EzineArticles To Go Nofollow!

EzineArticles To Go Nofollow!
Posted on February 27, 2011 by Neil_Shearing
Ezinearticles just published information at their blog in an apparently knee-jerk reaction to Google's recent algorithm change... they're going to add nofollow to all article links, even the bio-box!
Let's back up a little. EzineArticles (EZA) are one of the oldest article directories. Authors favour EZA submissions as they are quickly spidered, indexed and a good source of traffic and backlinks.
Recently Google announced a slap for "content farms" which they say only "noticably" impacts 11.8% of their USA search results, yet traffic to EZA dropped like a rock ("Last month, we served 57 million unique visitors. Next month, that number may be in half."). OUCH
Within TWO DAYS of the google announcement, Chris Knight, CEO of EZA announced a plan of action which, unsurprisingly, includes rejecting a higher percentage of articles, considering raising the minimum word count of articles, targetting "advertorials" etc. But the two interesting changes, to my mind, are...
"...evaluating ways to reduce the number of ads per page to improve the perceived user experience".
Yes, that'd made sense because there's nothing like five different Adsense blocks and extra, unidentified, "sponsored results" blocks to make a page look spammy!
"The rel="NOFOLLOW" attribute will be added to all links on all articles very soon."
What a peach! Did someone at Google lean heavily on EZA? Surely two days isn't enough time to evaluate potential changes to your system unless you already know the change that need to be made.
In reply to people querying the reason for adding "nofollow", Chris said...
"My gut feeling is that those links have carried no real value in at least 2-3 years now. I have no data to back it up. I do however know of plenty of competitor websites that have implemented nofollow already."
Hmm. No data to back it up, yet his "gut feeling" is that the links have been worthless for years? OK. That wouldn't be a cover for being leaned on to implement "nofollow", would it, Chris? The fact that other directories have implemented "nofollow" does NOT mean that webmasters don't like dofollow links, it means that either they were also leaned on, or they saw the writing on the wall and used nofollow to avoid getting Google slapped!
I would hazard a guess that Google probably suggested using "nofollow" way back in time, only for EZA to say that editorial checking of articles would be enough to keep out low quality content. But now Google have laid down the law, and EZA is going to comply. Sorry, chaps, no linkjuice here anymore.
As the linkjuice from EZA dies, the <strike>article marketers</strike> "content farms" lose juice and their Google rankings tumble, which was always the name of the game for Google.
Here's what EZA said about nofollow when it was rolled out in 2005...
"We're strongly considering using this new attribute...not only for the EzineArticles BLOG, but for the BODY of the articles within our site.
We will not use this technology for the RESOURCE BOX (as that is considered payment to the author for sending us their content), but we are strongly considering adding the rel="nofollow" tag to ALL URLs within the BODY of any article."
Times change, eh? So much for "payment" for the authors.
(note: links to EZA have been nofollowed on principle)
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