No Follow Tags and SE's

[gellnsh]

In the past couple of weeks I've had conflicting advise about using "no follow" tags for site crawls. Anyone have a take on this?

For example If my site is content driven, and I have a link to another content driven site that relates to the topic I'm discussing, should I have a no follow tag (which is what I've been doing in the past)? Apperently the "bots" ignore this tag anyway and will follow that link regardless and find out what the link is about.

Thanks

[LLFitness_Derek]

If the topics are closely related there is no need to use the nofollow tag unless you have lots of spam like references. If you do not mind the other sites getting credit for the links, then there is no need to use the tag.

Its a safe tag to use. I have not had any evident problems with it. It is actually a very helpful tag if you use it correctly.

[rumblepup]

The nofollow tag is a neat little tag. Great for conversation and fun at parties.

Use the nofollow tag when your linking to content that your not "voting for" or offering a little link luv. Yes, Yahoo and MSN don't really care about the nofollow, and the Goog will follow anyway, but the Goog won't count the link with any weight to the site your linking too. Use it to your heart's desire.

However, that being said, if your providing a good source of information, and linking to another good source of information, why not use a regular link? Remember, the SE's, the Goog in particular, also look at your outbound links and the content your linking to. If your linking to quality content, then Google sees your site as more of an authority, thus increasing the importance of your site's content.

If it's a good article or treatise, or discussion, or descriptive page on another site, don't be afraid, give it a regular link. If your don't trust the source, or there's something a little spammy on the site, then "nofollow" the link.

But why would you link to spam or bad content, right?

[brian.mark]

Remember, the SE's, the Goog in particular, also look at your outbound links and the content your linking to. If your linking to quality content, then Google sees your site as more of an authority, thus increasing the importance of your site's content.

If that's the case, will Wikipedia be doomed to lose their rankings? That'd be pretty slick.

I think there are cases where nofollow makes sense, but most links should just be links. That's what's natural on the web.

Brian.

[incrediblehelp]

Nofollow doesn't make any sense to me. If you need to nofollow a link why is it on your website? I think this tag made sense for comment SPAM and that is it.

Remember consider the source of this idea. Google needs help control paid links because the algo is not good enough detecting them on its own.

[LinksAndTraffic]

The nofollow tag is a google creation. The other search engines ignore it, because it was made by google for google.

[jawn_tech]

It's sad times when search engines are inventing proprietary code, and asking webmasters and blogging coders to use it.

Talk about web standards!

I'm definitely not a fan of the tag, and spam has nothing to do with it.