What's your take on "do-follow" or "no follow"?

[backlinksninja]

Dear Warriors,

I was wondering what will be your take on the age old discussion and debate on "do follow" vs. "no follow" links when it comes to blog commenting and also Page Rank vs. SE rank.

Official Google best practices in link building say:

"a good way marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic. Interact and contribute on forums and blogs. Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it."

However, I was unable to find anywhere mention in Google official blog about the follow types. To me this is more like people assuming their own perceptions about the utility of the follow types when building links.

Here's what I researched from Google official blog about the "no follow" type links:

"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."

So, if I understand correct. The no follow attributes don't pass "PAGE RANK" and that has nothing to do with Google SE position ranking. They didn't mention anywhere that they discount those links for SE ranking. So there is another myth. High Page Rank = More SE rank.

We have seen enough evidence how a certain website with less PR ranks for high traffic keywords.

Example: If I search Google.com for kw "cheap flights" I get result like beolw:

Position 1 - cheapflights.com - PR6

Position 2 - skyscanner.net - PR4

Position 3 - kayak.com - PR7

Any good interpretation with facts will be highly appreciated.

[warorama]

Originally Posted by backlinksninja

We have seen enough evidence how a certain website with less PR ranks for high traffic keywords.

I've never been quite sure why people like to compare the toolbar pagerank of different pages. The value you see is rather old, probably hasn't been updated for several months and was already old and crusty when it was updated. On top of that, different pages were likely updated at different times, thanks to google's minor pagerank "updates" (minor here apparently means "spotty, rare, and really inconsistent").

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by warorama

I've never been quite sure why people like to compare the toolbar pagerank of different pages. The value you see is rather old, probably hasn't been updated for several months and was already old and crusty when it was updated. On top of that, different pages were likely updated at different times, thanks to google's minor pagerank "updates" (minor here apparently means "spotty, rare, and really inconsistent").

End of all my point was that Page Rank has nothing to do with the SE position....I can show hundreds of such example.

@Warriors I was looking for specific case study and logic with facts and figures.

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by halcolenergy

I want to increase the pr of my do follow blog
my exisitng site has PR 2 - do follow blogs helped to increase this.

How it is doing in SERP position? Even with PR5 and no sales makes nothing in IM :-)

[himanuzo]

There a lot of high traffic blogs that allow blog commenting with nofollow (as default with the blog platform). These can deliver traffic to your site if you leave valuable comments although there are nofollow. Yes, nofollow is not good for SEO purposes at Google.

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by himanuzo

There a lot of high traffic blogs that allow blog commenting with nofollow (as default with the blog platform). These can deliver traffic to your site if you leave valuable comments although there are nofollow. .

Agree, yes and also Google loves to see this that you are participating in and around your niche.

Yes, nofollow is not good for SEO purposes at Google.

Can you substantiate this point with some facts or real examples, not necessarily your own?

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by himanuzo

There a lot of high traffic blogs that allow blog commenting with nofollow (as default with the blog platform). These can deliver traffic to your site if you leave valuable comments although there are nofollow. Yes, nofollow is not good for SEO purposes at Google.

Originally Posted by EricPacheco

The reason why those sites are ranked where they are because of the following:

1.Google loves when the keyword is in the domain. it adds instant credit
2.PageRank of the domain.
3.Onsite SEO. [title,on page use of keyword,meta]
4.Backlinks of that keyword [extremely important]

If you check kayak page and do a search for 'cheap flights' you will only find it in the title, and not on the page

If you do the same for skyscanner you will find it 8 times on the homepage,and in the title, and various backlinks, giving it a much higher %

and cheapflights.com has the domain keyword, so it already has a boost,has tons of backlinks because its domain is the keyword so people backlink it with the domain keywords, and its on the page and in the title.. So therefore it is ranked first.

@Eric, nice analysis....however, the point remains that for a certain high traffic kw Page rank has not much role in play. There are other factors to be considered...which you have pointed.

Well, we have not analysed the backlinks for these sites but let me do that now.

[brightgravity]

its best to have a bit of both

[JSProjects]

Just saw the same thread over @ backlinksforum.

I'll post a reply here too, though.

I'll never turn down a "nofollow" backlink. Do I prefer a "dofollow" backlink? Definitely. But a lot of people tend to forget that backlinks can do more than just boost your rankings. They have a benefit outside of SEO.

Some backlinks can bring in a fair amount of traffic themselves. I still see a small trickle of traffic coming from old Yahoo Answers posts, video descriptions, articles, etc. These are all "nofollow."

And at the very least nofollow backlinks will diversify your incoming links. Having nothing but dofollow links can look a tad suspicious IMO.

[jonnyhardbaked]

Do "do-follow" links really exist? I thought it was just a substitute to the absence of no-follow links.

But anyway, let me give my opinion about it. See Facebook? It uses no-follow but as you noticed, there are still hundreds of thousands are still using it in IM.

About transferring a certain rank, this is really not a big issue. Why? What's the point of having a high PR or a Good SERP ranking if your site is unable to earn money?

So the bottom line is: no-follow and the so called "do-follow" are both important.

[warorama]

Originally Posted by backlinksninja

End of all my point was that Page Rank has nothing to do with the SE position....I can show hundreds of such example.

Which pagerank? The real, current value? There's no way to determine that, since we don't know what the current value is. The toolbar value? Yes, you can't compare the many-months old toolbar value to today's SERP rankings, or even to other toolbar values (since they were quite possible updated at different times). That was the point I was trying to make.

[webcontent]

I prefer Do-Follow but having a homogeneous mixture of both the types can really be beneficial to you.

[bleepli]

only dofollow links carry Google juice, nofollow does not

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by jonnyhardbaked

Do "do-follow" links really exist? I thought it was just a substitute to the absence of no-follow links.

But anyway, let me give my opinion about it. See Facebook? It uses no-follow but as you noticed, there are still hundreds of thousands are still using it in IM.

About transferring a certain rank, this is really not a big issue. Why? What's the point of having a high PR or a Good SERP ranking if your site is unable to earn money?

So the bottom line is: no-follow and the so called "do-follow" are both important.

I like you answer...more factual and balanced....but still looking for some with citation from the official google blogs or webmaster central.

[ttkim]

Does anyone really argue that PR directly affects your SERP? Seriously, I have never seen someone argue that. I'm not going to find Facebook in the top 10 if I type in "pink elephants", despite Facebook having a PR of 10.

The only time people argue that PR is important is in terms of backlinks. If your backlinks come from a PR 5 page, then it passes a lot more "juice" than a PR N/A page.

As for nofollow and dofollow, I don't really care. There have been tests where people rank their sites with only nofollow backlinks. Twitter, facebook, etc. are all nofollow but Google gives those backlinks some sort of credit.

[barbling]

I personally think both are good - it's not only Google who follows your links, it's people too who might then be inspired to mention you in *their* posts/articles as well.

No Follow vs Do Follow Link Attributes | JR's Internet Marketing Strategies

DoFollow Versus NoFollow What to Choose for Your Website? « Boutros AbiChedid

might be helpful too.

[catheyleee]

It depends on the type of goal and strategy that you have in mind.
Nofollow if only links and ranking is in mind and only Dofollow if you want to improve the PR of the site

[richt1984]

a bit of both really to make things look more natural and not all do follow.

[JohnRaja]

It is the dofollow links that helps in getting better position in search engines.. Also it is responsible to achieve the page rank of a site.. Nofollow links play a very minimal role in acheiving search engines rankings.

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by ttkim

Does anyone really argue that PR directly affects your SERP? Seriously, I have never seen someone argue that. I'm not going to find Facebook in the top 10 if I type in "pink elephants", despite Facebook having a PR of 10.

Yeah....why take "Timbaktu" type examples. Take something real and discuss. It is NOT important what you and me think or perceive. It is important if we can get some information provided by Google officially.

Let me take a live example:

I researched google.com for a high traffic kw "how to create a website"

The results are interesting :-)

SE Rank 1 - makeawebsiteguide.com - PR3, Age:0 BL to site - 6344 - NOT A KEYWORD DOMAIN

SE Rank 2 - make-a-web-site.com - PR5, Age:9 BL to site -22086 - NOT A KW DOMAIN BUT LSI

SE Rank 3 - 4creatingawebsite.com -PR4, Age 8 BL to site - 10574 - PART KW IN DOMAIN (DMOZ ans YD Listed)

SE Rank 4 - 2createawebsite.in -PR3, Age 0 BL to site - 6943 - PART KW IN DOMAIN

SE Rank 5 - 2createawebsite.com - PR5, Age 9 BL to site -289266 - PART KW IN DOMAIN (DMOZ ans YD Listed)

SE Rank 6 - how2makeawebsite.com - PR3, Age 4 BL to site - 28314 - NOT A KW DOMAIN


I went ahead and analysed the backlinks of the Rank 1 site....Don't know the % but a subtantial is "no follow" type.....

Maybe someone may do some more research...to find out why the age 0 website ranks position 1 with the lowest PR (considering other high PR there), no Title tag, no description with the same kw and lowest backlinks and high % "no follow" (as I see with Traffic Travis).

I am sure you'll have some logic to explain :-)

[mosthost]

Originally Posted by Stalliontheme

A dofollow link is a link that passes link benefit/PR.

There's isn't a specific attribute that says this is a link that is dofollow, dofollow is the default value of a standard text/image link.

Links that are not dofollow include:

Links including the rel="nofollow" attribute.

Links hidden with javascript.

Post form button 'links' : use a post form button styled as a text link. I use these for comment author links, example this comment: WordPress SEO Plugins the "Paul Zagoridis" author link looks and acts like a text link, but passes no link benefit because it's a form (it's a button). Unlike nofollow links, the post form button links don't delete link benefit so perfect for comment author links.

The term dofollow came about when Google etc... developed the nofollow rel attribute, webmasters called links lacking the nofollow attribute a dofollow link, do follow link, follow link. Prior to nofollow we called them links, text links, image links... and many of us still do, I don't call them dofollow links :-)

David

Exactly. Links used to be just links until this whole sordid 'nofollow' campaign started.

[backlinksninja]

Guys,

Let's not post generalistic comments and definition of what is what and spoil this thread. This is NOT what you think and what I think. It is what and how Google recommends. I know Google algorithm is something no one will ever know. But my ask is if any of you are aware of any official citation from Google about more link building best practices.

I was looking for some specific case study or any citation from official Google contents about the no follow and do follow theory and it's effect on SE ranking and NOT PAGE RANK.

I am interested with SE position and NOT PR. If anyone provide such information I'll highly appreciate the same. Else thank you for reading this post.

[Stalliontheme]

Originally Posted by backlinksninja

Guys,

Let's not post generalistic comments and definition of what is what and spoil this thread. This is NOT what you think and what I think. It is what and how Google recommends. I know Google algorithm is something no one will ever know. But my ask is if any of you are aware of any official citation from Google about more link building best practices.

I was looking for some specific case study or any citation from official Google contents about the no follow and do follow theory and it's effect on SE ranking and NOT PAGE RANK.

I am interested with SE position and NOT PR. If anyone provide such information I'll highly appreciate the same. Else thank you for reading this post.

WOW, that shows a lack of SEO understanding!!!

Google doesn't generally post information about SEO, they give some details, but not how to use it to rank high etc...

Google has posted about nofollow, but won't post about dofollow for the reasons I and others have mentioned, webmasters created the term dofollow.

Official Google Blog: Preventing comment spam
PageRank sculpting (Matt Cutts Google employee)

Matt cutts has confirmed (maybe the post above or another post) nofollow links pass no link benefit or SEO benefit to the link is pointing to, a nofollow link effectivly doesn't exist beyond deleting the link beenfit it would have passed.

Do you really think Google is going to explain why a particular page is ranking higher than it's competitors? Seriously!

You are making a fatal SEO mistake only relying on official Google information, for starters they have a tendency to be misleading (to say the least) in the information they post. The Matt Cutts post above is clear nofollow links deletes link benefit/PR which means you are damaging your sites SEO using nofollow, yet Google recommends we use nofollow on links we don't recommend (like comments).

About the only information they have supplied you might find useful in determining why a page ranks high is they have indicated they use more than 200 ranking factors. You are concentrating on a few, PR, domain name, age of domain.... ever considered the 190+ you haven't looked into and researched? Most of them have a tiny impact on rankings, but it all adds up and the real answers come from anomalies like we found years ago with the Computer SERP where a domain was ranked high without using the word Computer anywhere on the page. Even now the Gateway sites page is ranked top 10 for an ultra competitive SERP and Computer is no where to be seen. Very easy to explain, the backlinks (a lot of them, PR7 page) use the keyword as the anchor text.

Good luck relying on Google sources :-)

David

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by Stalliontheme

You are making a fatal SEO mistake only relying on official Google information, for starters they have a tendency to be misleading (to say the least) in the information they post. The Matt Cutts post above is clear nofollow links deletes link benefit/PR which means you are damaging your sites SEO using nofollow, yet Google recommends we use nofollow on links we don't recommend (like comments).

About the only information they have supplied you might find useful in determining why a page ranks high is they have indicated they use more than 200 ranking factors. You are concentrating on a few, PR, domain name, age of domain.... ever considered the 190+ you haven't looked into and researched? Most of them have a tiny impact on rankings, but it all adds up and the real answers come from anomalies like we found years ago with the Computer SERP where a domain was ranked high without using the word Computer anywhere on the page. Even now the Gateway sites page is ranked top 10 for an ultra competitive SERP and Computer is no where to be seen. Very easy to explain, the backlinks (a lot of them, PR7 page) use the keyword as the anchor text.

Good luck relying on Google sources :-)

David

David thanks for the meaning ful post. Couple of things:
My previous post was not intended to hurt anyone but just to make sure quality info flows in. There had been series of general comments and more like "what I think Google thinks" sort of posts.

BTW: Assuming/passing judgement other's level knowledge/understanding by looking at Warrior Forum post count probably shows the lack of IM experience.

Don't want to brag about anything. I am sure you must have heard about SBI. I am a SBIer since (2006) last 5 years and have ALL of my sites rank page 1 Google for the main kws. Now moved to software development.

So...let's move on with the good discussion:

See....I couple of points I am trying to research and I felt WF is one of the best forums with knowledgeable people like you to share expereince of thier own.

Two points I am trying to find if those are true or otherwise:

1) Do follow and no follow links don't really matter with SE positional ranking when you are trying to build quality links. My research and personal expereince with case studies show yes...quality no follow links did wonder to my sites.

2) Has PR anything to do with the SE positional ranking. PR and SE ranking are two different and ca't be related together to fair extent. This again require quite substantial effort and analysis to conclude.

I add: no follow links DONT PASS PAGE RANK but that can't be constituted as any effect in SE positional ranking. So what's the real experience of fellow warriors in this?

[Stalliontheme]

Originally Posted by backlinksninja

David thanks for the meaning ful post. Couple of things:
My previous post was not intended to hurt anyone but just to make sure quality info flows in. There had been series of general comments and more like "what I think Google thinks" sort of posts.

BTW: Assuming/passing judgement other's level knowledge/understanding by looking at Warrior Forum post count probably shows the lack of IM experience.

Don't want to brag about anything. I am sure you must have heard about SBI. I am a SBIer since (2006) last 5 years and have ALL of my sites rank page 1 Google for the main kws. Now moved to software development.

So...let's move on with the good discussion:

See....I couple of points I am trying to research and I felt WF is one of the best forums with knowledgeable people like you to share expereince of thier own.

Two points I am trying to find if those are true or otherwise:

1) Do follow and no follow links don't really matter with SE positional ranking when you are trying to build quality links. My research and personal expereince with case studies show yes...quality no follow links did wonder to my sites.

2) Has PR anything to do with the SE positional ranking. PR and SE ranking are two different and ca't be related together to fair extent. This again require quite substantial effort and analysis to conclude.

I add: no follow links DONT PASS PAGE RANK but that can't be constituted as any effect in SE positional ranking. So what's the real experience of fellow warriors in this?

Erm, I have 30 odd posts here, not exactly a heavy forum poster so why would I look at your post count and make any assumptions? Actually I don't give a high number of posts any extra credibility, base my trust of a persons information on the information posted and you don't understand SEO. Don't take it personally, 99% of the posts about SEO here are wrong.

SEO is my career, 10 years as an SEO consultant, thousands of SEO tests which is why what I write is as close to SEO fact as you are going to get. My sites generate between 40,000 and 60,000 unique visitors (visitors, not hits/pageviews) a day and I don't pay a penny for traffic, it's all organic (most from Google), what I do works and works very well.

You've shown your complete misunderstanding of SEO with your questions.

There is nothing more important to a site ranking than backlinks, without links a site will go no where SEO wise. Nofollow links pass no SEO benefit (they are SEO damaging to the page/site they are on), just trust me on this one I've tested it and at one point discovered an anomaly that the anchor text of a nofollow link was counted by Google on the page the link is on (not the case anymore, Google fixed it). I had a working test of this at SEO Test Results – Nofollow Links Passing Anchor Text Benefit but recently broke the public SEO test myself when I updated the Stallion theme with code that automatically replaces nofollow links with javascript links :-) another private SEO test still shows the same results, so nofollow has no SEO value and since it deletes link benefit is bad for the site the link is on.

That's not to say nofollow link to a site have no value at all, there's click through traffic, but it won't increase search engine rankings and it damages the site the link is on.

PR per se does not dictate rankings, but the number and quality of backlinks which can be roughly (very roughly) measured by the PR of a page is very important. Remember Google says they use over 200 ranking factors, here's an interesting take on what may or may not be the most important factors 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors | SEOmoz some I agree with others I don't (it's a little wishy washy on detail).

Looking at the PR of a page or domain alone isn't very helpful, are the links that generated the PR aged, a link doesn't pass full benefit for about a year, is the domain in a 'trusted' state which appears to be based a lot on the quality and PR of aged backlinks and if there's anything wrong with the site (BlueFart SEO techniques). Are the backlinks spread over many domains or a few, are those domains 'trusted' sources. It's not that hard to get a page to PR4 which can be enough to generate decent SERPs, but doesn't mean the link benefit is working because of where the link benefit came from and how aged the links are.

In comparison the onpage SEO is easy and straightforward, but without those offsite factors you might as well not bother.

BTW this is why I don't participate in forums, takes up way too much time that can be spent making money:-)

David

[stephencammeron]

Originally Posted by backlinksninja

1) Do follow and no follow links don't really matter with SE positional ranking when you are trying to build quality links. My research and personal expereince with case studies show yes...quality no follow links did wonder to my sites.

2) Has PR anything to do with the SE positional ranking. PR and SE ranking are two different and ca't be related together to fair extent. This again require quite substantial effort and analysis to conclude.

I add: no follow links DONT PASS PAGE RANK but that can't be constituted as any effect in SE positional ranking. So what's the real experience of fellow warriors in this?

"The essential thing you need to know is that nofollow links don’t help sites rank higher in Google’s search results."- Matt Cutts PageRank sculpting

Look on the last part of the post. I guess this should be enough to answer your questions.

Originally Posted by Stalliontheme

Nofollow links pass no SEO benefit (they are SEO damaging to the page/site they are on)

It is certainly true that nofollow links has no SEO benefit at all. However, having NO BENEFIT is far too different from damaging. It's like having a site with a value of 100 added a 0 value would still be 100. It's not like it would reduce to 99 or whatsoever.

[Eddie Titan]

I think a combination of do-follow and no-follow is the best way to go. You should not differentiate the two. It is best to contribute to blogs positively and do not mind whether it is do-follow or no-follow.

With the development of the do-follow/no-follow system, Google's hope was to try to slow down spammers. It helped Google but it didn't go far.

However there is another benefit to the do-follow/no-follow system that can be viewed as even more beneficial. The do-follow/no-follow system allows Google to see which websites are getting natural backlinks and which one's are building backlinks (do-follow only) to themselves.

Obviously a website that gets natural links will have a mixture of both do-follow and no-follow. What if Google has or will factor this methodology into their algorithm? Just to be on the safe side of things, build backlinks from both do-follow and no-follow. That is what Google wants to see as the end result.

The above is my opinion and not factual. It just makes sense to me.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Eddie Titan

Obviously a website that gets natural links will have a mixture of both do-follow and no-follow. What if Google has or will factor this methodology into their algorithm? Just to be on the safe side of things, build backlinks from both do-follow and no-follow.

Totally unnecessary to try and build nofollow links to look natural. You will always end up with nofollow backlinks if you use a variety of backlink types

[affhelper]

I am having mixed feelings about nofollow lately. Did a test where I linked to a page on the same domain name through "nofollow" the page also had
"noindex, nofollow" in meta tags and Google still indexed it lol

The page eventually disappeared from index after a few weeks but initially
it was indexed even though I tried to tell Google not to index it.

Nofollow links might not directly influence your rankings but I think Google
looks at brand awareness and nofollow links can add to your trust factor
which does have impact on rankings.

If you got a nofollow link from let's say About.com it could help.

Read this interview with Melanie Nathan posted on SEOBook.com

Interview with Link Building Expert Melanie Nathan | SEO Book.com

If you’re building links for your own site though, I would never recommend turning down a link that makes sense…. even if it was nofollow.

[Stalliontheme]

I appreciate most of you here aren't researching SEO to the degree I do, but even when you are given the answers on a plate by an SEO consultant who makes a good living from SEO, sets up hundreds of SEo tests a year and has shown the evidence nofollow deletes link benefit you still argue it's not bad!!!

Read PageRank sculpting

So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let’s leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.

This is not nofollow might not pass SEO benefit, but we should use it anyway just in case. Nofollow deletes the link benefit that would have flowed through the link, damaging the site the link is on.

If you post comments on other peoples WordPress sites you'll probably get nofollow links to your site. Those nofollow links won't damage YOUR sites SEO, they have no SEO impact either way, but they do damage the site the link is from.

Which is why webmasters should NEVER add nofollow links to their own sites.

If you think nofollow works some other way please prove it with SEO tests.

David

[Courtney Lee]

I agree with the above poster, 'nofollow' links have not proved to benefit a site in the empirical data I have seen on the subject. If someone does have real evidence rather than anecdotal, I'd love to read it.

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by Stalliontheme

I appreciate most of you here aren't researching SEO to the degree I do, but even when you are given the answers on a plate by an SEO consultant who makes a good living from SEO, sets up hundreds of SEo tests a year and has shown the evidence nofollow deletes link benefit you still argue it's not bad!!!

Read PageRank sculpting

So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let’s leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.

This is not nofollow might not pass SEO benefit, but we should use it anyway just in case. Nofollow deletes the link benefit that would have flowed through the link, damaging the site the link is on.

If you post comments on other peoples WordPress sites you'll probably get nofollow links to your site. Those nofollow links won't damage YOUR sites SEO, they have no SEO impact either way, but they do damage the site the link is from.

Which is why webmasters should NEVER add nofollow links to their own sites.

If you think nofollow works some other way please prove it with SEO tests.

David

@David,

First of all I don't consider Matt Cutts to be "Google" Google never owned him. I have not come across a post of his in the Google official blog. Though I'll not discount him completely but will not take him as "God" of SEO.

I work for IBM and claim something that this is what IBM does....that do not mean that is IBM's voice. :-)

My disconnect with you remain to the point which I don't think am able to point it across to all (maybe).

Even if you refer to the quote of MC above about no follow links. It clearly say IT DOES NOT PASS PAGE RANK to the other site. Here is where many of you are assuming/relating to SEO BENEFIT. Not sure how you interpret but to me both are NOT equated.

I have got exciting results for participating on Jason's "johncow" blog and some other autority blogs where the commments are all "no follow". Maybe sometime I'll share the case study when I derive more conclusion.

My next point of contention goes to the PAGE RANK vs. SE rank. which I consider a myth when I target my own researched kw to rank and the examples I provided with my ealrier posts speaks of that. Researching more on this :-)

[stephencammeron]

Originally Posted by Stalliontheme

I appreciate most of you here aren't researching SEO to the degree I do

If you think nofollow works some other way please prove it with SEO tests.

Well then, why don't you prove it to us first? About how on earth does a no-follow element damage a site where the link is from? Rather than just bragging about the numbers of tests that you've made? I supposed it would be so much easy for you since you've been researching SEO to the degree that we don't. Right?

Originally Posted by backlinksninja

My next point of contention goes to the PAGE RANK vs. SE rank. which I consider a myth when I target my own researched kw to rank and the examples I provided with my ealrier posts speaks of that. Researching more on this :-)

Oh wait, about the page rank you are referring to, you're not referring to the page rank that can be seen in the toolbar right?

Cause you've got to be kidding me if the one you are referring to is the one that's seen on toolbar and not the internal PAGE RANK that Google uses for rankings!

[Raul991]

In my opinion the dofollow/nofollow is a plan by Google which has a goal to stop massive link building. Because from my experience nofollow gives a boost in serps. I have sites ranking high in Google top 10 with around 90% of nofollow links. Even getting a pr is no problem after few months.

[Stalliontheme]

Originally Posted by backlinksninja

First of all I don't consider Matt Cutts to be "Google" Google never owned him. I have not come across a post of his in the Google official blog. Though I'll not discount him completely but will not take him as "God" of SEO.

Even if you refer to the quote of MC above about no follow links. It clearly say IT DOES NOT PASS PAGE RANK to the other site. Here is where many of you are assuming/relating to SEO BENEFIT. Not sure how you interpret but to me both are NOT equated.

Matt Cutts is pretty much Google's SEO spokesperson, he's the head of Google's webspam team, you know the people who decide if sites should be in the Google search engine index or not. Now from reading his stuff he can be misleading: he works for Google and wants us all to be whitehat SEO so isn't going to confirm black_hat SEO techniques that work etc... Despite confirming link benefit is deleted by nofollow he still recommends we use it, which is awful advise!

On nofollow regarding deleting link benefit I see no reason why Matt Cutt's would be misleading, in fact would have made more sense for him to keep his mouth shut, those manipulating PR flow using nofollow are damaging their sites (deleting link benefit) which from a combating webspam/grey/black_hat SEO techniques is a good thing for Google (easy to spot lots of internal nofollow links).

It also opened a can of worms (did you read the comments about this on his blog) which would have been avoided if he kept quite. It's not like he announced the change the week it happened, it was over a year later (apparently he thought the webmaster community would have noticed without being told: he gives the community way too much credit, even when spelt out some still don't get it :-)).

Your statement does not pass link benefit does not equal does not pass any SEO benefit is semantics. The two main SEO factors from a link is link benefit (PR) and anchor text (the keywords used pass SEO benefit: recall the Computer SERP and the Gateway page).

It's been confirmed by Matt Cutts nofollow links pass no link benefit and no anchor text benefit. The latter I've tested (multiple tests) and the anchor text is not associated with the page linked to (very clear SEO results, no ambiguity). It's been harder to test the link benefit transfer, it's not clear cut from my tests, but they strongly suggest no link benefit is passed.

What other SEO benefit do you think a nofollow link can pass?

I would be interested in hearing about tests with only nofollow links involved. I've tried but there's so many scrapers out there etc... it's almost impossible to put a page online, add nofollow links to it and not gain some ordinary links. What webmasters tend to do is add both nofollow and non-nofollow links, so you can't prove the nofollow links had any value at all. You can rule out anchor text benefit (that's easy), you can try to rule out PR transfer (possible, but difficult): doesn't help Google no longer gives every page a toolbar PR, wait months for a test only to discover no PR rating when it should be PR3+ add to that natural links ruining link benefit tests...

About the only possible SEO factor left a nofollow link could help with is actual traffic. That is if you believe more visitors a site gets, higher the rankings in the future (because of the traffic, not other factors). For example you have a social media promotion, almost all the social networks (Facebook, Googleplus, Twitter...) use nofollow links. Some believe a heavy presence on those sites have an impact on Google search results. I'm yet to see conclusive evidence on this one, if it is a factor IME it's a small one. For example I have over 6,000 Twitter followers https://twitter.com/DavidLaw and automate Tweeting (18K Tweets), seen nothing that would suggest it has any impact on Google SERPs.

David

[DPM70]

Haven't read any of the posts - just saw the title. It seems a fallacy to split the two and cause the work that splitting the two can do - boo boo!

Just get backlinks. I've seen so many <supposedly> no-follow backlinks show up in various guises that it negates this argument for me. And as the "trend word" of the moment is "natural backlinks" then many of those backlinks would occur from no-dofollow sources, n'est-ce pas?

[dagaul101]

I think we shouldn't discount no-follow links entirely, but ofcourse the search engines won't let us privy to how exactly they regard no-follow links

[JSProjects]

Matt Cutts is usually pretty vague on the information he's giving us. Think of the source. Is he / Google going to tell us what's REALLY going on? Nope.

[didyouknow]

the fact that it doesn't pass link value doesn't mean it has no use in SEO.
To my opinion (certain) nofollows can still act as a signal for Google.. maybe in trustrank?

I'm pretty sure a nofollow link from Wikipedia is benefitting your site in the SERPs

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by Raul991

In my opinion the dofollow/nofollow is a plan by Google which has a goal to stop massive link building. Because from my experience nofollow gives a boost in serps. I have sites ranking high in Google top 10 with around 90% of nofollow links. Even getting a pr is no problem after few months.

I completely echo your observations. I have had absolutely similar experience

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by didyouknow

the fact that it doesn't pass link value doesn't mean it has no use in SEO.
To my opinion (certain) nofollows can still act as a signal for Google.. maybe in trustrank?

I'm pretty sure a nofollow link from Wikipedia is benefitting your site in the SERPs

Exactly, this is the fact. A very good no follow links makes a lot of difference.

Imagine you get a "do follow" link from a blog with 5000 OBL, I mean those spam tools out there can get you these links.

David as above will say these links are "more juicy", "SEO benefit" etc. etc. than a "no follow" link from tutplus.com by participating and adding value to their blog?

[iAmNameLess]

I'm pretty sure PR is less important than it used to be. Trust rank is the more important one anyway.

I have ranked a few websites, with nofollow links on sites like twitter, and wikipedia. Saying it had no SEO value is a lie.

I think it is important to take what matt cutts says with a grain of salt.

Of course this topic is going nowhere, fast. There is always a thread like this every few weeks and it causes confusion to beginners. When you are manually getting links, do not take the time to see if it is nofollow, just get the link.

SEO is about getting traffic, ultimately. Whether nofollow helps or hurts, or makes no difference in ranking should be irrelevant. Any link you believe you can get that can add value to the visitors on that page, if you think you can get traffic from it, DO IT! Forget the nofollow debate, just get the damn links.

[backlinksninja]

Originally Posted by iAmNameLess

I'm pretty sure PR is less important than it used to be. Trust rank is the more important one anyway.

I have ranked a few websites, with nofollow links on sites like twitter, and wikipedia. Saying it had no SEO value is a lie.

I think it is important to take what matt cutts says with a grain of salt.

Of course this topic is going nowhere, fast. There is always a thread like this every few weeks and it causes confusion to beginners. When you are manually getting links, do not take the time to see if it is nofollow, just get the link.

SEO is about getting traffic, ultimately. Whether nofollow helps or hurts, or makes no difference in ranking should be irrelevant. Any link you believe you can get that can add value to the visitors on that page, if you think you can get traffic from it, DO IT! Forget the nofollow debate, just get the damn links.

Super post and bang on!.....I think many of us in this thread have similar experience with good no follow links per-se, and there is no doubt about our testing so far and what we have concluded are with facts.

As you wrote correctly. The bottomline is end of all it boils down to whether you are getting the targetted traffic or not. If your site is trustworthy enough to convert that traffic to revenue....all other theories falls flat.

Thanks again

[MisterMunch]

I have good experience with nofollow links.

One website I had forgotten suddenly made a sale, and I checked its rankings. Page 3. I desided to make a comment on a nofollow news website (PR8) that was featured on Digg and I jumped to position 5 over the next few days.

The news item itself was new and had no PR. It was not even the particular story that was featured but a related story on the page.

I never spend time to check the nofollow (and I do not use firefox). If I can get a link from a popular website, I will do it.

[prcys]

In blog method ,it is not matter for me whether it is dofollow or nofollow. As blog be more helpful in promoting the content and to drive mroe people to you. And blog comments be helpful to get more backlikns to the site and also for engaging the visitor to own site.
And if blog is no follow then still it be useful for driving more traffic to the site and also with that it drive content to the site which is helpful for the site.

[HostMafia]

i search google for keywords like "list of high pr dofollow blogs" or something.

You should also install "nodofollow" firefox plugin or something similer, so you can urself see which of the blog comments are dofollow.

[dadamson]

Re Above poster - These "high pr dofollow blog lists" are a bad idea. - They are usually saturated with blog comments and have extremely high volumes of outbound links.

Even if you find an untapped list, it will get saturated over time so your links will be extremely devalued or diluted.

The NoDoFollow plugin for Firefox is great though!

You can literally activate it and it will highlight the dofollow links in Green and the nofollow links in Red so you can quickly find out the status of them.

Just remember not to focus 100% of your link building on dofollow links, they are great but you need to mix them up with nofollow links to keep a natural link profile which I believe is a huge help in your SERP rankings.

I usually go for 80/20 dofollow/nofollow if I can (which happens naturally when I don't use tools )

[dasexperiment]

I would like to share this search engine for dofollow forums: dofollowforums.com. Maybe there is something similar for blogs

[Beardo]

What are your thought on this ? If blog comment on relevant blogs with nofollow links is it more\less desirable than sofoklis comments on blogs that are far removed from my niche ?

[Beardo]

Sofoklis ? Stupid autocorrect iPhone. I mean dofollow