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Google Doesn't Like Nofollows Anymore. Shocker.
June 08, 2009
Recently, Google's Matt Cutts made some hints about nofollow links and their value going down. I have to be honest. I'm not surprised.
Once again, we're seeing something that Google did to try and make link popularity "fair" across the board become a nightmare for them to measure because of many people abusing the original intent of it.
This story has been developing for a while and there are some interesting elements at play. The biggest factor is that some sites have abused this link attribute in order to funnel the link value to a few of their internal target pages or for other purposes (of which there are many). The situation is not unlike the paid link debate: while some uses of the tactic are completely valid and ethical (assuming you follow the guidelines put in place), those that overuse and abuse the tactic ruin it for the rest of us. Let's face it, for every really good link builder (meaning ethical, transparent, creative, etc) there are 100 link builders that are only it for a short time and try to figure out a way to game the system instead of creating a long-lasting strategy.
Let's remember that the purpose of link building is not to trick the search engines. The purpose is to provide search engines and users with what they want: relevant results for their keyword queries by providing links to the content and having those links adequately describe what's on that page. Sadly, most people don't know how to do this very well and they begin schemes like link farms, blatantly irrelevant paid link campaigns and other less than savorty tactics to try and push their sites to the top.
Basically, from what I can see happening and what I’ve seen happen in the past few months is this: nofollow links coming from external sites are being followed by the search engines (many of them are showing up in my link reports) as well as affecting the ranking of certain keywords that I monitor. Now, I don’t think they are counting as much as a link without the nofollow attribute, but they are certainly adding some value. In regards to internal links, nofollow links are still valuable for PageRank sculpting and harnessing the values of the links coming in, but for sites that overuse this attribute, the value will not be as great as it once was.
Once again, Google will be trying to take things on a site-by-site basis, but I have not seen them fully succeed at that through the years. Even the algorithm, which was designed for a “site-by-site basis” style of analysis likes to make blanket assumptions on things and we’ve seen the SEO industry get worked up about it before. So what can we expect from this? It could be anything from an announcement from Google introducing a new alternative to nofollow, blanket rules and blanket statements that apply to all nofollow links (which was the original intent anyway: the search engine would not follow the link, but look what has happened), the ability to report “nofollow abuse” directly to Google (much like the paid link report form) and other various methods to try and control the issue.
The bottom line is that if you have an array of tactics and creative approaches to link building, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Nofollowing links (when appropriate) will still have some effect, and how great that effect is will be completely dependent on what the search engines do in the following months.
So, are you prepared for whatever comes your way? If you have a diverse portfolio of skills and tactics and don’t rely heavily on only one thing you should be fine. But if you've been banking on your nofollow strategy, you may be starting to panic.
All posts by Angela Moore
posted by Angela Moore at June 8, 2009 07:34 AM
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Comments
Personally, I use the nofollow attribute very sparingly as I deem it to be almost pointless. I want the search engines to follow all of my links and index all of my pages. And in fact, I'd prefer to leave it to them to decide which ones are to rank higher.
Seems to me that SEOs & webmasters are living in that grey area where they push the envelope and make Google and other SE's adjust something that was once meant to be a positive thing. They should stop trying to control which page is most powerful, and just let the SE's do it.
Posted by: Agent SEO at June 8, 2009 03:56 PM
Personally, I use the nofollow attribute very sparingly as I deem it to be almost pointless. I want the search engines to follow all of my links and index all of my pages. And in fact, I'd prefer to leave it to them to decide which ones are to rank higher.
Seems to me that SEOs & webmasters are living in that grey area where they push the envelope and make Google and other SE's adjust something that was once meant to be a positive thing. They should stop trying to control which page is most powerful, and just let the SE's do it.
Posted by: Agent SEO at June 8, 2009 03:57 PM
No one need to be panic :-)
I think google will change the nofollow tag to a new tag that will show google links that webmasters dosent trust the linked page. So google will know which sites to check deeper.
Or Hillel
www.seojobsfinder.com
Posted by: SEO Jobs at June 10, 2009 03:00 AM
Whatever is "assumed" by the Big G, humans will always try to get around the system!
Jason
www.iblbuilder.com
Posted by: IBL Builder at June 10, 2009 10:58 AM
Whatever is "assumed" by the Big G, humans will always try to get around the system!
Jason
www.iblbuilder.com
Posted by: IBL Builder at June 10, 2009 10:59 AM
Whatever is "assumed" by the Big G, humans will always try to get around the system!
Jason
www.iblbuilder.com
Posted by: IBL Builder at June 10, 2009 11:00 AM
Well, after people started about this google disliking to nofollow stuff, I tested with a mix of no-follow and do-follow links.. only do-follow and only no-folow too. Shocking, I got better results when with the mixed test. I still believe in working out the no-follow links too. And there is a secret weapon on no-folow :p
Posted by: sulumits retsambew at July 7, 2009 12:55 PM
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Posted by: Online seo company at July 17, 2009 06:33 AM
My understanding for the use of the no follow tag was when using sylo structure you wanted the content to be specific to that section of pages that are relevant. When talking about peanut butter you don't want to spread the link juice to jelly.
Concentrate on good topical structure, really good authoritative content and a decent honest link building campaign and you should be good to go.
Posted by: Ocala Web Design at August 11, 2009 02:59 PM
I don't think about nofollow or dofollow when I link some site from my site. The important thing that my visitor get some value from the link.
Posted by: flood pictures at November 22, 2009 08:37 PM
I don't think about nofollow or dofollow when I link some site from my site. The important thing that my visitor get some value from the link.
Posted by: flood pictures at November 22, 2009 08:39 PM
thanks this nice post
Posted by: Best Registry Cleaner at January 21, 2010 03:33 AM
Nice blog!
I think is very well no one can beat it .
It's not not one man efforts .
Keep going thanks
Posted by: regtweaker at January 28, 2010 08:40 AM
Nice blog!
I think is very well no one can beat it .
It's not not one man efforts .
Keep going thanks
Posted by: regtweaker at January 28, 2010 08:41 AM
I agree that Google uses no follow to prevent spam.
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