Who says that nofollow links is useless in google?

[edpudol1973]

Because of those stories came from those so called SEO experts, I decided to create 5 sites, my purpose is to test if nofollow link don't really work. I search from google keyword tool a long tail keywords that have little search per month (100 and less) and with competition of 10,000 and lower from google search. I decided this number because I want to see instant result of my experiment. After rewriting 15 articles and inserting the keyword I choose , 3 per site.

I launch the sites... I pickup 30 socialbook marking sites that use nofollow tags, some of them are delicious.com, stumbleupon.com, diigo.com, faves.com, blinklist.com, Twitter.com, netvouz.com, mister-wong.com , and other nofollow bookmarking sites.

I don't do any other link building after submitting all my 5 new sites to those nofollow social bookmarking sites.

After 24 hours I check the sites from google if they were index, and yes they are all index in 24 hours. And what make me more happy is that 3 of my sites long tail keywords are in the first page of google search result, the other two were not in the top 100.

My point here is that , this experiment prove that, nofollow links still counts in goolge.

My wild guess is that, they only not pass the value of PR

[tvanslooten]

I've always been skeptical of this whole "nofollow" stuff as well but I have to say I still "respect" it...meaning I operate under the assumption that nofollow links aren't as good as do follow links. My backlink efforts are always concentrated on do follow sources but I won't hesitate to leave backlinks on nofollow sites as well. Plus, my understanding is that the nofollow mainly pertains to Google and not the other search engines.

Travis

[malfumos]

I completely agree with you that nofollow links really works in Google only if the site is does not pass the value of the PR.

[Zeus66]

I can tell you that I use Yahoo's Site Explorer to track the increase in backlinks being recognized by that search engine, and with several new domains/sites I've recently launched the only links I'm seeing show up there are the dofollow ones. Not one nofollow has been detected so far. At least not that they're showing me in Site Explorer. Who knows if they hold back like Google does. We're all making educated guesses here.

John

The way around the nofollow is to ping your profile.. If it can be pinged, then ping it as it will still be picked up by the search engines...

In the case of the OP it is possible that someone else did a ping on their profile and because their tags was the same as yours then the links where picked up. Not saying this is what happened but it is a possibility.

James

[xiaophil]

Hi,

I thought Diigo, Blinklist and Mister-Wong were dofollow.

At least they are according to socialmarker.com.


Phil

Originally Posted by xiaophil

Hi,

I thought Diigo, Blinklist and Mister-Wong were dofollow.

At least they are according to socialmarker.com.


Phil

Mister-Wong uses

 <meta name="robots" content="index, nofollow" />

That is the reason why you ping your profile ...

James

[Tyrus Antas]

I suspect Google drops nofollow but only selectively. For instance, do you really think Google doesn't follow wikipedia links? Wikipedia is huge, with a large editorial team. They'd be stupid not to follow and count that vast quantity of links.

Tyrus

[countonuspr]

So many people think they know exactly what Google is doing nowadays and it doesn't matter how good of an SEO expert they are they will never know exactly what Google uses in their algorithms. It is all about testing and I have found what you have said also. The one thing I know for sure on is that all it takes is one backlink to a new website for the search engines to follow and get it indexed. My new sites routinely are spidered and picked up in less than 24 hours.

When I speak on SEO I try to speak from experience that I have had with something or speak with experience a friend or someone I know well has had. I don't just spout off the latest insight from the latest guru and there is a reason for that.

Great job on testing this and seeing that you shouldn't believe everything you hear on SEO forums!

[Mickm]

Originally Posted by countonuspr

So many people think they know exactly what Google is doing nowadays and it doesn't matter how good of an SEO expert they are they will never know exactly what Google uses in their algorithms. It is all about testing

I agree 100%

Testing on mass is the only way to get a good idea of what's going on out there. We might not know the exact algorithms but our test pages can give us a pretty good idea. I started out with around 200 test pages but found I had to expand to several thousand to keep up with Google.

[DanielFonda]

They aren't useless but hey. Not all that good in my opinion.

[delirious]

i agree too.. with all of your

[anuj291]

nofollow will get you targeted traffic for sure > which is very important..
but for those who are looking for link building its of no use...

[FredJones]

As long as the "nofollow" tag stays, there has to be some difference.

And I would guess that the difference is that a robot would still follow but without passing on a PR. In other words, a no-follow link assists in Web Crawling - robots would want to follow like a human and I would suppose that is what they do.

On the other hand, with a no-follow link I would not expect the PR juice to be passed on, and this would also be the outgoing PR juice getting "away" from a site. In a way, to me that makes perfect sense.

This was all guess from my end, please don't accept a single word if it does not sound reasonable to you. However, I just hope that I could guess somewhere not far off from the truth.

[flashgordon]

I've always thought of DoFollow and NoFollow as a further way of dividing up the "votes" of backlinks. If a DoFollow backlink is considered 1 vote for your site, a NoFollow is considered .25 of a vote (or something). Not worthless, but not nearly as good as a DoFollow.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by anuj291

nofollow will get you targeted traffic for sure > which is very important..
but for those who are looking for link building its of no use...

Getting targeted traffic does not depend on the link being do-follow or
no-follow at all.

Getting targeted traffic from any backlink depends on the relevancy of
the site your link is placed on, that sites traffic and the position of your
backlink on the said site.




-Paul

[edpudol1973]

Originally Posted by anuj291

but for those who are looking for link building its of no use...

What is you prove that nofollow links are useless, as I mentioned in my OP, I have tested it in a 5 new sites and they rank for the long tail keyword I selected, if they are useless then for sure those 3 sites were not in google first page if they are useless

[vistaland]

Nofollow links are fine...just dofollow links get more google love;

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by edpudol1973

I have tested it in a 5 new sites and they rank for the long tail keyword I selected, if they are useless then for sure those 3 sites were not in google first page if they are useless

Not necessarily. It depends on other factors, too. For instance, as long as the page gets indexed, then if the longtail is sufficiently lacking in competition the QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) factor in Google's algorithm might be enough by itself to place you near the top. I've seen this before with articles I wrote that I got no links for. But they were indexed by Google and showed up near the top for a while. Then they dropped, but with some backlinking I got them back near the top again. Those were all dofollow links, by the way. I still think nofollow links are worth a bit, but not nearly what dofollows are worth in terms of SERPs boosting. Nobody knows for sure but Google, of course.

John

[mcarey6]

Nofollow links have their own benefits. By having nofollow links pointing to your site you are not getting the PR to pass through however you are still getting the reputation of that link. So if you have a nofollow link that says "Super Powerful Zoogle zx3450" Google is still looking at that as if your site is about powerful zoogle zx3450. Therefor if you have several nofollow links that say the same thing Google is going to think your site is relevant to that keyword.

In your case where you were trying very non competitve keywords chances are there are not many, if any, people optimizing for them. By having several links for that keyword when the other pages on the first page probably don't have links for that EXACT keyword, than your site will be seen as more relevant than the other sites. So when you get those nofollow links for low volume keywords chances are you will rank very well for those key phrases even though you are not getting the PR from the links.

-Barry

[Ron Killian]

I love it when people say something is usless, but have no proof to back it up. Hey, good for me, if you don't want the links, I'll take them

I've always "thought" nofollow links still helped, though of course I've never proven it, but looks like the OP might have. Thanks for the info

I know at the very least, I've seen these nofollow links show up in the ranks. So even though I "might" not be getting the link love, I still get something out of the deal.

I am with James, pinging seems to be a nice work-around. Alone the same lines, while some links maybe nofollow, the rss are not. If any one is getting what I am saying.

Just my thoughts.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by anuj291

nofollow will get you targeted traffic for sure > which is very important..
but for those who are looking for link building its of no use...

Hi anuj291,

You seemed to be contradicting yourself, why build backlinks if not for relevant traffic. I realize some folks are chasing PR exclusively, but ask them why, and ultimately they will say it's for traffic (except when they are trying scam someone by convincing them that PR effects SERP rankings).

If your are doing proper link building you will get most of your traffic from direct links, usually several times more than what you can get from search engines. Chasing PR is a fools game, go for the relevant traffic instead.