'nofollow' still good for Yahoo, Bing, AOL?

[gearmonkey]

Hi,

I know rel="nofollow" is worthless for Google rankings, but how about for other search engines?

It's never good to put all your eggs in one basket, so I decided that I want to focus on other search engines.

Your thoughts?

[Shaunman]

Yup only Google cares about "no follow" I read an article where the blogger actually wrote to Bing and Yahoo about it to see how it affects their rankings.

Long story short they basically both replied with a "that's google's thing, we don't care about it" statement.

[Josip Barbaric]

Nofollow definitely isn't worthless for Google rankings. It may not carry the same weight or even be very important(tough to prove), but having nofollow backlinks in the whole link building mix is definitely a beneficial thing as it gives a natural-feeling backlink structure.

Cheers,

Josip

[Shaunman]

Nofollow definitely isn't worthless for Google rankings. It may not carry the same weight or even be very important(tough to prove)

I don't think it's tough to prove how important it is. Matt Cutts himself says "no follow are dropped out of Google's link graph, so they are irrelevent from the search engine's point of view."

Here's the video

YouTube - Are nofollow links irrelevant?

[gearmonkey]

Matt Cutts wrote about it on his blog and he said he recommends all webmaster to change their blogs and forums to 'nofollow'. He said this means the webmaster refuses to vouche for those "nofollow" links, therefore giving no credit to the links.
mattcutts [dot] com/blog/quick-comment-on-nofollow/

With that said, Josip's point (I think) is it looks unatural if a website gets 1000's of "dofollow" backlinks with 0 "nofollow" in the mix. Meaning that it may throw off a red flag to google that the website is question is nothing more than spamming the internet. And if Google thinks the website in question is spam, they may very well ban it from Google.

So it's best to appear as naturally link building, rather than having a bot seeking out all the "dofollow" to pump up the backlinks.

EDIT:
I am going to assume that Google gives no credit to rel="nofollow" backlinks. But how does other search engines feel about 'nofollow', that's what is important to this topic. Yahoo, Bing and AOL can bring a lot of traffic... and it appears that most people disregard the potential and focus only on Google. Why put all your eggs in one basket?

[HorseStall]

Links are links, I wouldn't worry about whether they are nofollow or not some search engines ignore the nofollow designation.

[HunterSnake]

Originally Posted by HorseStall

Links are links, I wouldn't worry about whether they are nofollow or not some search engines ignore the nofollow designation.

nofollow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[paulgl]

Since wikipedia is user driven and edited, it would be hard to
gather anything substantial from it in cases of doubt.

The bottom line is that nofollow is a google invention.
It's not a yahoo, bing, or whatever thing.

Why would they do the same as google? If would be admitting
that google is king, so we'll follow google. But then, their
algorithms would be the same. There would be no difference.

But there is. Nofollow must be a non-issue when it comes to
anything other than google. By "non issue," it cannot hold the
same weight or even be involved in anything that's going to
show on yahoo or bing, as it is on google.

In fact the term nofollow is very misleading. There's nothing
no follow about it.

Nofollow does not pass pagerank on to the link. That's it.

And that pagerank thing? That's a google invention as well.

So when you talk about nofollow and pagerank, which the two
must be discussed together, yahoo and bing are totally out of
the conversation.

Anyone that tries to equate yahoo and bing with nofollow
is purely speculating.

And AOL? There's this little google partnership thing.

Paul

[HunterSnake]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Anyone that tries to equate yahoo and bing with nofollow
is purely speculating.

Paul

Bing

The function of the <a> tag's rel="nofollow" attribute applies to all search engines that crawl the Bing community blogs and forums, not just the Bing crawler.

-- Rick DeJarnette, Bing Webmaster Center

Bing: Comment spam policy update for Bing blogs & forums

Yahoo!

The Yahoo! Slurp web crawler obeys the rel="nofollow" attribute for links. Web publishers and blog owners can apply a rel="nofollow" attribute to any hyperlink on their page to indicate that the link may not be an approved or trusted link.

Note: Yahoo! Slurp may use a "nofollow" link for discovering content, but the link will not be considered an "approved" link for consideration when ranking the target page.

This attribute works to reduce the benefits of comment abuse. For instance, websites with public comment areas can apply a "nofollow" attribute to publicly entered links to help fight comment spam.

Yahoo!: How to Use the rel="nofollow" Attribute to Help Combat Weblog Comment Spam

[Ohioquotes]

It seems like a lot of "follow" blogs become "no follow" anyhow. So if you stand pat, your percentage of follow blogs will decrease.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by HunterSnake

Bing

The function of the <a> tag's rel="nofollow" attribute applies to all search engines that crawl the Bing community blogs and forums, not just the Bing crawler.

-- Rick DeJarnette, Bing Webmaster Center

You have to read that quote carefully. Especially this part:

The function of the <a> tag's rel="nofollow" attribute applies to all search engines that crawl the Bing community blogs and forums, not just the Bing crawler.

Notice the words "ALL search engines" ? All search engines do not care about the
no follow tag. So that statement is blatantly false. All that statement is really saying,
is that they know google is important, they are trying to combat spam, so they
are using google's "no follow" tag to combat spam. Bing does not need a no follow
tag to not follow links on their own forum. They use it for what google uses it. To
combat spam.

Again, since no follow is ONLY used to not pass PR juice, and PR is a google thing,
what on earth is bing going to do with it each and every time? Not passing PR
to bing would be a silly statement. Seems as if bing is using a google creation
for exactly what is was intended in the first place. To combat spam.

There is just no way that "no follow" links are going to be treated equally across
search engines and have same non-effect. If they did, then everyone is tossing
in the towel to the google algorithm. But then, they may as well anyway. They
may as well make the same deal AOL did.

Funny I just noticed how they are using "nofollow" when google would like
"no follow." Maybe a typo, maybe something else.

Paul

[HunterSnake]

Respectfully, I disagree with some of what you've stated.

Originally Posted by paulgl

Notice the words "ALL search engines" ? All search engines do not care about the
no follow tag. So that statement is blatantly false.

I don't think it's "blatantly false" unless the statement is taken out of context. What is the significance if one in a group of people makes a statement and then follows it up by asking, "Does everyone agree?" Surely this person isn't asking if everyone in the world agrees but, rather, the relevant audience.

I believe that the term "all search engines" was referencing the search engines that Average Joe has likely heard of: Google, Yahoo!, Bing/Live/MSN, and maybe Ask.com. Many web developers, especially younger ones, haven't even heard of 99.9% of the thousands of other search engines out there that... mostly aren't used in the United States. Some of them aren't really used anywhere... In any event, I don't believe that Rick DeJarnette has any reason to mislead anybody on this topic.

Originally Posted by paulgl

All that statement is really saying,
is that they know google is important, they are trying to combat spam, so they
are using google's "no follow" tag to combat spam. Bing does not need a no follow
tag to not follow links on their own forum. They use it for what google uses it. To
combat spam.

Again, since no follow is ONLY used to not pass PR juice, and PR is a google thing,
what on earth is bing going to do with it each and every time? Not passing PR
to bing would be a silly statement. Seems as if bing is using a google creation
for exactly what is was intended in the first place. To combat spam.

There is just no way that "no follow" links are going to be treated equally across
search engines and have same non-effect. If they did, then everyone is tossing
in the towel to the google algorithm. But then, they may as well anyway. They
may as well make the same deal AOL did.

Funny I just noticed how they are using "nofollow" when google would like
"no follow." Maybe a typo, maybe something else.

Paul

I neither implied nor stated anywhere that the nofollow tag was treated equally by search engine spiders. Wikipedia's article on the topic does not, either.

Every search engine has its own algorithm so, obviously, the impact of nofollow will vary from engine to engine, or, as you've pointed out, have no impact at all. However, Google, Bing, and Yahoo! do make use of the nofollow tag with similar purpose. Sure, as you've pointed out, Bing and Yahoo! do not flow "PageRank" but they have to and obviously flow something similar. Unlike Google, they just haven't gone and named that attribute of their algorithm something, at least that they publicly throw about regularly like Google does.

In regards to Bing and Yahoo! copying Google, doesn't it make perfect sense in this case? There's a robots.txt standard, a meta tag robots standard... why should there be rel="nofollow yahoonofollow bingnofollow" when we can just have rel="nofollow"? Why waste not just our own bandwidth but everything's bandwidth making requests of our websites? rel="nofollow" is plenty... it doesn't matter who pioneered it. It's the standard and it should be. It would be a pain if Bing and Yahoo! had came out with their own methods of accomplishing the same task: reducing and discouraging spam.

You've been around these forums longer than I and I mean no disrespect. I just profoundly disagree with you on this topic.

[birdfood]

This thread is getting a little off topic.

My thoughts are that follow are much better and I try to avoid nofollow links BUT nofollow links are useful and not a waste of time.

[webdevelopmentcompany]

Great video you had shared over here mate. Nofollow have their own priority. I'm using such forums and blog which are no follow. I comment over there to explore my self towards that topic and do comment on those blogs.

[gearmonkey]

It's not getting off topic, it's getting interesting. These posters are shedding new light on the topic.

So the rel="nofollow" tag effects page rank (link juice), but should still help the website in question with SERPs?

For me, SERPs is more important to me than the little green bar that says "PageRank: 5" on my browser.

[SledgeHammer]

IIRC, Bing & Yahoo! gives you back-links even from the "nofollow" blogs. This is from my own experience !

[maps4pets]

We are just about to launch a blog / discussion forum on our website, so my question would be: shall we run it as a no-follow or as a follow?

[wix_de]

i have about 300 YBL AOL and BIng but only 1 google backlink
what does it mean??

[bioss]

nofollow= organic links. so i think same time nofollow its good. its show google you dont do only dofollow links. i know same sites with no good links only nofollow links but organic one , no seo and them rank good in google.

[FrankBowman]

The "nofollow tag" only relates to passing pagerank, that's it.

They are still good links to have, in terms of SEO

[HunterSnake]

Good morning... *twitches*

Originally Posted by SledgeHammer

IIRC, Bing & Yahoo! gives you back-links even from the "nofollow" blogs. This is from my own experience !

The links show up, correct, but if they're nofollow you're not getting credit for them. Google Webmaster Tools, for example, will show dofollow AND nofollow links. Bing Webmaster Center and Yahoo! Site Explorer will, too.

Originally Posted by maps4pets

We are just about to launch a blog / discussion forum on our website, so my question would be: shall we run it as a no-follow or as a follow?

WordPress 3.0 is nofollow by default. Leave it that way. DoFollow blog commenting encourages spam so you'll get a bunch of people spewing random nonsense, that you'll have to moderate, just to get a link from your site. Also, if their site is blacklisted somehow, you'll potentially be penalized for linking to it. If the comment system is nofollow, you're protected. Highly recommended that you leave the defaults alone in WordPress in this regard. They were set as such for a reason.

Originally Posted by wix_de

i have about 300 YBL AOL and BIng but only 1 google backlink
what does it mean??

I am going to guess you're getting these numbers from link: queries. Link: queries do not show the same results as does Google Webmaster Tools. See this video.

YouTube - Two questions about the link: operator

Originally Posted by FrankBowman

The "nofollow tag" only relates to passing pagerank, that's it.

This is incorrect. See the earlier links I posted in this thread. NoFollow is NOT a Google only phenomena.

[gearmonkey]

So what is the general consensus about 'nofollow' with SERPs. Throw PageRank out the window for a moment and focus on SERPs.

I know for a fact that PageRank does not matter for SERPs. My PR3 blog outranks PR7 wordpress blogs for the same keywords. I get 25% more traffic than another PR7 blog in my niche. And when you do a google search for keywords in my niche my blog shows up in the top 3 everytime, their blog shows up someplace on the first 3 pages.

imo, PageRank is helpful when selling links (which I don't do), I only care about search engine results. That's my only focus.

What are your opinions about nofollow with SERPs?

[sam770]

As far as I know, all 3 major search engines (google, bing and yahoo) DO respect the nofollow tag

[joesmith1608]

yes,nofollow good for yahoo,Bing,AOl & for traffic .

[azmanar]

Hi,

The purpose of nofollow tag is for SEs to combat spam like most of the comments stated. True. How? The link and anchor are not followed or spidered. Whether or not this applies to Google or all the 3 concerned SEs.

So, it is simply a waste of time trying to build backlinks by Blog Commenting, article submissions to certain Directories and Forums.

However, Blog Commenting, Article Submissions and Forums with nofollow do have some value on 1 condition.

The condition is whatever we wrote inside the No Follow spaces are compelling enough to get people clicking our USER ID, which is the Anchor Text to our website address.

And whatever content we wrote, if spidered and indexed, will be in the SERPs whenever the content matches user searches. This is another value of nofollow.

So NOFOLLOW spaces has no value for backlinking .. BUT .. has value in organic traffic. Unfortunately, this is very slim if what we wrote are just canned robo messages that are irrelevant.

[highave1]

No doubt; no follow is worth less for search engine, but it' valuable for driving traffic as well.

[jonnyhardbaked]

Who said nofollow links are worthless? It has still an importance in SEO. Check this out.

The Importance of NoFollow Links - YOUmoz | SEOmoz

Importance of nofollow links | Techreuters | Tech Updates | Software Review | SEO | Gadgets Review

[Dev!l]

Originally Posted by Josip Barbaric

Nofollow definitely isn't worthless for Google rankings. It may not carry the same weight or even be very important(tough to prove), but having nofollow backlinks in the whole link building mix is definitely a beneficial thing as it gives a natural-feeling backlink structure.

Cheers,

Josip

I'd like to agree with Josip. Although we cannot ascertain how important nofollow links are, they are an integral part of your link building process, makes your backlinks have more diversity and look more natural.