Thread: Importance of No Follow

There is a wide spread rumor that no follow links are no longer be considered as a link ( I mean important link) and no page rank value or no anchor text value will be passed. What we will get is a trust value and nothing all. What you think about this latest update?

There is a wide spread rumor that no follow links are no longer be considered as a link ( I mean important link) and no page rank value or no anchor text value will be passed

This is how it's always been - hence nofollow.

The latest update is that Google recommends that you don't use nofollow on your site to links pointing to pages on your own site. Many people were doing this fore pagerank sculpting, and Google was recommending it. Now they've reversed that recommendation. PageRank sculpting

That is why it is called as no follow because it functions that way.. This is actually not new because as chabbs said, it has always been that way.. Google don't bother indexing no follow links.. No follow may still be useful when it comes to backlinks..

This is what Google says:

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We don't follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without using nofollow, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it's important to note that other search engines may handle nofollow in slightly different ways.

In which ways handle other search engines this problem?

Here is the video where Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) explains the importance and use of the no follow attribute ~ [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4UJS-LFRTU"]YouTube - Two questions about nofollow[/ame]

Originally Posted by kbeus21

Here is the video where Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) explains the importance and use of the no follow attribute ~ YouTube - Two questions about nofollow

I just hit the "Thanks" coz it's really useful video.

Thanks for the video - great info

Ok since i have been getting lots of questions from people regarding nofollow attribute. Well i hae a feeling that there is a little wrong perception of what NOFOLLOW really is.
Somebody just asked me that i want a certain page to not to be indexed in google so i page a nofollow to its links on my site. So would it not be indexed in google?
The truth is that if its in your sitemap and it have links on your pages even if its nofollow it can be indexed. So what does NOFOLLOW actually do ?
From last year's google's update its clear that NOFOLLOW links only stops the sharing of your page rank with that link page.
For example:
If i put a nofollow attribute to a subpage's link on my homepage that means that it will have no share in my homepage's page rank. Google decides itself that which page to rank and how much to rank. if u nofollow a page so google dont gives them the share of your rank and instead distribute's the page rank with other links on your page.
Thats a reason social bookmarking sites put nofollow even to its own site pages. If u analyse www.delicious.com u will see that its homepage have each and every link nofollowed.
I hope it makes sense

thanks for sharing good tips.

Originally Posted by websavy

There is a wide spread rumor that no follow links are no longer be considered as a link ( I mean important link) and no page rank value or no anchor text value will be passed. What we will get is a trust value and nothing all. What you think about this latest update?

No-follow attribute is only used by Google. Other search engines are not using this. I have a page with 1000 inlinks and ranked #1 in Yahoo but only #4 n Google.

So, for the links,

Google = quality
Yahoo = quantity:sneaky:

5 Benefits of 'Nofollow' Links:-

Human traffic
Search engines still follow
Having only ‘dofollow’ is suspicious
It doesn’t hurt
They still count (in some ways)

goji juice gochi juice

not consider no follow link any way thanks for sharing useful tips

Google gives more importance to do-follow, where as other search engines, that doesn't matter.

Originally Posted by John La

No-follow attribute is only used by Google. Other search engines are not using this. I have a page with 1000 inlinks and ranked #1 in Yahoo but only #4 n Google.

So, for the links,

Google = quality
Yahoo = quantity:sneaky:

That's a good point to keep in mind. Just because Google doesn't follow these links, doesn't mean everyone else doesn't. So for example, a link from a blog comment or on YouTube using no-follow can still be of value, even though it might not directly be a valuable SEO link to your site.

Originally Posted by sachin123

5 Benefits of 'Nofollow' Links:-

Human traffic
Search engines still follow
Having only ‘dofollow’ is suspicious
It doesn’t hurt
They still count (in some ways)

goji juice gochi juice

The benefit points are not so perfect.. give some explanation for those points plz

One must understand that Google does in fact "follow" an nofollow tag. The Google spider follows each and every link it can find. The nofollow tag basically tells Google that you are not attributing any value to the link whatsoever, therefore the Page Rank status stays with the page itself.

Remember that linking to other sites is like a popularity contest. The more links a website gets, the more popular it appears to be. Adding a nofollow tag says "here's a website, but I'm not actually voting for it!"

My question is... when does high school finally end? LOL

what i have experienced is every link helps, however No follow links do not pass PR.

'Nofloow' links can give you some direct traffic from your relevant niche. And traffic is as important as PR, if they are very high may be more important than PR

I believe nofollow links still help your SERPs.

There's a lot of controversy about nofollow links.

Someone needs to do a study once and for all.

I think Goog uses nofollow has one aspect of their algo. If you're using it then Google knows you're into SEO because the average newbie webmaster knows nothing about nofollow.