Until this post, I have not shared my view on the “nofollow” attribute. It is my belief that using the nofollow with the purpose of controlling the flow of links or link juice is a gigantic red flag in the eyes of the engines.
Who Knows About nofollow?
Let’s start here with the audience who actually knows about this little attribute. Ask the random small business owner about it. Next, ask friends and family who don’t run any web sites, but still use the ‘net on a daily basis. Then, ask an SEO about it.
I’m willing to bet that the only person to know about the nofollow is involved in SEO.
This represents a fundamental flaw with the use of the nofollow. In order to use it, you need to make the effort to code it into the HTML. Once you’ve done that, you might as well alert the engines that you not only aware of optimization, but you’re willing to go out of your way to protect your site.
But, Links Are Needed!
Yeah, I get that. Anyone involved in SEO should realize that links are a major component to the equation. Big deal!
What I do not understand though is the warped perspective that makes some believe nofollows to be an asset to their site’s stature in the engines. Using a nofollow alerts the engines to the fact that you are trying to keep your tail covered.
We already know that (public) PageRank is some sort of mythical measurement that monitors the value of a page. If those little green toolbar values are nothing more than eye-candy, why should we care about whether or not it’s being passed on to others?
I know there’s some real measurement of links attributed to a page… But I’m also not naive enough to believe that Google (and other engines using similar stats) would ever make that data available to the public.
nofollows Raise Curiosity
If you and I were having a long conversation, and I kept referring to something I had tucked away in a brown paper bag that I’m carrying, you’d be interested — right? Of course! You’d even want to see what’s inside the bag too I bet, especially if I opened it up right under your nose.
Being nice, I’d let you see what was inside the bag — and then immediately require you to forget how or why you ever saw it.
That entire situation would be nothing but nonsense. There is no way you could ever forget how or where you came across whatever it was that was inside that bag. You wouldn’t let yourself forget it — and you know you’d always remember me when you thought back to what was in there.
This is what a nofollow is like for the engines. Links are intended to be contextual. Why then do we limit our ability to reason and just assume that the engines see a nofollow and forget all references between two linked pieces of content?
What’s Your Take?
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you’d like, but I’m more interested in having a strong discussion on this. Have an opposing view? Please, do post it below in the comments area.
@Lee,
There is a flaw in your test. Remember, “nofollow” does not pass PR, neither does it prevent indexing. You also mention that the page will have a page title. Since the page is indexable and has a title, it is possible to rank in Google.
sorry about that im real busy. I have no page title that has the key term, the page itself does not have any text that relates to the made up word. The page has no links to it apart from 4 nofollow links. the link text is the keyword and also are the title tags. The title of the page is “this is a text to see if google looks at link text in a nofollow”. the page name is test.html. The test is not for pagerank. I hope this clears it up a little
so nowhere in any text or title or in the page name does it discuss the keyword.
This “nofollow” business is getting out of hand. I just found on my profile page with Linkedin that they add “nofollow” to my site link and my blog link but they don’t include “nofollow” to my profile page on MySpace – why? probably because the profile page on MySpace doesn’t show links except for the ones that take you deeper into MySpace.
This is a conspiracy and Google needs to be stopped!
I have a theory that the nofollow attribute is time related for PR. It is difficult to test, but when looking at competitors for sites I design, I note that they get link:www.competitor.com from a great number of older blog pages with nofollow.
This aligns with Craig Geis’ note above, but these guys appear top of the list. They get indexed and PR from Google. Looking at their SEO design and who links to them (and their SEO design), I can’t see anything else that determines why they should be top of the pile.
It sort of makes sense that a blog site will clean out the spam eventually, perhaps especially if the article is being archived and no further comments are allowed. This leaves valid contribution which many people would agree should count towards PR
I’ll let you know in a few years if this link helps my site ;-)
Whilst reading this article and half of the comments following it, i found that this link will be of relevence.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru
internally, theres no red flags. which was my main concern when reading the article
dont see what the big deal is with the nofollow flag, I am sure it isnt a big red flad to the search engines
if no follow is not important why do they show up in my webmaster tools
Matt Cutts can say there is no flag now… but that doesn’t mean at some point they won’t see it as a red flag. It was these kinds of techniques that seemed to be flagged in the SEO filter implemented during the Florida update.
Yet another example of a figure/voice of orthority speaking on the subject of SEO and instant confusion and differing opintions set in.
If this is one of those “write something contraversial to get attention” posts, then it has worked judging by the responces – but it doesn’t help anyone!
I think it’s just like meta tags. At one point, no one except web developers knew what they were. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry knows about meta tags and how great they are for SEO. It’ll be the same with the nofollow eventually.
And what about web app products like WordPress or others who have the nofollow pre-built in? I think once it becomes more widespread it won’t be as easily discernible a “red flag”.
I have often wondered about what search engines do when they see the ‘brown paper bags’. This is a good analogy… I don’t dispute that search engine bots are likely to follow the links anyway, but do inbound links that feature a nofollow tag contribute at all to a websites PR?
I think that the nofollow attribute is great for some links, like login pages. The problem is when you start playing around with it when you don’t know what you’re doing. I have trouble believing that it raises a red flag, but more that you have the potential to mess up your site on your own.
I’m really trying to learn about this Nofollow attribute, but I seem to keep getting more confused.
I thought that nofollow was meant to prevent a link as counting as a Vote to the site it is pointing to…
Thus, the link will have no Search Engine value,
only direct traffic by clicking.
I hope to understand this matter to it’s fullest, because I think it is something important.
Thanks for your article Mr.Eric Lander,
-Andrew
I just don’t understand…people keep on saying NO nofollow…but nobody actually supports…especially the trusted sources with high pageranks…either you remove nofollow yourself or atleast stop talking about not supporting it!!!
so people out there do you vote for nofollow or not?
It’s amazing that this discussion has been running for nearly 18 months and yet still no overall concensus.
Maybe i’m wrong but presumably Google etc simply decided that it was too easy for individuals to play the rankings game, and rather than change algorithms etc they put in the hands of website owners to do a bit of policing / controlling themselves.
Is’nt this a win / win?
The search engines don’t get played, and blogs etc don’t get ‘spammed’ so heavily.
Or maybe my thinking is a bit too simple!?
This is interesting and have actually been something i was wondering about lately, I have seen a trend in companies hunting for higher PR are trying to use nofollow to inside pages in order to fool google…
I think its just crap and i hope we all will start to make real sites for real people and forget about the search engine focus…
Deliver what you want a client to see, not what makes your site in the search engine go higher or value wrong!!!
Huge mistake for SEO beginners…
Michael
I feel like I must say, in view of Matt Cutts’ recent announcements regarding nofollow…..
I told you so!
:-p
It is really a big topic to discuss..as already lots of folks discuss this but still there are many problems or confusions webmasters are facing …but you have discuss it very effectively.
It seems that most of you are missing the point entirely…
No-follow isn’t there for cheating the search engines. Using it properly isn’t about ignoring the people and trying to optimize for search engines.
Do you want people searching for your site to go straight to an obscure page on your site, or to specific land pages on your site? If you don’t want each of thousands of pages to be landing sites, wanting to instead choose certain ones designed for your viewers..
Well, that’s what no-follow is for. It’s foolish to go on about conspiracy theories, and I imagine that you were likely semi-trolling with the post.. However, you are accurate that many people foolishly and stupidly attempt to use no-follows to stop flow to external links…
That argument IS a valid one.. But use of no-follow in internal links is a VERY wise optimization – for the sake of helping your viewers, not helping your PR.
I think no follow has a advantage as the people would avoid spamming forums and Blogs.
It’s definitely used to avoid spam in blogs and forums.
I think that is also intended to be used on blatant advertising links. Or, at least, search engines want us to do this to prevent paid links.
It’s also good for login pages, I believe. I can’t see how it can be a red flag. However, you can mess up your site if you overuse it to try to control page rank. This is why Google came out a few months back and said that using no follows doesn’t give followed links more value. To prevent people from using it for the wrong reasons.
I think it’s perfectly fine to use, but you should do so in moderation. Don’t try to use it in a way you think you can trick search engines. Use it for advertising (if you choose to do so), spam prevention in comments and login pages.
I see that you use here rel=’external nofollow’ to all the guys leaving a comment.
Has it got any bad influence on Google Page ranking ?
Thanks
Thanks for this amazing post.
Hey Eric, I realize this is an old post, but it is relevent today. Have you noticed all the large sites are doing no follow? Looking back since these tags were originally devised, what do you think? Are you using no follow tags? Thanks, John
@John Sostak
Yes this is no longer relevant today. In fact if you nofollow internally on your website you will lose strength. I believe Matt Cutts used the word evaporate @ SMX Advanced 2009 in Seattle. So instead of 100% of the strength going to internal pages that aren’t nofollowed a certain amount of strength will disappear… as too how much no one knows except Matt and a select few at Google. Only nofollow external links that you don’t want any strength passed to.
There's also a nofollow plugin on wordpress that does that to all posts…does anyone use that?
The more and more I learn about Google, the more I don't like having to sculpt my website to how google works, if it decides to change it's algorithm I have to go around changing loads of things on my site.
Is it possible that using a keyword phrase in a link that is a no-follow link can still help a site position for the terms even though it doesn't help with PR?
Does word press automatically add no follow to blog comments?
Yes it does
Does word press automatically add no follow to all the blog comments?
Yes it does