My new take on nofollow

14 years ago

Nah man.

Nofollow simply means that a link doesn't pass any PR juice. Bots still crawl them (easy to check - see your site logs). That PR doesn't get assigned to other links - it simply disappears (they had to do this to prevent people from "sculpting" PR on their sites).

How do you mean "it hasn't worked out"?

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paulgl

14 years ago

Originally Posted by bnetwork

Nah man.

Nofollow simply means that a link doesn't pass any PR juice. Bots still crawl them (easy to check - see your site logs). That PR doesn't get assigned to other links - it simply disappears (they had to do this to prevent people from "sculpting" PR on their sites).

How do you mean "it hasn't worked out"?

I'm not talking about PR. I'm talking about tossing the whole idea
of what nofollow was supposed to do. It was supposed to combat
spam. Blog comment spam and others like it. It failed miserably.
Spammers just changed tactics. So nofollow is no longer a viable
attribute for what it was intended. PR is a side issue.

Main point I am making is that nofollow is becoming moot.
If google refuses to index what it feels is iffy content, there's
no link, no juice, nothing. It's like it doesn't even exist.

The whole point of panda, penguin was to combat spammed
links. It dawned on me that nofollow was for that reason.
But google's engineers obviously have more tools than ever
before, making nofollow just a "nice to have," but not needed.

PR is not even in the mix on my observations.

Paul

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scott g 14 years ago

Hola Paul :p

I remember getting into viscous arguments about NoFollow/DoFollow backlinks, get 'em, don't get 'em, good, bad, BLAH! 2 1/2 years ago lol!

I don't see how (or why) Google would EVER think that nofollow link from a site to another would mean noindex the other!??!

I think a backlinks a backlink (obviously high PR dofollows are great!) but it has a lot to do with ON SITE optimization and obviously now Google is discrediting large amounts of over-optimized anchored backlinks... Wait I'm getting off-topic...

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- tylerherman 14 years ago
  
  I wish I could find it but I remember seeing a case study of someone ranking a site with only nofollow links.
  
  Personally, I don't think Google excludes nofollow because it isn't a widely adopted standard and the data probably isn't very meaningful/reliable. Same thing for G+ likes or whatever.
  
  But I'm guessing their algorithm has a way of reducing or completely negating links within certain areas of the page, like say below the input forms for comments and possibly a reduced value for sidebar links and other places where ads and purchased links might appear.
  
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rahmanpaidar

14 years ago

Google seems to have been changed the way they interpret nofollow links serveral
times in past and in recent days.

Year 2005: Google announces a new generation of link attribute called nofollow.

Year 2006: Google introduces nofollow links. PR sculpting was the key in getting
success. Nofollow links were not passing PR nor authority nor ranking improvement.

Year 2008: was the year where people seemingly discovred that nofollow are
passing authority but not any PR juice. Google indexes pages with nofollow links
pointing at it and ranking is affected by nofollow links.

Year 2012: is the year where Google seems to have been changed the policy
once again. They don't index new pages with nofollow links pointing at it.
Nor they pass any linkjuice nor authority. The spice added is building a balance
between nofollow links and normal links to adjust the ranking.

Studies show that 8% of all links available on the whole internet, are nofollow.
Google seems to be using now a more strict and narrower threshold to
monitor site's percent of nofollow links.

Here is the percent of nofollow links for several sites:

google.com: 12%
wikipedia.org: 9%
facebook.com: 14%
twitter.com: 15%
youtube.com: 11%
yahoo.com: 14%
bing.com: 15%

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Mantasmo

14 years ago

Originally Posted by rahmanpaidar

Year 2012: is the year where Google seems to have been changed the policy
once again. They don't index new pages with nofollow links pointing at it.

Where did you get this from? Source? I get pages indexed with just a couple nofollow links any day of the week.

Also, if they pass absolutely nothing, how does this quote of your make any sense?

"The spice added is building a balance between nofollow links and normal links to adjust the ranking."

Because it doesn't...

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rahmanpaidar

14 years ago

Originally Posted by bnetwork

Where did you get this from? Source? I get pages indexed with just a couple nofollow links any day of the week.

Also, if they pass absolutely nothing, how does this quote of your make any sense?

"The spice added is building a balance between nofollow links and normal links to adjust the ranking."

Because it doesn't...

That's my study on more than hunderds of sites.
Just check the percent of nofollow links for penalized site after Penguin
update. The percent of nofollow links are usually less than 1 or 2
percents.

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Mantasmo

14 years ago

Originally Posted by rahmanpaidar

That's my study on more than hunderds of sites.
Just check the percent of nofollow links for penalized site after Penguin
update. The percent of nofollow links are usually less than 1 or 2
percents.

Yea but this doesn't answer the two questions that you quoted, lol.

I appreciate the %'s, it's your crazy assumptions that I have a problem with.

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rahmanpaidar 14 years ago

Originally Posted by bnetwork

Also, if they pass absolutely nothing, how does this quote of your make any sense?

Authority and PR are not the total factors for ranking.
Passing no authority nor PR juice, does not always mean ranking is
unchanged.
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retsek

14 years ago

Well I kinda agree. nofollow hasn't done what they thought it would. I am almost certain that nofollow'ed links do in fact pass credit in certain instances, Wikipedia for one.

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gearmonkey

14 years ago

Originally Posted by paulgl

Had done a similar post in another thread here, but it
gets buried and I would like more feedback.

My feeling is that google is ignoring a ton of links
anyway, from blog comments to forum spam. The
nofollow is quite meaningless in a lot of cases.

This is what I posted in another thread, but wanted to
start a real discussion going from anybody and everybody.

Google created the beast of nofollow and it has not worked out.
But the horse is out of the barn, so to speak, so they can't just
make a statement that it's gone.

What seems to me is happening, is that they are now selectively
using the nofollow to be a "don't index a site based on this link."

I had just read some official google statement on a discussion
of nofollow, and noindex was mentioned. Either intentionally
or not. Nofollow is not for noindex, but maybe google now
has to make lemonade with the lemon they have.

Anyone else want to chime in, feel free. But I would like
some logic and facts, mixed with some good opinions.

Someone pointed out Matt Cutts' blog is nofollowing a link
to comments. Makes me wonder if it's a sly signal to
don't index blog comments.

Paul

My feeling is nofollow doesn't pass link juice for page rank, but does help with link authority.

jm2c

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retsek

14 years ago

The percentage of nofollow to dofollow links on the web is in the "lower single digits".

Matt Cutts: Don't Write The Epitaph For Links Yet [SMX Advanced 2012 Video]