Yet again Google confirms Nofollow links worthless for ranking

[deaddogdesign]

Stop ignoring nofollow links! Google is not the only search engine. Honestly, I just don't worry about nofollow links anymore ! SERIOUSLY!

[chooch]

It looks like Google is changing their algorithms again this month. So I guess everyone will be scrambling to keep whatever page rank they have now. And this is going to be a moot point. Because we will have to figure out what to do to counter their changes to continue climbing up the charts.

[warehouselarry]

If Google is REALLY concerned about relevancy then it should ignore the "nofollow" tag altogether. Most places where people link to things they truly care about are "nofollow" links - i.e. social networks - These are the most honest votes you can find for a website. I dare say the "nofollow" will soon be a thing of the past as Google starts caring more what people really think about a website and not whether the webmaster has made the link nofollow.

[yukon]

I love threads like this

Trust me on this, a wiki nofollow is worthwhile!

Test the links, & you'll see...

[TurnkeyBusinessBlogs]

If you just make your focus the creation of compelling content, you never have to chase links in your life. Never.

3 years ago we started a niche blog in the finance industry, and as you know the competition is STIFF. For an experiment we only wrote content - allot of content, including videos, tables, calculations, and a min of 1000 words per post. Some post over 2500 words. Never linked that site ONCE. We only got links from others deciding to link to us. Then we had a couple of news magazines link to one of our articles.

It's now 3 years and 3 months since that blog launched and it's now making over $3500 month in Adsense revenue and over $3000 in affiliate commissions per month.

We have other blogs that are linked like crazy, article marketed like crazy, etc. etc. Guess what - it doesn't even come close to being a real earner.

This comment will get buried deep into the Warrior Forum now and no-one will take notice, but it's not often mentioned here. YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A LINK CHASER. Sure, it can help, but only if the content is steller.

[orvn]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

OF course we are talking about SEO and not all Internet marketing. Yahoo answers, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are all no follow but will bring you a ton load of traffic.

Historical context is I have asked people that claim that nofollow is good for SEO on GOOGLE to show me that data. They never have.

Here's your data: nofollow links from high authority sites and social networks directly impact SEO:
Google + Bing Confirm that Twitter/Facebook Influence SEO | SEOmoz
(and we're not just talking about blended search here)

As we transcend in to a semantic web, this will only become a more prevalent trend. Many conventional SEO methodologies will be obliterated.

[musicaltouch]

I have personally tested this theory and No-follow links do increase your SEO standings if the link comes from an authority source. For example if yo get a link from the chamber of commerce in your town, it will be no-follow but will help your local and nation search campaigns.

Remember Google wants to see a natural linking pattern which should include no-follow links, and follow attribute links. Of course follow pass more page juice, but No follow links do help if they are form any authority site.

You can also test this by running a back link checker on your site- you will see register No follow links.

Plus like mention in the video, they do provide traffic if the site has traffic and the link gets clicked.

[TurnkeyBusinessBlogs]

Originally Posted by musicaltouch

You can also test this by running a back link checker on your site- you will see register No follow links.

Yahoo! siteexplorer back checker confirms as many have mentioned here.....Yahoo! and Bing look to be counting nofollow links.

I notice that if we get a high PR link (or cluster of them) Yahoo! and Bing respond faster than Google. Google will reward too, but it seems to take longer for the links to take an affect.

[peanutspro]

When I do blog commenting I ignore whether they are nofollow or not, because my experience is that they've helped my serp position either way. Google wants "natural" links right? Natural links do not care if they are followed or not by Google.

[jerytohn]

What do they know?

[Majon]

In my experience still no follow links are adding some value for a web site direct and indirect way. We can take here by traffic as well.

[strategic seo services]

My experience has taught me that nofollow backlinks are not useless & do count, especially if they're on a .edu or .gov domain, as this will help to establish trust for your website.

[JSProjects]

Originally Posted by webeserve

I think that google is trying to confuse us

Ya think?

I try not to worry too much about what Google is doing. And I'm pretty sure Matt Cutts is a cyborg created by Google meant to confuse us.

We can get into these huge discussions on what works, what doesn't work, the latest scary Google update, etc. But really, it all boils down to:

1. Creating 100% unique content that is optimized for the keywords you're targeting.

2. Ensuring that your competition is not impossible to outrank without a giant budget. In other words, do proper keyword research before launching a website.

3. Diversifying your backlinks. Nofollow, Dofollow. Whatever. Just get as many decent backlinks as possible. You can even reverse engineer the backlinks of your competition if you don't know where to begin.

That's pretty much it really. Even though it seems like I'm oversimplifying things.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by strategic seo services

My experience has taught me that nofollow backlinks are not useless & do count, especially if they're on a .edu or .gov domain, as this will help to establish trust for your website.

Hi strategic,

Yes, as the OP suggested, and Matt Cutts expressed in that video, nofollow backlinks are not always worthless. What Matt said is that they are dropped from the link graph, so that specifically implies there is no direct benefit in Google's algorithm.

That of course leaves us with the possibility of an indirect benefit, which is possibly if, and only if, there is user traffic to the page where the link is placed.

• Nofollow + No Traffic = No direct or indirect Google SEO benefit.
• Nofollow + Targeted traffic = No direct Google SEO benefit, but potential indirect SEO Benefit as well as direct traffic benefit.

In both cases there is always the SEO benefit outside the scope of Google (other search engines).

The problem arises when we overgeneralize the specific facts about the Nofollow backlinks. Saying that they are completely worthless is an over-generalization that simply isn't true. Likewise, saying all links are valuable isn't true either.

Perhaps a better way to look at backlink value would be based on the amount of targeted traffic. All links with keyword targeted traffic have value that roughly tracks with the amount of targeted traffic. And Nofollow backlinks have a lesser degree of value at Google, but are still valuable to the degree of targeted traffic from that page.

As to your claim of SEO value based on domain extension, that has been debunked by every credible source within the industry. I'm sure your claim has little to do with your signature link, right?

[asphotographymk]

No matter how many times they say that nofollow makes 0 diffrence i still find it hard to believe.

[Mike Anthony]

Guys you fell for a thread bump. this thread is over a year old (15 months) before warehouselarry bumped it. I am very much aware of the new factors google put in for twitter and Facebook but it doesn't make nofollow worthwhile. Its a separate metric and does not extend across the board to all sites..

Originally Posted by orvn

Here's your data: nofollow links from high authority sites and social networks directly impact SEO:
Google + Bing Confirm that Twitter/Facebook Influence SEO | SEOmoz
(and we're not just talking about blended search here)

As we transcend in to a semantic web, this will only become a more prevalent trend. Many conventional SEO methodologies will be obliterated.

[HKSEO Rotzee]

Listening to Google talk to Us about how their algorithm works is like the US government listening to Al Qaeda tell them where they plan to attack next. You can listen to them...but I don't know that I would trust them just because they said so

[HKSEO Rotzee]

We have seen over 100 examples of ranking a page with zero d0follow links over the past two weeks.

Someone in THIS forum has a “special offer” ebook (Offline Video Bazooka Explosion if you care to Google) shows a way to rank a video to the home page in literally 20 minutes. This technique has you uploading a video and building $15 worth of blog comments from our service and less than an hour later you can be on page 1. Anyway, in probably 90% of these cases these links are ALL nofollowed comments.

We do this every day for our own clients as well, but we generally mix in some d0follow for good measure. But it’s very easy to do.

Indexing is not needed to rank. And you can rank without being indexed. Indexing is just a number you can measure easily that refers to how important Google thinks your backlinks are.

[cheesee]

How did I reach the 8th page in google for "webmaster forums" just by building backlinks on no follow forums. No follow links are not useless..

[dburk]

Originally Posted by cheesee

How did I reach the 8th page in google for "webmaster forums" just by building backlinks on no follow forums. No follow links are not useless..

Hi cheesee,

LOL, 8th page?

8th page isn't the 1st page, it can't be worth that much, can it? Besides, you seem to have plenty of dofollow anchortext links. Obviously, you are being facetious, right?

[MrWonton]

Originally Posted by cheesee

How did I reach the 8th page in google for "webmaster forums" just by building backlinks on no follow forums.

This makes me not want to build nofollow links

[Brendan Mace]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

The fact that they hide somethings does not logical equate to them hiding everything

Yeah... but the fact that they hide something does logically mean that they could be hiding this

Like the others have mentioned before, 'nofollow' links are probably worthless for directly improving your websites ranking.

None of your arguments supply any proof that nofollow links are worthless... I'm still waiting.

1. a google employee says the are (LOL)

- I'm not going to touch this one

2. Nobody has any evidence that they have value

- This certainly does not prove anything. See the counter-argument about the 500 pound alien above. Was quite funny.

I'll also add the cliche nobody knew the world was round. before 1492 many peeps could say the world is flat... nobody had any proof that it wasn't.

3. I have programming experience, and this would be easy to implement

- yes, I don't think anyone is arguing that google is incapable of making 'nofollow' links worthless. Whether they do is a whole 'nother topic.

the fact that you could do this, does not mean that google does it (or even chooses to do it)

There's quite a few benefits to a backlink. ie. page rank, anchor text reputation, link juice, etc.

Does google negate all of those benefits?

There's a good chance that they do, but there's nothing in this thread that provides any substantial evidence.... and no, Matt Cutts does not count.

As someone also mentioned earlier, g-bot still crawls 'nofollow' links. So at the very least, a 'nofollow' link can improve indexing.

SUGGESTION

For the case study... someone mentioned that creating identical sites - one with 'dofollow' and one with 'nofollow' would be the way to test this. Wouldn't it be better to have to sites - one with 'zero links' and one with 'nofollow links' and see if there's any noticeable difference.

That way, if 'nofollow' are devalued (But still have some value) there would be a tangible difference between the two sites.

[strategic seo services]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi strategic,
....
As to your claim of SEO value based on domain extension, that has been debunked by every credible source within the industry. I'm sure your claim has little to do with your signature link, right?

My claim may have been "debunked" by "credible sources within the industry", but I have a website ranking on the first pages of Google for about 10 competitive keywords, so experience has shown me what works and what doesn't.

[SEOEnlightenment]

First rule of SEO is that if Google "confirms" something (especially Matt Cutts) then it probably means the opposite is true!

Lol