DoFollow or NoFollow

[caravan]

For a while now I've been trying to get my head around how the nofollow attribute works, the benefits of using it and when or when not to use it. I've heard a lot about using it on links to your minor pages such as terms and conditions or privacy policy pages and understand that by doing so you're instructing the search engines to follow the link and index the page but it doesn't pass any page rank or link juice. I've also heard the analogy about imagining the page as a glass of water (or whatever your favourite tipple may be) and that each link out of the page will pass a shot of PR to the next page thus helping to distribute page rank throughout the site.

After recently reading about blogs with the dofollow attribute on their comments links my question is this. By removing the nofollow attribute from the blog comments links or by including links to external websites will I be diluting any page rank that my website has collected and by freely passing on the link juice to external sites will my site benefit? Or should I be conserving my link juice on the website as much as possible by using the nofollow attribute?

[Webnauts]

The original idea of the "nofollow" attribute was for blog comments spammers. Now Google requires that for paid links.
In addition it is commonly used if a site's navigation is screwed up and cannot be fixed without it being redesigned.

I have a personal blog and I do not use the "nofollow". I moderate the posts.

And about PR juice: If we all start keeping the PR for ourselves, there will not be any PR see on the web.

At last: I am against nofollow, and I implement other legitimate methods instead.

[subhzash]

You can use nofollow tag for links which you dont want to index. You can stop PR flow from your site to other sites by establishing nofollow tag for external links.



Regards
Subhzash

[caravan]

I agree with you webnauts on removing the nofollow on blog posts which has caused me to consider whether by doing so I may dilute what page rank I may have. I do feel though that if someone has taken the time to post a legitimate comment to a blog post and is therefore contributing to the discussion then they should be rewarded in some way with a dofollow backlink.

[claybutler]

The no follow attribute means "don't follow". It's not about PR per say. So if you put no-follow attributes on every hyperlink linking to your contact page, your contact page will not be indexed...unless someone else is linking to it. I don't know why there is so much concern about the no-follow attribute. I would never use it to manipulate rankings: a total guess at best and there is no way to accurately judge the effectiveness of such manipulation as the PR bar is always out of date, Google used hundreds of factors to rank a page, and search results naturally shuffle around all on their own whether you do anything or not.

I only use it to block a spider from indexing a page.

Google encourages you to use it on paid links to make their life easier, not yours.

[datetopia]

Use it for links that are not really relevant to the content of your page. Like a link to a live chat popup, to a terms page, to a page only logged in members can access.

[BradHart]

The biggest reasons for using nofollow are about duplicate content on your own site. Multiple links that have to be followed and indexed that go the same place can get you site banned from some of the smaller search engines and search services. On your homepage you want no follow on all multiple and external links, but they should be followable and indexable on your single page. If you use wordpress the best plugin combination for this is nofollowthosedupes and nofollow free

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by BradHart

The biggest reasons for using nofollow are about duplicate content on your own site. Multiple links that have to be followed and indexed that go the same place can get you site banned from some of the smaller search engines and search services. On your homepage you want no follow on all multiple and external links, but they should be followable and indexable on your single page. If you use wordpress the best plugin combination for this is nofollowthosedupes and nofollow free

What are you talking about?

The biggest reasons for using nofollow are about duplicated content? What the hell are the robots.txt for?

On your homepage you want no follow on all multiple and external links? What is that again for tip? Why should we nofollow multiple links or OBLS when they are trustworthy and relevant to our site?

My goodness people.

[edhan]

I also do not believe in using nofollow. Since if you accept the links then why use the nofollow.

[Terry Van Horne]

Webmasters should use "nofollow" when they do not endorse the link. So a paid link does not have to use "nofollow", however, to say the issue is contentious is to put it mildly. IMO, this should be up to the webmaster not some SE! It isn't a given a blog should "nofollow" comments but they are responsible if they becomne a blogspam target. Webnaut is moderating his so... why should he "nofollow"? Webmasters should be deciding this not SEs! If you are selling links by the lb. then you deserve to get what you get, clearly not all paid links are vetted, no vetting-> use "nofollow" or you'll screw it for everyone who does!

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

What are you talking about?

The biggest reasons for using nofollow are about duplicated content? What the hell are the robots.txt for?

Agreed...Then use Robots.txt not misuse a tag simply because you can!! I can think of at least three better ways then misusing this tag to stop indexing of duplicate content... woops two... content behind forms is now indexed! Duplicate content is not mentioned anywhere as a reason to use this tag by a SE or the HTML spec.

[Seo-optimizer]

only use it to block a spider from indexing a page.

I am in the No no follow movement! let others get some juice.

[Terry Van Horne]

My bad... I forgot there is a "nofollow" in the Robots tags. See that is the absurdity of this in that "noFollow" can refer to 2 totally different implementations with one being used for indexing commands and one "supposedly" indicating endorsement of the a link. This shows the absurdity and lack of planning for implementation with opaque references for one, is it any wonder we are skeptical, it's with good reason, SE's have been terrible at documenting these tags and ensuring across the board support for them.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Terry Van Horne

My bad... I forgot there is a "nofollow" in the Robots tags. See that is the absurdity of this in that "noFollow" can refer to 2 totally different implementations with one being used for indexing commands and one "supposedly" indicating endorsement of the a link. This shows the absurdity and lack of planning for implementation with opaque references for one, is it any wonder we are skeptical, it's with good reason, SE's have been terrible at documenting these tags and ensuring across the board support for them.

But when you add "nofollow" in the robots meta tags does not mean that the page will not be followed itself. Only the links being placed on the page.

I implement workarounds for a page I do not want it to be followed (sharing PR juice), but still being possible to be indexed. If you disallow a page with the robots.txt, it will not be indexed at all.

And for outbound links that they should not be followed, like affiliates, etc, I redirect the users with a 301 and forbid the SE (the ones I choose) to follow with a 403.

Lets take this scenario:

If you consider an external web site as a very useful resource for your customers, but it is irrelevant to your sites theme, what do you do not to piss Google off? I assume rel="nofollow".

Would Yahoo or MSN or other smaller SE be pissed off if you do that? No! Would they penalize you for selling links or linking to irrelevant sites? No. Using the rel="nofollow" you block Yahoo and MSN following those links. Sacrificing all that just to satisfy Google? Me not.

I am the boss of my business and not Google!

Just my two cents ladies and gentlemen.

Off-Topic:
Terry I read elsewhere that you charge $500 per hour for your services. How much do you think I can charge?

[Laurentvw]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Off-Topic:
Terry I read elsewhere that you charge $500 per hour for your services. How much do you think I can charge?

You'd be rich John, very rich. Can I have your fortune when you die?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Laurentvw

You'd be rich John, very rich. Can I have your fortune when you die?

You know how much I love you Laurent. If I die you can share my fortune with my lady and my son buddy.

[nullvariable]

I've seen some pretty incredible PR sculpting using nofollow tags but I think John's method would have pretty much the same effect. I agree with Terry, its pretty much bullshit that we have two tags that say the same thing but mean different things. Especially when its proven that Google really does follow the links they just don't pass on your PR juice. I am testing out the rel=nofollow tags on my blog following some recommendations on reducing duplicate links and such but we'll see how valuable that works out to be.

[inertia]

Originally Posted by claybutler

The no follow attribute means "don't follow". It's not about PR per say.

It IS about PR, link text and everything to do with a link that doesnt have the nofollow attribute. What caravan is wanting to know about is PR transfer, if he removes the nofollow will his PR plummet and SERPs suffer? Or will the boost in content (mostly from the dofollow crew) override this issue? I would like to know as well!

Originally Posted by webnauts

Would Yahoo or MSN or other smaller SE be pissed off if you do that? No! Would they penalize you for selling links or linking to irrelevant sites? No. Using the rel="nofollow" you block Yahoo and MSN following those links. Sacrificing all that just to satisfy Google? Me not.

Just a quick note on the google/yahoo nofollow thing. The nofollow blog test that i did proved several things (full report on its way).

Google DOES NOT follow "nofollow" links (like they claim - well done G!). They also place no weight on the link text with regards to the destination page. Yahoo however did cache and index the page at the end of the nofollow links. So they do follow "nofollow" links. But they appear to place no weight on the anchor text of said link.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by nullvariable

I've seen some pretty incredible PR sculpting using nofollow tags but I think John's method would have pretty much the same effect.

If you read my post carefully, you will see that it does not only have a same effect. It has an extended effect, as you can achieve more than you can achieve alone with the "nofollow" attribute, robots.txt or robots meta tags.

Originally Posted by nullvariable

I agree with Terry, its pretty much bullshit that we have two tags that say the same thing but mean different things. Especially when its proven that Google really does follow the links they just don't pass on your PR juice. I am testing out the rel=nofollow tags on my blog following some recommendations on reducing duplicate links and such but we'll see how valuable that works out to be.

At least Matt Cutts is claiming that they do not crawl links condomized with the "nofollow" attribute:

Matt Cutts: It is interesting. Whenever we talked about it originally, we said PageRank would not be passed, and the messaging that I tried to do was that it would not even be followed and it would not even be crawled. It turned out there was a really weird situation, where, if you had totally unique anchor text that nobody else had, we would not follow that link - but if we had found the page from some other source, we still had this anchor text lying around and we were willing to associate it with that page.

Source: Interview with Google's Matt Cutts at Pubcon

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by inertia

Just a quick note on the google/yahoo nofollow thing. The nofollow blog test that i did proved several things (full report on its way).

Google DOES NOT follow "nofollow" links (like they claim - well done G!). They also place no weight on the link text with regards to the destination page. Yahoo however did cache and index the page at the end of the nofollow links. So they do follow "nofollow" links. But they appear to place no weight on the anchor text of said link.

Great observation. I just think it is funny when people tell Yahoo that several pages of their own pages are spammy, like "About Us", "Privacy Policy", etc.
Yahoo! Search Blog: A Defense Against Comment Spam

Also here is an interesting article to read. The thread is getting very interesting. Keep it going.