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!]
Yes it will….and it will lead to me swallow my words and use the recomended plugin.
Wikipedia is surely going to benefit from all that incoming with no outgoing link power in the future
Dobrze mówi, dać mu wódki!
I have to say this is a pretty impressive site. I really enjoy how you use good titles, numbers in your posts for example, and it seems like you have a solid niche here that you have established. My friend and mentor Courtney Tuttle has been doing really well. I don’t know if you have taken a look at his site at all, but he has done very well and your skill reminds me of his. I would love to read more and look forward to other articles.
I think that nofollow is good if u can use that….
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.
Hi,
I finally removed nofollow today. Nofollow is irrelevant with comment spams. I let Askimet and Spam Karma to catch them :)
Thanks for a great post.
Przemyśl nocleg w hotelu Marko
zapraszamy wszystkich odwiedzających Przemyśl do skorzystania z naszego hotelu
Thanks for a great post.
Zapraszamy w Polskie Bieszczady do Ustrzyk Dolnych
Survival – Auta terenowe ,wspinaczki …..
This is definitely an eye opener. For a moment I was kind of lost on whether I will be credited with backlinks on blogs that have nofollow tag. Seems that it’s useless. Thanks for the thumbs up!
Thanks for the great post. I am gonna remove nofollow links.
Thank you!
Czarter jachtów – rejsy po morzu śródziemnym
I think that nofollow is good if u can use that
Based on the number spammy-type comments here, I think you should turn on your own nofollow tags.
I agree, though, that they are a tactic used to mask the failures of sucky page rank engines.
Thanks for the thumbs up.
I totally agree that no follow links are almost useless, I own 3 directories that get hundreds of sign up requests for free targeted web Traffic since I removed my no follow tags.
Carpathians – Bieszczady – Noclegi – Poland
Thanks for sharing. It’s a real eye opener!
it read this article in turkish first
i liked it
no follow is a stupıd thıng ı thınk
In this contentious issue we see the characteristics from the blogger.
Nviousness or liberal.
Wikipedia is surely going to benefit from all that incoming with no outgoing link power in the future
Thanks for the thumbs up.
I didn’t even realize wordpress defaults to using NoFollow and has no way to take it off without using a plugin.
Przemyśl hotel Marko zaprasza
Bieszczady – Photo
Bieszczady – Noclegi – Ustrzyki Dolne
Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more. So please keep up the great work. Greetings
Great work ! I really enjoyed browsing through this site. I will recommend it to my friends. Greetings
yip, you are right. no-follow tags seem really boring to me. i disabled it on our site. thx.
Thanks for a very interesting article; I agree with you 100%.
Since Google recommends that paid links use a NoFollow attribute then why doesn’t Google practice what it preaches? Google advertises on millions of websites with their “Ad by Google” and they don’t have a NoFollow attribute.
I don’t think these links on adsense ads are followed by G – arent they wrapped in Javascript?
Shaun, AdSense Ad links are generated by Javascript and crawlers don’t execute JavaScript = no Ads on the page for the spider = no need to add nofollow.
The nofollow tag is good at times for me but your points are actually VERY valid. I do a lot of SEO work on my website and always try to avoid sites with nofollow for trading links. It’s funny google doesn’t do nofollow on any of their own links or ads that are around… What is the answer though? More fill in the blank funny images?
Nofollow is intended for using in places where you have no control over user generated content. Just like the comments here. Just take a quick glance at the comments above to find plenty of reasons why nofollow may sometimes be a good choice.
Nofollow is good if you don’t have time to manage those spam links, it just isn’t for everyone..
——
Meow
Very interesting article:) Good work:)
Great Post!
After reading this I have installed DoFollow and Wikipedia nofollow plugins on my blog.
What would be interesting to me is what other solutions are currently being discussed for this this short of spam filters like Akismet, captchas, and enabling nofollow which clearly doesn’t appear to function as hoped?
It’s very good article. Great site with very good look and perfect information… Thanks
Pozycjonowanie stron w internecie
You don’t avoid the spam comments. It’s normal when you often posting. ;-)
What about russian translation this article?
Absolutely agree with the Author. I don’t understand why such big gurus like Darren Rowse and John Chow use this terrible tag?
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!
I agree with alot of your points, I have to say it’s just a cat and mouse game. The turning on of dofollow only temporarily increases the traffic on your blog, untill eventually everyone will have done it and it makes no difference.
Therefore it’s an interesting marketing stunt to publicly display that your activating a dofollow, so that people start posting more to get linkjuice,
smart idea!
You can add the blog on my site to your list of NO nofollow blogs if you guys are keeping track… ;)
Text link condom? Huh?
So, let’s get this straight: a text link on my site constitutes my site’s advocacy for the advertiser’s site, and hence a donation of link juice?
I don’t think so. Just as when Nike advertise on TV, the TV channel is not endorsing Nike, nor would you expect that pressing “BBC1″ on your remote would suddenly start the “Nike channel” (OK, OK, BBC1 doesn’t have adverts, but at least everone knows the BBC….).
All of the advertisers on our site are only interested in advertising on the home page, despite me repeatedly telling them that our homepage is only viewed by 15% of visitors, and that the band and gig pages are viewed by 60% of visitors. So, they either don’t believe me, or they are just trying to steal some juice.
I suspect the latter, hence my “nofollow” on ads.
We’ve just had an advertiser refuse to renew due to the nofollow… now why would that be, then….
The condom analogy is nice, but I prefer this one:
When the guy your shaking hands with reaches into your pocket, counter with your left upper-cut.
Great Article, The only place I use nofollow for is on my blog, I don’t want my site linking to a bunch of other peoples and penalizing me by lowering my SEO rankings.
Niiiice
Spot on, Loren, completely hasn’t been thought through from an implementation or long term perspective.
As you say, surely far more effective and ultimately fair options exist.
I don´t use no follow, I think we don´t need it.
Yes, Text Link Condom ist right :)
Loren, completely hasn’t been thought through from an implementation or long
Anyone have a good list of blogs that don’t use nofollow?
veri gooddddddddddddddddd
Text Link Condom lol that was funny.
You know something seriously sucks when boycotting the usage of it, can be used a powerful marketing tool.
Text Link Condom lol that was funny.
i hope you dont have a no follow tag here ;) lemme get a backlink from ya. lol
yeah…
wonder what happen if we all use nofollow on our websites? And how about DMOZ & Yahoo directory.
Have a good one.
On this contentious issue we can see peoples character.
SEO and SEM is new ideology!!
Can people trust to SEO gurus?
Podręczniki szkolne, akademickie i inne.
For SEO & SEM, nofollow tag is bad news.
This post is basically a trackback, but Postnuke’s trackback module is a somewhat raw, so I’ll do it manually :)
Basically, there would be no point in the No Follow tag, if we all were to use Anti-Spam plug-ins and software as standard. This tag is severely weakened by Yahoo not implementing it into their SERPS.
Trackback is almost as invaluable as Alexa, but both are commonly used…
It’s very good article. Great site with very good look and perfect information.