PageRank Sculpting & Nofollow Dead?

[Webnauts]

I am sure the majority of the members here (at least the ones who were interacting with me the last years) know that I was always always against the "nofollow" attribute. I had huge debates ending up nowhere.

Since SMX the are a lot of discussions in the SEO professionals circles, triggered from the comments of Matt Cutts about the death of PageRank Sculpting and the new way Google might be handling the Nofollow attribute.

So what's next?

Please read and come back if you would like to discuss about this here too:

1. SEOmoz | Google (Maybe) Changes How the PageRank Algorithm Handles Nofollow

2. SEOmoz | No Clarification Forthcoming from Google on Nofollow & PageRank Flow

3. Is PageRank Sculpting Dead? Inc. Matt Cutts Transcript

Some weeks weeks ago I implemented for the very first time the "nofollow" attribute on my web site (to some internal links), which I am not sure that I want to take them off at the moment for the reasons you all might understand.


My question is: If it is true that PageRank Sculpting was or is now a myth, and/or the "nofollow" attribute screwed up, is Bots Herding maybe the new way to go?


For example:

If page A has a followed link to page B, and the page B has a meta robots tag with a “noindex” directive, and page B has a link back to page A.
What should to happen in that case? Where does the PR go to?

[inertia]

I left this post on the other thread and I think its worth mentioning again...

Suppose you have 10 links and 5 of them are nofollowed. There’s this assumption that that the other 5 links get ALL that PageRank and that may not be as true anymore (your leftover PageRank will now “evaporate”, says Matt.). What are we supposed to think about this? How about all those people with nofollowed outbound links?

Is it a case of Google treating internal nofollows differently to external nofollows?

If page A has a followed link to page B, and the page B has a meta robots tag with a “noindex” directive, and page B has a link back to page A.
What should to happen in that case? Where does the PR go to?

Do we have to have the same discussion again?!

[Webnauts]

I left this post on the other thread and I think its worth mentioning again...

Is it a case of Google treating internal nofollows differently to external nofollows?

Well that is what I am asking.

Do we have to have the same discussion again?!

I assume yes. I am still not done with this.

[inertia]

Originally Posted by inertia
I left this post on the other thread and I think its worth mentioning again...

Is it a case of Google treating internal nofollows differently to external nofollows?
Well that is what I am asking.

I think they must! Otherwise many sites would end up "evaporating" pagerank everytime a new external link appeared. For social bookmarking sites, blogs, directories etc this could be a problem.

[Webnauts]

I think they must! Otherwise many sites would end up "evaporating" pagerank everytime a new external link appeared. For social bookmarking sites, blogs, directories etc this could be a problem.

Why evaporating? Every single web page has a total amount of PR for outgoing (off-site) links. Are you one of those who believe that having less outbound links on a page, your page PageRank will increase?

[SteveGerencser]

Just curious, but do you really think that all the effort spent trying to manipulate an arguably very small amount of PR is worth the effort spent on it??

I'm of the opinion that it 'might' make for an interesting intellectual discussion, but the time wasted on it would be better spent on other efforts at site promotion..

That said, Google (MC) has already said that internal nofollow is handled differently than external nofollow..

[inertia]

Why evaporating? Every single web page has a total amount of PR for outgoing (off-site) links.

Can you explain this further and also how you know?

Are you one of those who believe that having less outbound links on a page, your page PageRank will increase?

No.

[inertia]

That said, Google (MC) has already said that internal nofollow is handled differently than external nofollow..

Aaah... that i didnt know for sure... Got a link to the quote?

[SteveGerencser]

Off the top of my head, no.. I'm no where near home or my own PC.. And in 24 hours I will be in a another country getting ready to fish for a week

[kgun]

Do we have to have the same discussion again?!

I'm of the opinion that it 'might' make for an interesting intellectual discussion, but the time wasted on it would be better spent on other efforts at site promotion..

I am not convinced that WPW is the best place for an intellectual discussion