The NoFollow link attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, due to the amount of blog comment spamming.
The theory is that if spammers are spamming in blog comments to get better SEO and anchored links for their sites, NoFollow would render such spam useless. Problem is, spammers still spam.
Now, NoFollow has been adopted beyond blog comments. Wikipedia is now using NoFollow for external links and Google recommends that paid links use a NoFollow attribute.
Here are 13 reasons why NoFollow is a failure.
1. NoFollow = NoWorky. Using NoFollow in blog comments, the original intent of the tag, does nothing to discourage comment spammers. Using other anti-spamming tools such as question, math and plugins such as Akismet and SpamKarma for Wordpress is much more effective.
2. If a blogger moderates comments, there is no need for a NoFollow attribute. “Everyone who passes a human inspection should get the link love.”
3. Since the use of NoFollow in comments on Wordpress blogs is default, many bloggers do not even realize they are using NoFollow.
4. NoFollow=NoValue. Why use NoFollow on sites, text ads, and blogs if there is no value in terms of search engine indexing? What if they made the Yahoo! directory nofollow? Would anyone continue to purchase listings? Obviously the value of that directory would be zero of nofollow tags were applied to the listings.
5. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves.
6. No Follow sucks because the search engines (particularly Google) can’t make up their mind about when and how it should be used, thus causing confusion among inexperienced webmasters who do STUPID things like No Follow ALL outgoing links from their website to “protect the site from page rank leakage” and other silly ideas.
7. No-follow is a poor search engine’s solution to conceal its own failure to rank websites appropriately. What’s next, No-linking?
Search engines should be able to develop a method of identifying and devaluing links to spam sites which were placed in blog comments. Why should everyone who posts in blog comments suffer from the actions of a greedy few spammers.
8. Commenting on a blog post is the same as adding more relevant to that blog post. A thought provoking one sentence post can lead to pages of comments. If someone takes the time to help build your site’s content via posting comments, it is professional courtesy to give them some link love.
9. Putting NoFollow on Wikipedia is like putting Grey Poupon on a Spam sandwich.(Or like putting perfume on a pig.)
Taking Wikipedia to task over nofollow is fun but ultimately you need to take them to task for why they implemented nofollow in the first place - that is, to prevent spam. Which in turn means that the way Wikipedia was setup was flawed because it opened itself up to easy spamming.
Therefore, instead of just letting Wikipedia take the easy way out (because ultimately it’s an important resource for many people and replacing it would be tough), they should look at ways into changing their systems so they are not as open to spamming any more.
10. Text link advertisements which use a NoFollow make no sense. If you want to spread your Google juice, why use a link-condom?
11. Even Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg says NoFollow was a failure; “In theory this should work perfectly, but in practice although all major blogging tools did this two years ago and comment and trackback spam is still 100 times worse now. In hindsight, I don’t think nofollow had much of an effect, though I’m still glad we tried it.”
12. Search Engines follow NoFollow. Yahoo has been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer. So, if you’re goal in comment spamming to to build backlinks, which builds your site’s value in terms of selling advertising (TLA, ReviewMe, SEOmoz’s PageStrength and other metrics programs use Yahoo Backlinks as valued criteria), NoFollow is useless.
13. NoFollow Sucks. Check It!
What are your thoughts on NoFollow? Do you support the use of NoFollow in Wikipedia or as a way to identify paid links?
Have more reasons why NoFollow is a failure? Please feel free to share them below.
[Thanks to Carsten, Greg, Ahmed, Dave, Everett, Gemme, and John for contributing. You’ve all been NoFollow’d!]
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Comments
316 responses so far ↓
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 14, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Note : We’ll be following this post with a counterpoint post later in the week.
In addition, if you are a Wordpress blogger and wish to take NoFollow off of your blog, try the DoFollow plugin.
Everett on Feb 14, 2007 at 12:20 pm
“You’ve all been NoFollow’d!” Liar.
Great post Loren. I’m still looking for that WP plug-in that turns a member’s comment link into a followable link after a certain amount of approved posts. Drop me a line if you hear anything.
Lucas Castro on Feb 14, 2007 at 12:29 pm
And what about non automatic spam? A blogger that wants to rise up his page rank, should just say nice words on comments of many blogs with high PR, and would get many strong incoming links just for saying things like:
“wow, great post!”
“keep on the good job!”
“nice one!”
and so on. Does anyone here blocks this kind of comment? Nofollow does.
Ok nofollow sux, but is less worse with them.
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 14, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Yeah Lucas, I hate those types of posts.
It takes a bit more of your time but when using SpamKarma, labeling such comments as spam wil have those IP’s, sites, and user names added to a blacklist.
Sure, it takes a bit of time, but it is an alternative.
Carsten Cumbrowski on Feb 14, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Loren,
Time to turn off nofollow in the comments here at SEJ :)
Ken Savage on Feb 14, 2007 at 12:50 pm
The only thing I found with using the DoFollow plugin was that people can now search my code for rel=”" and comment away. Luckily akismet and my own eye keep up on that.
Razvan Antonescu on Feb 14, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Well….if it sucks so bad, and if it sucks for comments why do you use it?
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 14, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I’m not using NoFollow… as of now, Search Engine Journal is using the DoFollow Plugin to turn off the default NoFollow in our blog comments :)
I wonder if this will lead to more commenting?
Razvan Antonescu on Feb 14, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Yes it will….and it will lead to me swallow my words and use the recomended plugin
Razvan Antonescu on Feb 14, 2007 at 1:45 pm
And you get a digg too :P
Jonathan on Feb 14, 2007 at 3:30 pm
I completely agree. I have resorted to following commenter’s links as their username and nofollowing the links inside their comments so they don’t just spam my site with comment links.
I feel if a user takes the effort to comment, they deserve the link love.
Joe Whyte on Feb 14, 2007 at 3:31 pm
No follow tags are BS. Some blogs don’t even use no follow tags and yahoo and some engines still pick them up.
Hawaii SEO on Feb 14, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Reason # 14
You know something seriously sucks when boycotting the usage of it, can be used a powerful marketing tool.
Jason Schramm on Feb 14, 2007 at 5:44 pm
I turned of NoFollow on my blog a few weeks ago. Since I moderate all comments anyway, and use Akismet, it makes no sense to have NoFollow enabled. I didn’t even realize wordpress defaults to using NoFollow and has no way to take it off without using a plugin. If only there was a plugin that allowed selective NoFollow use, for those people who are not yet trusted.
Nadir on Feb 14, 2007 at 6:19 pm
You know what, I was just thinking about removing the nofollow tag from my blog comments as well. I use Akismet and it works pretty well, so yes, people who comment on my blog should get some link love, that’s only fair.
Casey Woods on Feb 14, 2007 at 6:34 pm
I do like the fact the nofollow prevents spammers from garnering link love. It hasn’t stopped the spamming because they know that there are still lots of blogs that don’t have “nofollow” enabled.
I’m thinking about turning it off on my site because I think it encourages more people to comment.
Webomatica on Feb 14, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I just took the plunge and disabled nofollow on my blog via the DoFollow plug in. Akismet catches the vast majority of spammy comments. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Folletto Malefico on Feb 14, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I can’t get what’s the issue about nofollow. 13 reasons are more like two: “doesn’t work for spam”, “is still followed by some engines”.
About the rest, I don’t think it deserves a post. Ok, it doesn’t work. But it’s still an information added to the link, supported sometimes, unsupported some others. It fails on the spam issue, but it’s still metadata: untrusted link.
Why I shouldn’t use it if I need it?
Greg on Feb 14, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Great post. I never got around to adding nofollow to my self-coded blog, largely because I manually moderate comments. But I remember making a mental note some years back that I should add nofollow. Mental note removed.
Raj on Feb 14, 2007 at 8:38 pm
The Problem with the post is that it is expecting the NoFollow to be the silver bullet for comment spamming.
I see it as one of the components of fighting spam. Akismet is great. But it still needs minimum moderation from the blog owner.
Just using NoFollow will not make any difference, but to me its still a step in the right direction.
And looking from the search engines view, it wants to get links that a page author puts on this page pointing to a third party site. So if the search engine ignores the link that I put on somone elses sites pointing to my own site, what is the problem there??
Seth Finkelstein on Feb 14, 2007 at 8:59 pm
“Therefore, instead of just letting Wikipedia take the easy way out (because ultimately it’s an important resource for many people and replacing it would be tough), they should look at ways into changing their systems so they are not as open to spamming any more”
Much easier said that done …
Wikipedia relies on keeping participation barriers as low as possible to get all that unpaid labor. They like to cost-shift to other people as much as possible. Telling them to do otherwise doesn’t help much because there’s no change in their incentives.
Azmeen on Feb 14, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Although I do agree that rel=nofollow is over-rated, I have to say that Wikipedia’s move to incorporate it is, in my opinion, justified.
Reason being, you have to look at the source of Wikipedia’s content; it’s user submitted. And literally anyone can create or modify entries on Wikipedia. And being a popular resource, Wikipedia is constantly being “leveraged” as a PR-boosting tool.
On the topic of weblogs on the other hand, I’d have to agree that rel=nofollow is becoming more and more irrelevant by the day. As you’ve rightly mentioned in your post, anti-comment spam plugins have matured enough that virtually all spams get caught almost effortlessly.
Doug Karr on Feb 14, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Hehe… I have 2 very important WP plugins installed:
no nofollow - disables rel=nofollow
wikipedia nofollow - ensures that all wikipedia links on my blog have rel=nofollow
JK on Feb 14, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Reason 5 rocks!
5. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves.
alek on Feb 14, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Some very good points Loren that the Search Engines should think about - nofollow was well intentioned, but yea, seems to have fallen apart. I “digg’ed” you … but appears your story was buried (?)
Evan on Feb 14, 2007 at 10:23 pm
unfortunately not everyone uses Wordpress for their blog, or manages comments like they should. The fact is that tons of people use Blogger.com for their blog and a quick search on any blog search engine you will find tons of people who have no idea what comment spam is and don’t think there is any reason to delete a comment.
I think this is why comment spam has increased so much over the years, but its also why i switched all my blogs to wordpress :)
Joe on Feb 14, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Good point… I should post about this too. :-)
Tom on Feb 14, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Comment spam has all our sites on moderated commenting. I have no problem giving link love to worthwhile comments.
Glenn on Feb 14, 2007 at 11:15 pm
So in #1 you say it’s a pathetic effort in preventing spam because it still happens.
Agreed.
In #9 you say Wikipedia uses it because it is a way to discourage spam, but they should have found a better system?
So it sucks.
If it’s good, the people should have found a better system in the first place…
nofollow just can’t win with you, huh?
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 14, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Well, it’s possibly discouraging spam at Wikipedia, but in no way stopping spam, as Wikipedia spam drives a lot of traffic to sites which place their links in it. So yes, Wikipedia should look for a better way to stop spamming.
And while it may be a bit bold to use DoFollow here at SEJ, which takes the NoFollow attribute out of comments, in the grand scheme of things NoFollow has only been popular for a year or so, and used here at SEJ for about 9 months.
For 3 years we did not use NoFollow on this blog :)
Peter Davis on Feb 14, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Great linkbait Loren! I agree with much of what you’re saying. While comment spam was the original problem that nofollow was supposed to solve, I think that the greater concept is still applicable. Yes, it’s a bandaid that’s imposed by the search engines to make their jobs easier. But, I do see the usefulness of it. If you (or any webmaster) do not have good editorial control over what links are placed on your website, nofollow is a good tool to let the search engines know that you cannot vouch for the quality of the links. If you, or Wikipedia, can take the time to give editorial review to all links posted, then of course the nofollow is irrelevant. I think a lot of people have perverted the meaning of it, though. But, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 14, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Peter, good points.
I just feel that there can be better ways of combating spam without taking away a little present in the form of organic links to the contributors to this blog and it’s content, which is 80% posting and 20% comments.
Maki on Feb 15, 2007 at 12:35 am
I have to say that I’m convinced with all the arguments so far. I personally know a lot of webmasters who are afraid of turning off NoFollow because they were afraid of ‘PR Leak’ .
Maybe a followup post that addresses this issue would be very useful indeed in pushing the DoFollow agenda.
Bashar on Feb 15, 2007 at 2:36 am
Nice argument. Since you don’t have NoFollow in your blog, how is this encouraging spam in a site as big as yours?
Peter van der Graaf on Feb 15, 2007 at 2:40 am
I absolutely agree; NoFollow sucks!
That’s why I use the “dofollow” plugin on my blog. I want to spread the linklove.
But is nofollow not followed? I had a new page in my website crawled, but it only had nofollow links to it. Yahoo’s “linkdomain:” shows also nofollow links and the links in Google webmaster central, at first the backlinks tool showed nofollow links as well (i’ve been told, not confirmed).
Therefore nofollow is a leaky condom.
http://www.vdgraaf.info/nofollow-is-a-leaky-condom.html
Gronk on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:05 am
I can’t remember where I read it but I thought the idea was a good one. Wikipedia should set up a sandbox style system where new submitions are nofollowed for a specific period. Once they have been around for a while and spam can be weeded out, the nofollow fades and it becomes a true linklove link.
found it:
Wikipedia would fare much better if they acknowledge the wiki spirit of communities working towards improving articles over time. And there’s a trivial way to ensure “nofollow†becomes sensitive to time. I implemented it in this blog’s comments: any fresh link that is posted receives a “nofollow†attribute, but only for a couple days, upon which the “nofollow†is automatically removed… turning this into a normal link. The reasoning behind this compromise is simple – searchbots will not value spam links here (giving spammers less incentive to post them, too), but any link that is not removed by one of the comment moderators over some short time must be a “trusted†link. The comments still respect the nature of links, and the nature of a community who adds value with outgoing links.
source:clicky
CVOS on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:08 am
Nofollow was originally intended to curb blog comments by people looking to artificially increase their rankings. It is debatable whether or not this has worked as intended.
The problem is most webmasters are completely abusing the nofollow tag and applying it in completely nonstandard ways.
Some webmasters use nofollow tags on all page links not directly related to their main content, hoping to “decrease PR leak”. So the contact us, about us, faq etc are all nofollowed. The end result is no user will be able to find their contact information through any search. This is a huge step backwards from an open and semantic web.
I believe there should be a new tag - something that means “i trust this site, its not spam but don’t want it to have full authority as a regular link.”
1 regular a href
2 rel=”follow, notspam, partial trust”
3 rel=”nofollow”
paris on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:45 am
In germany we have a big diskussion about this right now, and a strong movement against nofollow. It turns out that some people really are using it out of stingyness, but most people dont even know.
I was searching for english language sites that are aware of the problem, and now this issue gets some attention here too.
What i miss in the diskussion is the fact why there was a field to enter the website in the comment form on blogs in the first place.
That would be very interesting to know - anyone?
john on Feb 15, 2007 at 4:01 am
Response to first 4 “reasons”:
1. Not everyone using Wordpress, and using nofollow is easier than writing your own anti-span tools
2. “If” .. ok, if a blogger has no time to moderates comments, he shouldn’t blog?
3. The “leave a comment” function is default on Wordpress, many bloggers do not even realize they are allowing comment spamming
4. Another if, “What if they made the Yahoo! directory nofollow?”. What if someone kills himself with a knife? Everyone stop using knife? A tool is useless to idiot doesn’t mean it is useless to average people
Gerard @ Interweb World on Feb 15, 2007 at 4:52 am
Loren - definitely a good move getting rid of NoFollow!
I use the SEO for FireFox plugin and it highlights in red any link that is nofollowed. It’s surprising how widespread the usage of the nofollow attribute is.
As a previous commenter mentioned, you’ll definitely get more comments from this. And you’ve also gained one RSS subscriber!
Sebastian on Feb 15, 2007 at 5:25 am
The most sucking issue with nofollow is confusion due to its ongoing semantic morphing. Your great article doesn’t unveil the most popular nofollow-misunderstanding: nofollow doesn’t mean nofollow.
> 12. Search Engines follow NoFollow.
They have to follow castrated links. Why shouldn’t they fetch the link destination? rel=nofollow just removes the Googlejuice from a link, it is in no way a crawler directive in the sense of the robots exclusion standard. Meanwhile it sometimes even works as intended by its most common misuse: under particular circumstances it can function as crawl delay directive at least.
>Yahoo has been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer.
That’s not only Yahoo, Google lists comdomized links in link: searches too, and BTW that’s 100% compliant to the nofollow-microformat and the introducing blog post as well. Again, the problem is that rel=nofollow does not mean nofollow. Just because a link appears in a SERP that doesn’t mean it adds any weight to the link destination’s ranking.
> So, if you’re goal in comment spamming is to build backlinks, which builds your site’s value in terms of selling advertising (TLA, ReviewMe, SEOmoz’s PageStrength and other metrics programs use Yahoo Backlinks as valued criteria), NoFollow is useless.
It’s kinda useless for most of its real-world implementations, but not for this reason. It perfectly works as defined. Rel=nofollow removes the Googlejuice, but not the traffic.
On my blog I’ve a cpl. post explaining the nofollow-fiasco more detailed, I’m looking forward to seeing you there :)
Deanna Marie on Feb 15, 2007 at 5:35 am
I like the idea, and would stop using nofollow if most comments weren’t the type of “hi nice site bye” comment. I reward good commentators with a link on my blogroll and leaving comments on their site. I don’t see why any random moron should be able to leave me a four word comment just to get a link. Real people with real sites try to spam too.
Then again I may just be being snotty because the people I would be linking don’t have a clue they’re using nofollow, and linking them wouldn’t result in a link back in 99 percent of all cases.
Phil on Feb 15, 2007 at 6:57 am
I sometimes use nofollow when pointing out a site that is bad - I really don’t want that link to boost their search engine rankings. I don’t think it’s the tag that’s bad but perhaps how some people are using it.
The questions you now have to answer is - have I posted this comment to your blog just to get a back link?, do you care?(assuming it’s a valid comment).
Current comment spam is fairly easily identified but what if it were created by someone more intelligent, an example generic comment that looks legit and would get through all spam filters would be…
#I hadn’t thought about it that way before, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and reading a few other blog posts about it - you’ve raised some very interesting points, thanks for the insight.#
I could write hundreds of these generic comments that most bloggers wouldn’t spot as spam and post them to thousands of blogs - google would love me.
Martin on Feb 15, 2007 at 7:09 am
When saying that rel=”nofollow” has not reduced spam, I think you missed the point. The design was to reduce spam in search engine results not to reduce spam in blog comments. For reducing search engine result spam I think it probably has had an effect.
It was obvious from the outset that this was never going to reduce comment spam. The spammer’s motive is to get people to their site. As a result any link anywhere that when clicked on takes someone to their site is a good advert as far as the spammer is concerned. Ok, they no longer get the increased Google rating but they still get a benefit. To them it is like getting a free AdWords advert.
In order for rel=â€nofollow†to reduce comment spam, it would have to have a negative impact on search engine ranking rather than a neutral one. Making it negative though would never work, as this would obviously penalise far too many legitimate sites.
Sanjay Goel on Feb 15, 2007 at 7:12 am
Great post.
I think nofollow should be used sparingly, maybe only in blog comments, and there too the admin should have permissions to make selected comments as follow after moderation.
Martin on Feb 15, 2007 at 7:24 am
Oh, I forgot.
Even if we do take the view that the spammer’s motive is solely to increase Google Rank rel=”NoFollow” by itself is still never going to work. The reason for this is that spammers tend to use automated robots. As a result they can leave billions of comments with very little cost. They only need a tiny number of successful spams to achieve their goals. The problem is that in order to reduce the spammer’s return on investment to a point where the activity is no longer viable, absolutely everyone everywhere would have to implement rel=”No Follow” without fail and this is simply never going to happen.
julian on Feb 15, 2007 at 8:58 am
Wikipedia have by putting nofollow on all links “thrown the baby out with the bath water”. Surely a better approach would be to put nofollow on all “new” links, but once checked by an editor the nofollow is removed and the link “locked” from future editoring.
Jayson on Feb 15, 2007 at 9:54 am
Yes, nofollow is something used by search engines to ensure that search returns relevant pages. In blog context, removing nofollow altogether will cause havoc since most of the blogs are not actively moderated.
Jim Westergren on Feb 15, 2007 at 10:10 am
Unfortunately I don’t have the time to check the comment links on my blog. I still have quite some manual comment spammers who links to porn etc and then it feels good to have the nofollow. If I would have time to check, then yes, I would disable the nofollow.
But at least I disabled the nofollow on the pingbacks.
Chris Hynes on Feb 15, 2007 at 10:31 am
In my experience, nofollow doesn’t do a whole lot for search engines. It seems that they use that as another attribute in their statistics, but not as a hard and fast rule. I think a lot it’s usage is just because it’s turned on by default in a lot of blog engines.
Lucas Castro on Feb 15, 2007 at 10:42 am
Loren,
i still dont know if nofollow does suck at all.
you made a good point, but i am still wondering about the bad intentional actions. Like you said, we will need another ways to control the web index spam.
So i beg to you make clear to the mass: “that is ok if you don’t want to nofollow externals links, but do care about web index spam.”
Chris on Feb 15, 2007 at 12:26 pm
You should list some nofollow plugins that people can install, that easily remove the attribute from their site links. I did a quick google search, and there appears to be quite a few…
David Leonhardt on Feb 15, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I blogged about my thoughts on Wikipedia (I agree with yours). But it does beg the question, when the very most valuable links from an immensley trusted source with such a rigorous process of vetting outbound links has no value in a search engine’s algorithm, can even Google trust the nofollow attribute? So I tested it (and reported about it in my blog). It seems that Google is not following nofollow links…at least not yet. Perhaps its days are numbered, but not yet.
By the way, what do you mean that WordPress bloggers might not even know that nofollow is the default? Hey, wait. I use WordPress. Loren, let me have that plugin!
Andy Stratton on Feb 15, 2007 at 1:34 pm
As of December of 2006, many professionals in both web development and search marketing had been using NOFOLLOW as a means of keeping search engine spiders out of traps and preventing indexing of two URLs for identical content — using it as a means of preventing some of the pitfalls of bad SEO.
Stopping search engines from infinite loops in web programming URLs and keeping them from indexing the same content for two differnet URLs makes me rather enjoy the NOFOLLOW meta-attribute…
Nate Balcom on Feb 15, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Ha hah…Great post. I especially liked #10.
10. Text link advertisements which use a NoFollow make no sense. If you want to spread your Google juice, why use a link-condom?
Great point! Good stuff.
Julie on Feb 15, 2007 at 1:52 pm
You say “Therefore, instead of just letting Wikipedia take the easy way out (because ultimately it’s an important resource for many people and replacing it would be tough), they should look at ways into changing their systems so they are not as open to spamming any more.”
I agree with this somewhat. But look what a mess DMOZ is with volunteer editors that have to apply….it is a disaster. I don’t know what the solution is, because the open posting policy on Wikipedia is what made it a success. The failure of most DMOZ editors has made DMOZ what it is - an outdated directory that might have some relevant information in it. DMOZ’s control policies have limited its ability to grow in relevancy to the same level as Wikipedia. So please Wikipedia, don’t implement anything like what DMOZ has done!
Aaron Pratt on Feb 15, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I agree that Wikipedia and others need to do something to better control spam but it is also a fact that the majority of people who have blogs have no idea what a nofollow is or how to even prune a “Hey great post” comment.
Wikipedia is surely going to benefit from all that incoming with no outgoing link power in the future. This will most likely keep them using the thing BTW, lame.
Google needs to update it’s guidelines with “uses of the nofollow tag”, that would stop all speculation.
Note: graywolf tried this and now put the nofollow back in place and SEOmoz “believes” and loves the nofollow tag so there you go…
Thanks for the link, I might also use dofollow on my blog because I can handle spam pretty well, that was your best point Loren. :)
Also if you think about algorithms and the devaluation of bad link neighborhoods and ranking, you do not want to be part of one if you are looking to remain relevant and keep that “trust” you SEOs talk about.
So there you go, I am also still unsure and hate this feeling, doesn’t mean I agree that it should be done away with either, just means that Google needs to not rely on us following around Adam Lasnik and Matt Cutts to get answers. I know the rules but the rules bring more questions. ;-(
Go-Référencement on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:03 pm
I think that this is like the BETA tape… It was a great idea, had a lot of potential, but really should have been think about better.
I mean, the fact there is a “no follow” attribute on a link got the spammers to say:
“Hey, now I don’t get link love… but heh, what else can I do? I’ll just keep posting here and there, I might drive natural traffic through those powerful blogs anyway”.
Spammers were like 100% efficient with DoFollow, went to 25% efficient with the nofollow… still there was no alternative… so they kept doing it, hoping many people would forget to do so and many other blogs didn’t have it toggled…
My 2 cents.
Empresas de Peru on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:22 pm
In my site, there are several thousand links to several thousand websites. How can I possibly know if each and everyone is ok, or a spammy site? It’s impossible! Even if at one point each was checked, there’s no telling how will it change in the future… so unless I’m absolutely sure the site I link to is a top recognized/not spammy/authority/whatever, I do choose to use the nofollow tag. For me, it’s a blessing… I don’t have to worry about letting go of my “google juice” to crappy sites… ;)
Dave Davis on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:23 pm
We’ve been thinking and saying this for months. Many of us Irish have nofollowed our blogs comments because of the reasons out outlines. Comments have increased and we can get a lot more positive feedback.
It only takes one of the “Big boys” to do it and the rest will, excuse the pun, follow.
The Inspector on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:34 pm
I have to say that I did get a few giggles from this post.
What your saying is 100% accurate but there is a dark side to that thought.
By removing the no-follow on blogs, it opens up a whole new market of spammers. The “Great Site” or “very informative post, please visit my site” spammers. The object of every blog is to get quality posts and I’m afraid that this will open the flood doors for simple 1 liners.
What do you think?
SEO Portugal on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Great post!
Thanks,
José Fernandes
The Inspector on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:41 pm
My point exactly,
Thank You Mr Fernandes for proving my point…
Credit Guy on Feb 15, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Good points Loren.
I do have a question though: Does the “nofollow” attibute only effect link juice? Would it have any effects on affiliate or referral links?
Andy Beard on Feb 15, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Loren is missing one part of the equation that is vital - a comments policy that clearly defines what is allowed.
What I will also be introducing soon on my blog is a cookie based system that switches off commenting until someone has read the comments policy.
I think the percentage of high quality comments will actually increase, especially if you have smart SEOs reading your content, because the relevance of a link is based upon the text around it, not just the anchor text.
I have even just used my optional link to link through to my own comments policy. In that way it actually offers more value to Loren’s page as well.
Sebastian on Feb 15, 2007 at 4:20 pm
The best is that, while i completely disagree with the post, since i think that NO-FOLLOW is clever and nothing else than a “Microformat”(http://microformats.org/ which will be huge in the internet’s future) i still get a nice backlink from the comment
;-)
Traffic Slurp on Feb 15, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Doug Karr’s point below…
wikipedia nofollow - ensures that all wikipedia links on my blog have rel=nofollow
Yes indeed Doug, splendid idea - let’s see how wikipedia like it up ‘em- they’ll be doing more than moaning about lack of donations, that’s for sure!
A friend of mine has an authority site operating in a ‘government’ niche area. It’s a news and information portal.
He wrote a huge information article type page on wikipedia covering the particular area that he has renowned ‘expert’ knowledge in, this page inturn is now linked by uni and government sites.
His reward for his hard work and effort was until recently a link at the bottom of the page back to his own site.
Not any more! He’s utterly disgusted with wikipedia’s ‘no-follow’ on links decision.
Number 8 covers this - if you’re using comments to ultimately help build your site, be they in blogs, forums, wikis type sites or whatever; there’s no incentive or reward for those who actually make the effort to add informative comments if you use the ‘no-follow’ tag.
Yeah sure you still may get click thru traffic from the link, (which is something people sometimes forget when they’re totally focused on PR chasing.) but you do end up feeling a little cheated.
emo on Feb 15, 2007 at 4:40 pm
It’s not so much the devaluing of comment links I don’t like (which seems to be one of the main arguments here) but the fact that a new tag was introduced overnight that has far more implications than it’s original intended purpose.
I think it’s very weird that Google condone or even encourage use of the nofollow tag beyond what it was originally designed for (am i being naive here?).
dave on Feb 15, 2007 at 4:55 pm
When I first heard about nofollow, I thought to myself, “this might be an opportunity”. If I can create some sites that don’t use it, then that would be an added incentive for folks to come post there, assuming everyone else starts using the nofollow tag.
Shell on Feb 15, 2007 at 5:00 pm
I had never thought of the NoFollow in these terms. I may have to adjust my attitude towards them. I may even turn it off on my blog. When one domino falls…
Tom on Feb 15, 2007 at 5:23 pm
No Follow, The main reason why people spam is it pays to. If anything affects how much a spammer is paid, they make more spam to compensate. The only way to prevent spam is to make it not pay. No Follow only promotes the idea that a webserver cpu somewhere needs to run the spam program for a little longer to build more pages. Nothing will cure a fundemental flaw in online advertising. Web 3.0 anyone?
SeoLeo on Feb 15, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I believe nofollow is good, it may have flaws but still it’s better than nothing.
Cone Tanriverdio on Feb 15, 2007 at 5:57 pm
I’m pretty sure Google still follows every link they find, they just don’t count the nofollow ones in their page rank algorithm.
What you need to keep them out of certain areas of your site is a robots.txt file.
Sebastian on Feb 15, 2007 at 6:02 pm
If on the whole Web there is only one link to a page and this link has the nofollow value in its rel attribute Googlebot will not fetch the page.
TallStreet on Feb 15, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I completely agree with you on the nofollow issue.
We don’t use nofollow links on our website either. Especially on point 7. Googles justification for the page rank algorithm was that it was an unbiased metric of the popularity of a website. Nofollow is their way of admitting they were wrong.
Jim Cook on Feb 15, 2007 at 6:14 pm
There’s a couple of cartoons I posted at SEOrefugee which suggest a couple alternate uses for the no-follw tag. My favorite was:
http://www.seorefugee.com/seoblog/2006/12/10/skitzzos-honeymoon/
Max on Feb 15, 2007 at 6:46 pm
We don’t use them, I think linking to other sites is about the users not the engines. If I get a crappy link posted on one of our sites it comes down - quickly. It’s interesting to see the new Google link tool reporting nofollow links - what is that all about? Is the condom falling off ?
Tinu on Feb 15, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Best NoFollow Post EVER!
William on Feb 15, 2007 at 7:03 pm
It’s amazing the number of people who feel empowered to tell the volunteers at Wikipedia that they are doing it wrong, all wrong.
Do you normally act that way with gifts, Loren? If so, I’d like to see some video of next time you tell your sweetie, “Boy, this sweater you knitted for me is ugly and uncomfortable. You should figure out how to do it better. Or something.”
There are articles out there from your fellow SEO vendors explaining how to sneak links into Wikipedia articles to build up page rank. Rather than pointless whining, have you considered stopping SEOers from doing that? Or using your magic SEO powers to clean up Wikipedia instead of demanding everybody else do it for you?
It is, after all, the encyclopedia anyone can edit, so nothing’s stopping you.
Tan on Feb 15, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I can agree that your points above, but say they take back the nofollow attribute..what else could Google do without impacting their search results on a large scale? Unique Wedding Favors
Alex Combs on Feb 15, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Even if Nofollow did prevent comment spam (which it doesn’t really), it’s missing the point. Any time you allow comments, you’re allowing someone to write on your site. Why wouldn’t you take the time to prevent someone from defacing it? If you don’t have time to manually approve your comments, at least use a anti-spam plugin or some other automatted method to prevent it.
It looks bad on YOU if your site has spam on it. If someone autoapproves more than a couple spam comments on a site, I run from it. These type of webmasters want pageviews, not visitors.
Arun Agrawal on Feb 15, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Interesting reasons. Some are just comments but brings home the point.
When commentors taken the time to post a note on your blog and pass the Akismet test, they deserve to get a little link juice. Remember the web is about cross-linking.
User generated content is the best thing that can happen to your blog - reward them and they will be happy to add some more. Win-win.
Luke McCallum on Feb 15, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Replying to Lucas Castro’s comment re crap “well done” posts. I am sure everyone hates them but everyone wants to get a pat on the back for a job well done.
Why not simply expand on the “Approve / Publish Comments” function in the Blog control panel to allow or disallow NOFOLLOW on a per post basis.
That way it is a decision of the blogger as to whether they feel the comment is worthy of a backlink.
Sure it will add a couple of seconds to the moderation of the post but you will be able to easilly maintain a balance between blocking spam links and link love!
WebGeek on Feb 15, 2007 at 10:08 pm
I have mixed feelings on nofollow. I think Wikipedia did the right thing, but I agree that they need to do more to stop spammers.
TDavid on Feb 16, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I was against nofollow when it came out originally (and wrote about it several times at the time) and didn’t require two years to make up my mind to disable it in the comments section, but it’s nice to see SEJ finally coming around on this one and doing the right thing.
CarstenCumbrowski on Feb 16, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Loren, this is not linkbaiting but comment baiting. Your 80% post 20% comments break down is certainly not reflected by this post :).
Aaron: SEOmoz removes the nofollow once you contributed for a while and have proven that you not just add worthless comments, although I think the 100 “points” is set a bit too high.
I disapprove the nofollow at Michael’s Blog. This, including the loss of a lot of comments (including some long ones I did) makes me really think twice about commenting at his blog in the future.
Randy Charles Morin on Feb 16, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Here’s a +1 in favor of nofollow on Wikipedia. I wasn’t sure at first, but I’ve noticed that many of the people who are against this are the same people who are link spamming Wikipedia. Sounds like it worked!
Versteigerung on Feb 16, 2007 at 2:42 pm
NoFollow : (
Ashish Mohta on Feb 16, 2007 at 10:41 pm
The only reason of using no follow is not to make the google thing that they have so any outgoing links.They dont like if you have pages with full of ougoing links.
Moreover if you have too many outbound links it will reduce ur pr
Andrew Timberlake on Feb 17, 2007 at 1:33 am
Loren and others.
I decided to write a quick plugin to turn off nofollow for commenters who have commented a certain number of times.
The default is set to 10 comments but can be changed.
This stops quick comments for link love and allows a blogger to share the link love with those who are actively part of the community.
Link Love Plugin
Darren McLaughlin on Feb 17, 2007 at 2:28 pm
This post now has 90 outgoing links.
David Martin on Feb 18, 2007 at 4:07 am
Google must decide if a link is good or bad, not the webmaster.
A lot of patents, technology and a Google doesn´t know to do with a link in a blog…
Can I translate this to Spanish?? This post is great.
Seo Mallorca on Feb 19, 2007 at 8:58 am
This is superb and has really made sense of a lot of things.
Minah on Feb 19, 2007 at 10:25 am
Nice post! I think we better not to use nofollow attribute…. don’t be greedy! :-)
Paul T on Feb 19, 2007 at 11:21 am
I recently updated my site and changed my extension names. I have multiple pages out there that have duplicate content now and am wondering what is the best way to not get penalized by the search engines for duplicate content? Can I use a NoFollow on the older pages to prevent duplicate content of sites or should a 301 redirect be used?
Texxs on Feb 19, 2007 at 11:42 am
“…Why I shouldn’t use it if I need it?…”
Because you don’t need it and it negatively effects other people.
Alex on Feb 20, 2007 at 8:58 am
I agree the tag is stupid although because what they don’t realise is that people don’t spam comments for higher PR rating thats stupid, especially when its usually cheap drugs spam or borderline auto spam they do it for the direct promotion i.e they hit enough of these blog comments people around guarnteed to click them. It just so happens that they used to (without ref=”nofollow”) get a pr boost.
David Berkowitz on Feb 20, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Great post, Loren. I referenced it in my MediaPost column today, also available on my blog.
http://www.marketersstudio.com/2007/02/imagining_a_web.html
robwatts on Feb 21, 2007 at 8:05 am
Nice article.
I think there is a place for a ‘this link is crap’ or ‘I choose not to convey love to this link’ type tool, but in general it shouldn’t be used to gag blog commenters. Any blog worth its salt should be moderating its commenters, those that dont well..nuff said really.
Eileen Trainor on Feb 21, 2007 at 3:08 pm
I moderate all comments on my blogs (4). I am not interested in comments that link to pharmaceutical wonders or splogs put up to milk Google Adwords.
I am against turning comments off completely. If a blog does not allow comments, I do not visit again.
chris on Feb 21, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Thank you for taking this stance and putting this out there. Also thanks for pointing me towards the dofollow plug in for wordpress.
Clark on Feb 21, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Hello,
Yes they are stupid and pointless unless your site is private.
Jason on Feb 22, 2007 at 6:36 am
I manage a number of websites and there have been numerous occasions where I have spotted backlinks from links with the nofollow tag - conclusion: it does not work.
TheGuru on Feb 24, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Using nofollow on WikiPedia is crazy. Taking the value out of links from MediaWiki is removing the value of tens of thousands of publicly-moderated, human evaluated links is unfortunate. In that respect, WikiPEdia was the ultimate dmoz.
Using nofollow as a crutch is sad. Let the editors (everyone) do their job. It was working.
kukuman on Feb 26, 2007 at 11:15 pm
yeah now everyone is using no follow even when linking! so now when you link to goggle, yahoo or any popular site remember to tag no follow too!
Alastair on Mar 1, 2007 at 10:29 am
Great post Loren. I find the “pink links” everywhere I’m reading now.
I’m going to go turn off nofollow on my blogs’ comments sections and see how that goes.
Like you said, Askimet does such a great job of stopping spam already. I find that combining Askimet with the Wordpress option “moderate posts with X links” and setting X to 1 is very effective.
Jamey Wood on Mar 2, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Interesting list, but I think it over-simplifies the impact and importance of NoFollow. If hyperlinks are to be treated as votes (as PageRank-style algorithms do), why would we not want to give the “electorate” a strong ability to express the intent of each vote? We need more controls along the lines of NoFollow, not less. I talk about this more fully here.
Chris Taylor - Learn SEO on Mar 2, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Good conversation…
What I’d really like to know is why did Google implement the “nofollow” rule in the first place?
Surely they knew it would be a misserable failure so there must have been other reasons.
I just think that links in blogs were stuffing up there rankings and they wanted to remove them altogether.
Is “nofollow” tags another way of tracking people with SEO knowledge, I wonder!
The fact is, Google did this for other reasons that they haven’t been honest about and it certainly wasn’t to help all the blogf editors out there and their fight against spam.
Any insight anyone?
Regards, Chris
David Burdon on Mar 6, 2007 at 5:33 am
Loren,
I argued this exact point at a technology conference in London just 3 weeks ago. Nofollow could well signal the beginning of the end for Google. As you say, if you’re going to nofollow links why not ban them altogether. No links = no Google.
ralf on Mar 13, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Very nice NoFollow Post!
Thanks, Ralf
salsa on Mar 14, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Excellent discussion, lots of different viewpoints. Personally I don’t like the no follow. The cartoons posted by Jim cook are great.
paul on Mar 14, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Loren,
I think you have carved out your place in internet history my friend. Your picture and bio will be in Wikapedia in no time under the title “NoWorky”
LOVE IT man!!!
paul
Tyler Dewitt on Mar 15, 2007 at 9:11 am
Great Post loren, great job, always looked towards your work, and always admired what you have had to say :)
Dirk Karl Maßat on Mar 15, 2007 at 9:38 am
On the topic of weblogs on the other hand, I’d have to agree that rel=nofollow is becoming more and more irrelevant by the day. As you’ve rightly mentioned in your post, anti-comment spam plugins have matured enough that virtually all spams get caught almost effortlessly.
IndustryStock on Mar 20, 2007 at 10:10 am
you are right, NoFollow sucks
Jeffrey Goos on Mar 21, 2007 at 3:16 am
I think these blog is really useful for new comers and Excellent resource list.
I hate nofollow more than Bush
matt D on Mar 21, 2007 at 2:18 pm
So, does anyone have a list of sites, directories, blogs that do not use no follow?
Pozycjonowanie on Mar 22, 2007 at 7:40 am
One of the best article here i fully suport the idea nofollow is wrong!
Brian P on Mar 22, 2007 at 7:06 pm
I run a search engine ( Winzy ). Should I be using no follow on my search results? I get a feed from my search provider and I haven’t endorsed any of the paid or algorithmic links myself
Niko Neugebauer on Mar 26, 2007 at 9:58 am
Good article, i agree with a lot of points.
When about Wikipedia, i think, that putting a blocking for linking is a good idea, since there is no chance of finding and controlling all the content and links created by the millions of editors.
As for the blogs, I agree, using Moderation and Askimet is basically solving the problem with a spam and useless linking.
Seychelles Web Design on Mar 27, 2007 at 9:02 am
What Wikipedia did was inevitable. You just can’t blame them for trying everything in their power to make their project as clean as possible. But using nofollow on blogs and ordinary pages is just silly.
Nice post, good discussion.
gutschein on Mar 27, 2007 at 10:36 am
You are right. No-Follow Tags are really boring. I diabled the tag in my blog. Good work.
Mitomjo on Mar 28, 2007 at 9:49 am
The no follow tag was and is a failure since it was adopted. With search engines still following them, and the spammers still spamming blog comments. It’s why I am thankful for Askimet.
David Paul Robinson on Mar 29, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I have disabled no-follow on my blog as well. It’s nice to see bloggers are finally giving up on no-follow.
Firefox Community Edition on Apr 2, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Excellent article and an excellent argument has been made here for removing no follow but I still feel that some sort of a grading system like a number of posts before the tag is removed scenario is probably the best route to travel.
domain freek on Apr 4, 2007 at 5:21 am
I think the choice is simple! nofollow doesn’t help it hurts! I won’t comment on a nofollow blog even if it’s talking about something I like!
it’s like kicking your commenter in the teeth and then sayin well nothing! the hell with you! it’s an insult to commenters! thanks for telling it like a champ! good job!
Rich Waters on Apr 7, 2007 at 10:43 am
I think that you need some sort of way for others to know that the link is NOT NoFollow. With it being the default in so many places people are used to that being the way things work. I really like someone’s suggestion above about a plugin that removes NoFollow after someone has had a certain number of comments, but the fact remains that you need a way to inform your readers of that… Perhaps just an extra line of text above the “Leave a Comment” block stating that their website link will NOT be NoFollow or will not be NoFollow after so many posts.
Miami Luxury Real Estate on Apr 10, 2007 at 10:03 am
WordPress should have an easy to use radio button in the options of the admin panel:
1.DoFollow
2.NoFollow
Keep it simple!
Randa Clay on Apr 11, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Want to tell everyone that you’ve turned off the nofollow in your comments? Check out my new “ifollow” logos- grab one for your sidebar!
http://randaclay.com/archives/the-i-follow-movement
Henri van den Hoof on Apr 13, 2007 at 5:16 am
I also run the DoFollow plugin from Semiologic on my blog, but agree with the above statement that WordPress should have an easy to use radio button in the options of the admin panel with DoFollow/NoFollow
joey on Apr 17, 2007 at 1:09 am
NoFollow is just a lazy excuse to prevent spam, which in the end makes the web a nonhuman-friendly place, since it “NoWorky.”
I haven’t change wordpress settings, but I will pluginize myself now that you reminded me (It was on my agenda for things-to-do-but-memory-is-failing).
Jeff on Apr 17, 2007 at 5:43 pm
What a joke nofollow is, yet it’s still around.
The one that really got to me was Wikipedia, as they rank for everything, and won’t share the love.
Luckily I can nofollow my links to their articles.
Paul on Apr 19, 2007 at 1:22 pm
The interaction between bloggers and commenter should be like the social interaction in the real world. My brother-in-law is an intellectual property rights lawyer. He gives free speeches and seminars to entrepreneurs who have a vested interest in the subject. Both he and they know he does it to try to get new clients. When at the end of his discussion he hands out cards no one storms off disgusted at the thought that he was marketing to them. On the web on the other hand if you leave even a simple link like area rugs in a post that is applicable or even helpful, the post or link is often mediated out. People watch free TV shows and put up with commercials and product placement because they get something out of it. I am very surprised by how people’s reactions in the real world differ from their reactions online. The web is still in its infancy and has a lot of maturing to do so we still see a lot of over reaction to marketing online but I am sure as it ages we will see the market place relax.
frankp on Apr 21, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I’m a believer in the value of careful management of outgoing links - so in blog posts I link to relevant, good quality sites.
If you ‘dofollow’ comments, won’t each post end up with potentially endless non-relevant links which could negatively affect the search engine ranking of that page, and on an ongoing basis your site?
Am I missing something?
Richard Malis on Apr 26, 2007 at 12:27 pm
As someone who is concerned about search engine results, but not someone who actively follows the SEO community, I find all of this very interesting. The only reason to dislike the no-follow tag is if you yourself use blogs as a way to gain pagerank. I think the nofollow tag just gives the webmasters an additional way to control the value of outgoing links. Who cares if wikipedia uses the nofollow tag? The only ones who care are the ones who have links from wikipedia. And if you have a link from wikipedia that is deserved, you probably have tons of other good links out there. On top of it, I’m assuming this site doesn’t use the nofollow tag, and it’s amazing how people will try to sneak in links throughout their comments even here, where people are trying to make an argument about why the nofollow tag is bad. Just my opinion of course!
Dan Bradstreet on Apr 26, 2007 at 2:57 pm
As a reletively new webmaster I was not aware of the differance in follow or no follow, Does it affect my linkbacks, traffic or pagerank at google. I own a few web directories and just turned the no-follow attribute off because all the honest directory postings were not getting their just reward. And I also reallise the wast of all those good posts and info that should get indexed.
Dan Bradstreet
Online Advertising on Apr 29, 2007 at 3:54 am
Good Points, but we need to spread the word reg this, most bloggers do not even know the comments are getting no followed.
Traffic Slurp on Apr 29, 2007 at 6:30 pm
matt D on Mar 21, 2007 at 2:18 pm asked
So, does anyone have a list of sites, directories, blogs that do not use no follow?
Yeah sure matt, here’s a couple of places you can get a list of large numbers of ‘SEO friendly’ directories.
Directory Critic has over 4000 listed.
Strongest Directories
lists SEO friendly directories by page strength, it uses all kinds of interesting stats to determine the strength of each directory.
Enjoy!
Bucky from bloggingwv.com on Apr 30, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Hi!
I found a good dofollow plugin for wordpress today. I always wondered why this feature is still in current wordpress releases.
NoFollow sucks!
Klimatyzacja Tychy on May 2, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Can anyone link to my site for free, please?:)
amici on May 3, 2007 at 11:50 am
Very interestant article :)
Hagerman on May 9, 2007 at 3:53 am
I agree!
The Magician
Deaf Musician on May 9, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Wow, I never realized all this. I hear all over that Google downgrades your site if you don’t use nofollow in external links? If not, then I’d like to start using rel=”external” rather than rel=”nofollow”. Give some love to the decent commentators. How do I enable this in wordpress?
Loren Baker, Editor on May 9, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I do believe that if you wish to use a tag like rel=”external” on a Wordpress Blog you can tweak the Do Follow plugin code to replace rel=”no follow” with rel=”external”.
But why would you want to label them as external? If they point to another site, bots already no that they are external or outbound links.
Search engines will not penalize you for organic linking to external sites, as such is the building block of the Internet and search algorithms.
MDofPC Custom Computers on May 10, 2007 at 6:21 pm
I wonder if this blog has the no follow attribute?
CarstenCumbrowski on May 11, 2007 at 3:19 am
“I wonder if this blog has the no follow attribute”
No it does not (anymore). Having fun with link building, haven’t we? :)
Perfect Wealth Formula on May 12, 2007 at 1:07 am
Can anyone tell me the firefox plugin that
highlights no follow links in red?
I’ve seen it mentioned before but can’t
seem to find it.
Make money online on May 12, 2007 at 11:18 am
this is kool. thanks
credit card bonus on May 12, 2007 at 11:25 am
i like this no follow trick..sweet.
Case Stevens on May 16, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Hey Loren,
Great post.
I referred to it on my blog at Blog Comments, Spammers, Backlinks and NoFollow where I decided to get rid of the nofollow.
Thanks.
fo.unta.in on May 18, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Good Points, the search engines need to work this out among themselves.
and leave the publishers on their own.
David Staub on May 18, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I have posted to several tax and legal forums over the years. It takes a lot of time to post well written, thoughtful comments but I enjoy doing explaining legal and tax issues to people who need some general direction.
One of the side effects of the “nofollow” for me is that I have chosen to post primarily to those sites that don’t use “nofollow.” If every forum used it, I would still probably continue to post, but if 5 use it and one doesn’t, I’ll spend the time on the site that gives me some benefit in return for my effort.
Pitumbo on May 20, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I stumbled across this page when Googling “firefox nofollow plugin” and agree with pretty much all your points Loren. Sites that ‘do follow’ definitely provide more motivation for commenting, and on my own blogs I make sure to practice what I preach. It’s frustrating that so many users of blogger, wordpress, etc don’t even realize they’re not reciprocating the ‘link juice’, but hopefully a few of them will read your article and recognize the merits of doing so. Thanks!
Website Visitor Tacking Systems on May 21, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Google is becoming nothing more than an index to WikiPedia. The addition of nofollow tags has accelerated this because WikiP no longer “leaks” (ie doesn’t give credit where credit is due) Page Rank out of its site.
I have instituted a “no links to wikipedia AT ALL” rule in my forums and in any personal blogging or posting that I do.
Funny Stuff on May 22, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I haven’t eaten today so I can’t think of anything funny to post about no follow tags. So I’ll just use the standard cop-out post:
“Great post [web site owner I don’t know, whom I just found through google under the term “no ref no follow”].
I couldn’t agree more with points [random #, but in this #2 & 5 because I did read this post].
Anywho, you have a n