since the thread went a sleep, but I think we are not done yet, I would like to bring to your attention a post I just posted in another thread and which is fully on-topic:
NEWS!!! Google re-introduces PageRank

[kgun]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

OK I have been debating this on some other threads recently. Since WPN Video now has a video on the subject I thought I would post something in WPW:

» SMX West 2008: Stephan Spencer WebProNews Videos: Videos from WebProNews.com

It is a simple question. Does PR Sculpting work or not. If so do you have proof of it. Sure conceptually it seems like it would, but I am wondering about those that have tested it out and can prove that it does work. Remember I looking for proof of it working alone, not simultaneously with other changes.

I have never been a big believer in the concept of PR hoarding. I really don’t believe that adding the nofollow attribute can greatly help you r internal OBLs on the page. The biggest argument against this is that millions of websites rank and will always rank without having to worry about implementing the nofollow attribute, thus why would Google allow this simple trick to give our websites the “golden ticket” of ranking higher by implementing it. I believe they don’t.

I am also tired of doing things because it is the hot new thing right now and believe some solid data on using the nofollow should be expressed somewhere. Not simply saying “hey Cutt’s said it should work so we should do it” as was recently heard at SMX.

More on this at Sphinn as well and a more believable thread from one of my favorites Michael Martinez:

SEO Nonsense - Sculpting PageRank Builds Muscle - SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

We need to stop jumping on the bandwagon of SEO techniques so quickly without properly testing this stuff out. Just because conceptually something seems like this should work doesn't mean that it does.

I am asking a simple question. Is this a stand alone technique that can benefit your website? I really have yet to see proof of it, rather just speak of how cool of tool it is.

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Another big issue is that the SEO community are basically the only people that know about nofollow. Are we to believe Google has gifted only the people who know of nofollow attribute the ability to out-rank others that dont use it? LOL, hardly. In fact even if this PR Sculpting does work, it probably does on such a small level comparable to other SEO techniques it is not even worth doing at all.

A priori, I agree with Jaan here. There may be a minor effect that is difficult to identify.

But if a PageRank 10 page put rel="nofollow" on all OBL's aside from one, there may be a small effect.

Originally Posted by deepsand

A common fallacy is to take an observed correlation and ascribe a causal effect; i.e., I did "A" and observed "B," therefore "A" must be the cause of "B." Well, maybe, and maybe not.

Unless and until one understands how "A" might cause "B," and can then prove that "A" must cause "B," and that there is no other possible cause presently in play, one cannot say with certainty that such a causal relationship does in fact exist.

In short, in order to prove a cause and effect relationship between "A" and "B," one must prove that the presence of "A" cannot not result in "B."

So, to say that "I do not under stand how it works, only that it does" does not stand as proof that "it does."

Exactly. Causality is a much deeper concept than (linear) correlation.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by deepsand

But, with fishing you can prove that the rod is attached to the line, which in turn is attached to the hook, which is attached to the bait, and the the fish is ultimately attached to the hook. Thus, you have an empirically demonstrable unbroken link between cause and effect.

However, with "nofollow" and SERP, you cannot observe anything between your conjectured cause and any effect.

Interesting picture.

[Terry Van Horne]

This is an old thread but I thought it interesting that it was #1 for page sculpting. I was trying to verify the original author of the technique. I thought it was someone who on occasion posts here so... here I am reading another great WPW thread. Interesting is that sculpting started out as sort of endorsed as "legit" by a well known Googler and a year or so later it's useless or worse...

IMO, it continues to indicate that manipulation of links is "unwanted manipulation" regardless of where or how you do it. Will the industry ever stop chasing it's tail on this? I doubt it!

We also learned that Matt Cutts gives information that is absolutely true... at that moment in time. He may turn around and in his next breath say to his team "Woooops. Boys we got a problem!" and a legit technique is now a waste of time... or worse... a waste of client's money. SEOs who did sculpting to client sites are dangerous to the indusrtry rep. Those who do it on their sites are innovators who should be applauded. That's the difference between a professional SEO and a snakeoil salesman. They know what you do for clients is different then what you do on your site or for research purposes.

I fully agree with Janeth on the premise there is an intial benefit to creating a page, I don't agree that is a PR benefit. I do know Dan Thies or one of the others Guys at Stompernet have been writing some stuff on this that looks interesting and seems a good attempt at shedding some light and testing this premise. I think those those that concern themselves wirth leakage or try to hoard PR.... will never get it. They are basing the technique on a paper that is a decade old. I have questioned that papers value for some time now. I've seen to many changes to believe that it was anything more than a starting point.

I have seen over and over that linking to the authoritative sites absolutely does affect relevancy and rank. However that was truer in the past then it is now. In the early days Google seemed to reward this technique but that could also reflect the content I was exposed to... and implementing at the time. I don't need a formula, or a test to tell me that this is a distinct possibility. I see it all the time in the SERPs. I see it in traffic audits etc. but again... that could be because I'm always looking for a difinitive answer on this. It's been on my radar for many years.

PR sculpting made assumptions, assumptions that changed, and will likely change again. Techniques that only serve to benefit the site and not the user have a short shelf life. That has been true since we were stuffing keyword meta tags and using multiple titles to manipulate results (guilty of one, not both). Personally, realizing this has stopped me from doing lots of things that, in the long run, wound up being a waste of time and effort.

IMO, Wikipedia benefits from nofollow because they weren't trying to benefit themselves when they implemented "nofollow". Using it as an example of sculpting working is an apples to oranges comparison. I also don't rule out that the sites the WIKI links to may get some benefit if the site linked to or the wikipedia page have other authoratative "citations", not saying it's PR benefit but Google has lots of filters and algos beyond PageRank. I haven't tested it, don't need to because I don't expect promotion or raising website visibility to benefit SEO.

I do what raises real user visibility regardless of SEO value. That's a long term strategy that, IMO, always works. Using linking for SEO is a distraction that takes your focus away from the real drivers of traffic... content and raising website and brand visibility with users. I could care less what a Search engine does with an IBL. I'm there because it made sense to have visibility with that audience. I find it concerning that Google might not approve IMO, there is a possibility that negative SEO could exploit a vulnerability in my philosophy. But... that's what happens when anyone believes they can, with any accuracy, determine anothers intent without asking directly. In that sense Google is again trying to tell me how and where I can promote, based on a premise that's totally false. I see lots of sites not using "nofollow" that IMO, should. I have to weigh the above possibility of negative SEO against the user visibility. That is not a decision I should have to make and wouldn't be if we went back to IBLs can't hurt you... end of story... no if and or buts to consider. But then that would also take away the hammer Google holds over webmasters implementing the "noFollow" to do so according to the guidelines in the HTML5 spec. Many won't because they know that affects the bottom line with the "dumb as a fence post SEOs" who believe building links is an SEO technique not a websiite and brand promotion technique. That's what the technique started as and IMO, that's the way it should have stayed.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Terry Van Horne

This is an old thread but I thought it interesting that it was #1 for page sculpting. I was trying to verify the original author of the technique. I thought it was someone who on occasion posts here so... here I am reading another great WPW thread. Interesting is that sculpting started out as sort of endorsed as "legit" by a well known Googler and a year or so later it's useless or worse...

Page sculpting has been around for many years just that most people didn’t know about it.

And it still works.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Terry Van Horne

I have seen over and over that linking to the authoritative sites absolutely does affect relevancy and rank. However that was truer in the past then it is now. In the early days Google seemed to reward this technique but that could also reflect the content I was exposed to... and implementing at the time. I don't need a formula, or a test to tell me that this is a distinct possibility. I see it all the time in the SERPs. I see it in traffic audits etc. but again... that could be because I'm always looking for a difinitive answer on this. It's been on my radar for many years.

There is no way to look at a result in the SERPs and know what caused it to get there without studying and testing it.

Originally Posted by Terry Van Horne

PR sculpting made assumptions, assumptions that changed, and will likely change again. Techniques that only serve to benefit the site and not the user have a short shelf life. That has been true since we were stuffing keyword meta tags and using multiple titles to manipulate results (guilty of one, not both). Personally, realizing this has stopped me from doing lots of things that, in the long run, wound up being a waste of time and effort.

IMO, Wikipedia benefits from nofollow because they weren't trying to benefit themselves when they implemented "nofollow". Using it as an example of sculpting working is an apples to oranges comparison. I also don't rule out that the sites the WIKI links to may get some benefit if the site linked to or the wikipedia page have other authoratative "citations", not saying it's PR benefit but Google has lots of filters and algos beyond PageRank. I haven't tested it, don't need to because I don't expect promotion or raising website visibility to benefit SEO.

It sounds like you believe that Google knows what we are thinking and is able to reward us for our thoughts more so then our actions.

Wikipedia (in your opinion) was rewarded because they (in your opinion) had the end user in mind and not ranking the site, while others were not rewarded (in your opinion) because they had the site in mind and not the end user.

Sounds like Google’s algo has gotten a lot more complicated and we need to think about what we are thinking about when making changes to our sites.

[Doc]

Originally Posted by janeth

There is no way to look at a result in the SERPs and know what caused it to get there without studying and testing it.




It sounds like you believe that Google knows what we are thinking and is able to reward us for our thoughts more so then our actions.

Wikipedia (in your opinion) was rewarded because they (in your opinion) had the end user in mind and not ranking the site, while others were not rewarded (in your opinion) because they had the site in mind and not the end user.

Sounds like Google’s algo has gotten a lot more complicated and we need to think about what we are thinking about when making changes to our sites.

I find myself thinking more and more that if the SEO community would focus upon the user experience and conversion, rather than placement, then Google would be FORCED to modify their algo, or lose their functionality.

But we all know that ain't gonna happen.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Doc

I find myself thinking more and more that if the SEO community would focus upon the user experience and conversion, rather than placement, then Google would be FORCED to modify their algo, or lose their functionality.

But we all know that ain't gonna happen.

Don't be so sure that it doesn't happen already.

SE's depend upon, rely upon, trying to ascertain precisely what it is the masses that use them are looking to find. Sure, marketing is a factor but in the end, delivering what it is the user is trying to find is what matters.

Try and deliver what it is the user wants in the way they want to find, or are trying to find, it.

Dave

[Doc]

I'd sure like to believe you're right, Dave. I can only imagine the amount of money that Google alone pockets every year, from SEO efforts to meet the algorithm-du-jour. Hard to imagine them letting go of that, voluntarily.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Doc

I find myself thinking more and more that if the SEO community would focus upon the user experience and conversion, rather than placement, then Google would be FORCED to modify their algo, or lose their functionality.

But we all know that ain't gonna happen.

The sad truth is that most people that do SEO work only focus on SEO and either don’t understand or don’t mess with trying to increase a websites conversion. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to a site, if the site is unable to convert that traffic it’s all a waste of time at best and at worst could hurt your businesses reputation.

Search engines want searchers to find websites that will be meet their needs and are constantly changing the way they rank websites in hopes of doing this.

A little common sense would say that someone that buys links, hires a search engine optimizer and looks for better ways to rank their site, would be the same person that would try and increase their conversion. Other words, the site that would best meet the searchers needs would be the same site that Google is battling to keep out of the searches.

So Why Does Google Try to Keep These Sites Out?

Because spammers are using the same techniques to rank and build websites that have no quality in hopes of ranking them above the quality sites. The reason they are doing this is because they have Google’s ads on their sites and know that if they can get that site in front of the end user they can make money from Google.

A lot of the problems Google is battling and causing webmasters to battle are problems they created.

[Doc]

Originally Posted by janeth

The sad truth is that most people that do SEO work only focus on SEO and either don’t understand or don’t mess with trying to increase a websites conversion. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to a site, if the site is unable to convert that traffic it’s all a waste of time at best and at worst could hurt your businesses reputation.

Search engines want searchers to find websites that will be meet their needs and are constantly changing the way they rank websites in hopes of doing this.

A little common sense would say that someone that buys links, hires a search engine optimizer and looks for better ways to rank their site, would be the same person that would try and increase their conversion. Other words, the site that would best meet the searchers needs would be the same site that Google is battling to keep out of the searches.

That's the foggy impression that was beginning to form in my mind, but you stated it much more clearly.

Originally Posted by janeth

A lot of the problems Google is battling and causing webmasters to battle are problems they created.

And we aided and abetted in it. Talk about having created a monster.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Don't be so sure that it doesn't happen already.

SE's depend upon, rely upon, trying to ascertain precisely what it is the masses that use them are looking to find. Sure, marketing is a factor but in the end, delivering what it is the user is trying to find is what matters.

Try and deliver what it is the user wants in the way they want to find, or are trying to find, it.

Dave

I hope this is not going off-topic Dave: Will Google Judge You Guilty of SEO? | FutureNow's GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog

[watto]

No. Since this thread originated MC has suggested that using the rel="nofollow" on internal links will not push the pr to the followed links of a page (pr sculpting).

About 2 weeks ago I removed all rel="nofollow" and meta nofollows, allowing pr to flow and eliminating dead end pages (bot hearding).

Today for the first time in a long time I have seen an increase in google (position 3 to position 2) for one of my main keywords. I was in the #3 position for over 1 year and now all of a sudden BOOM!, I am now in position 2.

These results speak for themselves.

watto

[Doc]

Originally Posted by watto

No. Since this thread originated MC has suggested that using the rel="nofollow" on internal links will not push the pr to the followed links of a page (pr sculpting).

About 2 weeks ago I removed all rel="nofollow" and meta nofollows, allowing pr to flow and eliminating dead end pages (bot hearding).

Today for the first time in a long time I have seen an increase in google (position 3 to position 2) for one of my main keywords. I was in the #3 position for over 1 year and now all of a sudden BOOM!, I am now in position 2.

These results speak for themselves.

watto

Watto-

Glad to hear you got results, but it seems to me to be a little premature to say the results speak for themselves. My understanding of SEO is FAR from vast, but strictly from a scientific standpoint, one result from many possible causes does not establish a theory as fact. A number of things might have caused you to climb from third to second position.

Just sayin'...

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by watto

No. Since this thread originated MC has suggested that using the rel="nofollow" on internal links will not push the pr to the followed links of a page (pr sculpting).

About 2 weeks ago I removed all rel="nofollow" and meta nofollows, allowing pr to flow and eliminating dead end pages (bot hearding).

Today for the first time in a long time I have seen an increase in google (position 3 to position 2) for one of my main keywords. I was in the #3 position for over 1 year and now all of a sudden BOOM!, I am now in position 2.

These results speak for themselves.

watto

Peter I honestly hope that your experiment is valid. Can you please come back in a week and tell us if you are still ranking #2?

I say that because Google is doing the last week some extreme tweaks and rankings are fluxing aggressively.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Doc

Watto-

Glad to hear you got results, but it seems to me to be a little premature to say the results speak for themselves. My understanding of SEO is FAR from vast, but strictly from a scientific standpoint, one result from many possible causes does not establish a theory as fact. A number of things might have caused you to climb from third to second position.

Just sayin'...

Ups? Sorry Doc. I did not read your post before I respond to the post of Watto. You are fully right. And I hope that Watto will not go into any nasty problems. I am scared to be honest.
Well lets hope not.

[watto]

I see your point Doc. However after over a year in the #3 position and mnay google algo changes, I still remained in the number 3 position, until now.

Webnauts, I will definitely let you guys know in a weeks time if my ranking #2 position remains the same. Also, what exactly do you mean by "I hope that Watto will not go into any nasty problems"?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by watto

Also, what exactly do you mean by "I hope that Watto will not go into any nasty problems"?

I just hope that you did not do anything wrong with your recent changes. That is all man.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

I hope this is not going off-topic Dave: Will Google Judge You Guilty of SEO? | FutureNow's GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog

Have you seen this?

agency:2 Research Shows Social Media Marketing Outperforms Search, Email and Online Advertising

[watto]

That makes two of us! lol

My site has already been cached with the changes and the only difference is an increase in rankings as mentioned above. If I had noticed anything negative, I will change things back ASAP, but for now its all good.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

If you want my opinion, just do you work as that link condom does not exist. Spend your time on your site navigation structure and hierarchy.

And if you want to sell links, etc, then follow the technique I introduced above http://www.webproworld.com/368246-post158.html instead of the using that non-standard ridiculous attribute (nofollow).

I repeat: MY OPINION!

My post above is pretty old: 03-30-2008, 08:37 AM

Matt Cutts post is from June 15, 2009: PageRank sculpting

I had to wait for over a year until Google would confirm that I was right, and that it was not only my opinion.

[watto]

Webnauts, you are one step ahead of the game as usual! You rock man!!

webnauts, I am trying to find a post of yours about the alternative you use to the rel="nofollow", but I cant find it........

[Magnus Vogel]

Well I am sure you have heard of PR hoarding or PR Sculpting by way of the nofollow attribute before, but do they work? Simple answer for me is I don’t know. Do you? I would love to hear from you on this thread then.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by watto

Webnauts, you are one step ahead of the game as usual! You rock man!!

webnauts, I am trying to find a post of yours about the alternative you use to the rel="nofollow", but I cant find it........

Peter looks like I am 15 months ahead of Google. Evidence? Does PR Sculpting Work?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Magnus Vogel

Well I am sure you have heard of PR hoarding or PR Sculpting by way of the nofollow attribute before, but do they work? Simple answer for me is I don’t know. Do you? I would love to hear from you on this thread then.

Google says that PageRank Sculpting works, but not using nofollow: SEOmoz | Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can't Do It With Nofollow

[Doc]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Google says that PageRank Sculpting works, but not using nofollow: SEOmoz | Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can't Do It With Nofollow

Thanks, John. That was a great article! I would think it would clear up any questions on nofollow links and outflow of juice.

And randfish is certainly right...it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of redesign to fix.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Doc

Thanks, John. That was a great article! I would think it would clear up any questions on nofollow links and outflow of juice.

And randfish is certainly right...it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of redesign to fix.

I just finished reading the comments of Rands post and before I did the same with the comments on Matt Cutts blog.

I see a lot of contradictions and or non-transparent statements for all parties. I think I should start from MC blog post comments.

Matt Cutts June 15, 2009 at 10:55 pm:

"...btmorex, I just think there’s usually better ways to spend your time as an SEO. If you have a pretty good site architecture to start with, you normally don’t need to think much about PageRank sculpting (e.g. WordPress does quite well at the mechanics of SEO by default)."
Source: PageRank sculpting

OK. So Matt Cutts tells that PageRank Sculpting works. Am I right?

---

Matt Cutts June 15, 2009 at 10:55 pm:
"Amit Agarwal, great question. Given the way that Google works since this change, I would let PageRank flow even to your privacy and terms-of-service type pages. Even those sorts of pages can be useful for more searches than you would expect."

So MC confirms that it is not a good idea to block privacy and terms-of-service type pages. OK. I never blocked them. That's fine too.

---

Andy Beard June 15, 2009 at 10:15 pm
"I take it using noindex, nofollow on your date based archives isn’t deliberate then?
Yes that is nasty, possibly enough to knock you a few rankings for Matt"
Source: PageRank sculpting

Matt Cutts June 15, 2009 at 10:55 pm:
"Andy Beard, I was only talking about the nofollow attribute on individual links, not noindex/nofollow as a meta tag. But I’ll check that out. Some parts of Thesis I really like, and then there’s a few pieces that don’t quite give me the granularity I’d like."
Source: PageRank sculpting

For my understanding, MC means that PageRank Sculpting works with meta robots noindex/nofollow.

But, sorry MC... How the hell can you Sculpt PageRank with a meta robots tag directive "nofollow". If I got that right, that is fully incorrect and misleading!!! About the noindex one, I am fine with that. But that cannot achive 100% PR flow, as the noindex page acrue PR, even if it is minimal. That said, that is about bots herding. Or is it still pageRank Sculpting? I need to re-think after I get some sleep. Or do you know already?

---

Danny Sullivan June 15, 2009 at 11:44 pm
"Matt, as you know, I was kind of annoyed when you suggested sculpting to a room full of SEOs back in 2007. We’d been told over the years to do things for humans, not to overly worry about having to do stuff for search engines -- and suddenly, here you were suggesting that SEOs could flow PageRank to their most “important” pages. I’d figured Google had long since been smart enough to decide for itself what percentage of a page’s PageRank spend to assign to a particular link. That assumption didn’t just come out of the blue -- it came from things Google had hinted at over the years. So being told to start overtly flowing around the PageRank? It seemed counter-productive."
Source: PageRank sculpting

No further comments. Great post Danny.

---

Matt Cutts June 16, 2009 at 12:30 am
"Sean Weigold Ferguson and David Airey, there are times when nofollow is useful. Paid links remains one of those reasons. When someone you don’t necessarily trust adds a link to your site is another good reason. It turns out that links with nofollow prevent quite a few blog spam sites from getting links, for example."
Source: PageRank sculpting

For that you have my bless Matt. Even if I still prefer this option: New Canonical Tag from the big 3

[Doc]

What a load of doublespeak! First, they tell us to do something and then a couple of years later, tell us we were wrong to be doing that.

Now, after what I THOUGHT was a fleeting moment of clarity, I'm even more confused about what they're saying, than before.

Whereas, if I fall back to the position of building for the quality of user experience, and cooperate in the conversion effort, blithely saying the HELL with Google, everything just might work out fine!

I think I like that option the best. At least then, if it doesn't gel, it's on ME!

[Feydakin]

Listening to Matt is like listening to a politician.. They say an awful lot of words that never seem to add up to anything much..

PR sculpting does work.. But for 99.5% of websites out there it is a waste of time and effort.. If you are in an extremely competitive market, with evenly matched quality competition, PR sculpting "might" be that one thing that gives you an edge if done properly.. But I view it as a 4th or 5th tier tactic that simply doesn't give you the results people think it will in most circumstances..

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

Listening to Matt is like listening to a politician.. They say an awful lot of words that never seem to add up to anything much..

Exactly Steve. But that is why people follow such guys.

Originally Posted by Feydakin

PR sculpting does work.. But for 99.5% of websites out there it is a waste of time and effort.. If you are in an extremely competitive market, with evenly matched quality competition, PR sculpting "might" be that one thing that gives you an edge if done properly.. But I view it as a 4th or 5th tier tactic that simply doesn't give you the results people think it will in most circumstances..

Before I would go any further into this, I have one question? What do you mean it is a waste of time and effort? I recently had to implement some bots herding techniques (maybe other would call PR sculpting) for a web site of about 72.000 pages. I started my crawler and let it run in the background, and when the pages were indexed, I only needed to export the results in excel and create a robots.txt which took me 10-15 minutes.

My work all together was maybe 20 minutes. For sure if I would go into extreme refinements, that would need sort of time, which depends exclusively on the quality or state of the site navigation.

So what do you think?

[Feydakin]

I think that most people can't do it right in 20 minutes.. For that matter, most people can't do it right in 20 years..

The issue is that if you spend an hour trying to manipulate PR in this manner you are most likely find better benefits spending that hour doing almost anything else.. Getting one decent link, writing one page of decent content, altering on page text, anything.. But in a highly competitive market, where sites are nearly evenly matched, that little bit of boost you might get from trying to manipulate your PR might be that last piece of the puzzle that puts you ahead of them..

That's why I call it a 4th or 5th tier tactic.. There are plenty of things you could do that will give you more positive results quicker than manipulating PR..