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Following "follow" "and no follow" links

by vastcosmos
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello;

I remember someone here on this forum gave this advice as a way to build a backlink. He said to go to Yahoo answers, which is a fairly young people's site to ask questions about anything.

He said to go to the site, find an appropriate question, give a thoughtful answer and there is a place for your web site as a source of the answer.

He also said to first go back a few pages to find a question so the monitor wouldn't see it. I am trying to understand this. Does the monitor see a thoughtful answer to a question and just decide that maybe the person answering is just trying to get a link and so they can just turn the link from a "follow" to a "no-follow" link.

How do they do this? Do the monitors here do that? I mean, I always thought, what better authoritative link than this forum?

Can someone explain this to me.

Thanks

Jim
#and no follow #follow #links
  • Profile picture of the author Pawpoint
    I think he was just being cautious. If you always answer the newest posted links, it could look like you are just after your free backlink
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  • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
    One: The follow / no follow means nothing at all and you still get credit for the link. This is one of those myths started by SEO people to sell their services.

    Two: If you are going to join a site "DO NOT JOIN WITH THE INTENT OF GETTING LINKS". Instead join the site and participate, stop looking to hide yourself by answering questions from hidden post.

    Answer questions that you know the proper answer to. Give valuable information that is worth someone else reading. You provide quality answers and people will follow you. Stop worrying about "getting links" and concentrate more on getting followers.
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  • Profile picture of the author pbarnhart
    Originally Posted by Ord Allenbea View Post

    One: The follow / no follow means nothing at all and you still get credit for the link. This is one of those myths started by SEO people to sell their services.
    Ord Allenbea's conclusion about quality content is dead-on. But the first statement about follow and nofollow is a fast-growing and erroneous statement. Per Google:

    In general, 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. {http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569}
    Set aside for a moment that tests to confirm this are easy to perform - I myself have run three tests for large clients confirming the indexing outcomes. Google does parse compiled Flash for links. Google does parse javascript for links. Google will index HTML pages with no inbound anchor links if it appears in the XML sitemap or RSS feed. Google does follow links found in PDF files and Word documents. Google does not follow or index rel=nofollow links. Think for one moment why we should believe Google on this.

    Google is going through serious anti-trust investigations in both the USA and the EU. Bing is just one major search provider fighting them. Search engines in Russia and China are also part of these investigations. This above quoted material is part of Google's support content and an extension of their terms and conditions. If this was not true and Google deliberately did use these links for indexing, this would actually be criminal conduct under USA FTC and EU law. Bing, Yandex, and others would be presenting this publicly to both investigation teams. Google is so paranoid about this that they deindexed their own browser for violation of the paid links provision. They will do nothing that contradicts their own terms, conditions, and technical guidance because the legal consequences could be severe.

    Correlation does not imply causation. This is the hardest statement of science for humans to understand, since our brains are wired to see causation at the slightest correlation. Throwing up a bunch of nofollow links then seeing your site index does not mean one caused the other.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
      Still stand by my statement that do follow and no follow means nothing. No follow was designed to mark affiliate links and advert links. No link juice will be passed with no follow but pages do still get credit / indexed.

      According to my test this is how it has been before panda and after. Many authority sites are no follow these days due to spam, you think marketers stop posting on them ? No because they know they will still get credit.

      Originally Posted by pbarnhart View Post

      Ord Allenbea's conclusion about quality content is dead-on. But the first statement about follow and nofollow is a fast-growing and erroneous statement. Per Google:



      Set aside for a moment that tests to confirm this are easy to perform - I myself have run three tests for large clients confirming the indexing outcomes. Google does parse compiled Flash for links. Google does parse javascript for links. Google will index HTML pages with no inbound anchor links if it appears in the XML sitemap or RSS feed. Google does follow links found in PDF files and Word documents. Google does not follow or index rel=nofollow links. Think for one moment why we should believe Google on this.

      Google is going through serious anti-trust investigations in both the USA and the EU. Bing is just one major search provider fighting them. Search engines in Russia and China are also part of these investigations. This above quoted material is part of Google's support content and an extension of their terms and conditions. If this was not true and Google deliberately did use these links for indexing, this would actually be criminal conduct under USA FTC and EU law. Bing, Yandex, and others would be presenting this publicly to both investigation teams. Google is so paranoid about this that they deindexed their own browser for violation of the paid links provision. They will do nothing that contradicts their own terms, conditions, and technical guidance because the legal consequences could be severe.

      Correlation does not imply causation. This is the hardest statement of science for humans to understand, since our brains are wired to see causation at the slightest correlation. Throwing up a bunch of nofollow links then seeing your site index does not mean one caused the other.
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  • Profile picture of the author pbarnhart
    I just got contacted by a friend following this discussion, and he shared some interesting findings they have had. There seems to be a 'hole' in Google's nofollow rule involving link shorteners. Google DOES follow link shorteners (and all 301 & 304 redirects) to their source for badware testing, even if they are nofollow. It appears that if there is a break in the nofollow chain AND its a 'well-known shortener' and the final destination page is not noindexed, that page may be indexed. They have examples of this using both bit.ly and goo.gl.

    Expect this to be adjusted/fixed :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author freestufffinder
    As far as I'm concerned, the longer people think nofollow is useless the better
    I use custom scripts to post to CMSes that are a mix of both follow and nofollow links. Posting to the nofollow alone ALWAYS gives movement in a positive direction in the SERPs. Stop listening to the "gurus" and test yourself
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    • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
      The point is people should stop worrying about do follow and no follow and just go out there and participate on websites. Put the "marketing mind set" behind you for a minute and share, learn, grow, and help others.

      Attracting and engaging will always win in the long run no matter what the link is marked. Imagine for a moment:

      Marketer A post only on do follow sites because that is what those ebooks say to do. He egts some credit and even some traffic and made some sales.

      Marketers B does not care about do follow or no follow. He joined a site and built relationships with people on that site. He shared, learned some things, and grew. Marketer B has traffic to his sites and even some sales. The huge difference is Marketer B has people that will follow and trust him which leads to constant re-sales from followers.


      Originally Posted by freestufffinder View Post

      As far as I'm concerned, the longer people think nofollow is useless the better
      I use custom scripts to post to CMSes that are a mix of both follow and nofollow links. Posting to the nofollow alone ALWAYS gives movement in a positive direction in the SERPs. Stop listening to the "gurus" and test yourself
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  • Profile picture of the author aizaku
    I find that stubborness is an appealing quality , especially in this biz and i consider myself to be stubborn at times. But to deny and reject factual proof of something is borderline foolishness.

    The rel="nofollow" tag is real and created by google and for goole to impower webmasters on where there link juice flows. U can find this info on google webmasters as pointed out above and u can go on youtube and hear it come out of matt cutt's mouth.
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