Google’s Take On NoFollow vs. DoFollow
Filed Under: Do Follow Tuesdays, Miscellaneous
Every Tuesday we pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll. However today, we are going to do something a little bit different with our "DoFollow" post. As we continually get asked how Google feels about NoFollow, we are going to provide some information about DoFollow vs. NoFollow. Much of this comes directly from Google and some of it is not exactly breaking news, but we hope to anwer a lot of your questions with this post.
Let’s start off with a video interview of Matt Cutts at SMX several weeks ago. You need to listent to the whole video to hear Matt announce Google’s webpage regarding NoFollow usage. There is also some other interesting information in the video.
Now that you have watched the video, here is a link to the Google Webmaster page covering "What is NoFollow and why was it created". And here is a great summary of the Google information on Jaan’s blog, along with additional info.
Personally I am not sold on the fact that NoFollow really means Google, Yahoo or any other engine won’t follow the link. In fact, I may be just wishful in my thinking, but I believe many NoFollow links are still passing link juice.
What’s your opinion? Let us know in the comments below, those that are accepted will get a nice "dofollow" link from us (after all it is DOFollow Tuesday!). I am sure the experienced SEO is already tiring of this subject, but we still get asked about it on a weekly basis.
Please be sure to vote for your market today! VOTE HERE
Technorati Tags: dofollow, nofollow, google webmaster, Yahoo, link building
Popularity: 17% [?]
12 Comment(s)
2 Trackback(s)
- From All about link building. | Jul 22, 2008
- From SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 22, 2008 | Jul 22, 2008
Spanish property | Jul 22, 2008 | Reply
I use nofollows on various sites of mine. The reason for using them is that some pages are really poor in terms of SEO, as we have designed them more for the user. We nofollow these pages and create a more SEO friendly page which is followed.
This seems to work fine for us and the nofollowed pages really don’t get indexed and the page rank is passed to the pages that we want it to go to.
I think you can over-do nofollowing stuff so as always, tread carefully.
Trezora - glass jewelry, art glass, fashion jewelry | Jul 22, 2008 | Reply
I agree - My website ranks very highly for the keywords “glass jewelry”. I typically rank as #1 and #2. The difference is my commenting on blogs both with nofollow and dofollow links. Here is what I noticed, 1) the anchor text absolutely matters 2) there seems to be a fading factor to the juice given to nofollow links.
If I suspend my commenting on blogs for more than 3-5 days, then I slip from #1 to #2.
I have not noticed much difference to the quality of link juice from dofollow versus nofollow sites. Relevance and quality still rule. I love learning about SEO so I tend to respond to those blogs as well as art and jewelry blogs.
Am very glad you noticed this trend - I’ve been wondering about this myself.
Mendy
Social Marketing | Jul 22, 2008 | Reply
Hi Arnie,
It’s been such a turbulent few weeks I have not had time to post here on your DoFollow Tuesday. What is in my comment today will give you the tip of the iceberg of what I am currently working on.
Let me make some quick, thought provoking and proven points here, all backed up by the new Google FriendRank, social profile algorithm.
Since Google wants to serve advertising behind walled gardens like Facebook and MySpace they have had to find a way in.
Next, they want to do the same thing on StumbleUpon and Delicious and they want to be able to circumvent their own monster they created, the nofollow attribute.
So, in the new (dubbed by Slashdot) FriendRank patent, they have a new algo. In the algo it states that as Google crawls a site, they “assign each link a weight” and that is a direct quote.
This allows them to bypass their own nofollow attribute. To cut to the chase here, Google has found reason and ways to bypass nofollow.
So it only goes to reason that Google can decide when and if to use their own nofollow guidelines.
Two more very interesting points and a little documentation to back up my claims.
#1 Google has been doing this for a while. Just go to StumbleUpon and look at your friends profiles with the Google toolbar in a browser. Why, if Stumble is nofollowed for the most part to keep social bookmarking spammers at bay, does Stumble profiles and groups have PR 5 and 6 rankings?
Next, why are some profiles in Ning groups carrying PR 2 and 3 when the group is behind a login?
Because Google chooses when to pay attention to nofollow and when they would prefer to bypass it. Why do profiles behind a login carry PR? Because Google has been allowed in and this has been going on for a long time. Since early in 2006 at least.
So, in conclusion, YES Google does selectively choose to pass on link juice and they have even written an algorithm to do so.
If you want my full indepth walk thru of the new FrinedRank algo, it is on my site.
best regards Arnie,
Chris Lang
Vertical Measures | Jul 22, 2008 | Reply
@Chris - Always a pleasure hearing from you. I know what you mean about turbulent - we’ve been busy! And I know what you mean about Google looking right past NoFollow - it’s been my stance for quite a while now.
Social Marketing | Jul 22, 2008 | Reply
I am still looking deeply into what Google is doing on social sites and many will say that StumbleUpon does not nofollow on in site links but nofollows outgoing links, just like Wikipedia. Thereby keeping all their link juice internal.
But think about this, if social bookmarking is affecting seach results then Google has to find a way to weed out the spam and value the good profiles that link to real content. That is what they are doing and I can pretty much prove it these days.
The best part is all my naysayers have now gone back into the woodwork where they came from and everyone is taking my content more seriously.
As far as Google looking past nofollow I think they have been writing sub algos that do this for them when the time is to their advantage and of their omnipotent Google choosing.
SEO Bedrijven | Jul 23, 2008 | Reply
I’m absolutely sure that nofollow still has juice. If done well it shows relevance and that is usefull.
Inesting - Search Engine Optimization | Jul 23, 2008 | Reply
Maybe a good way to know is to put up a controlled experiment and test it correctly.
On the other hand, there are so many factors, that after the experiments, we look at the results, and have a hard time drawing the conclusions.
See all the discussion about if Google is counting only the first link to a domain, for instance.
The moaning blogger | Jul 25, 2008 | Reply
i dont think it matters, i think dofollow is a good idea, my site is dofollw and anyone can have a comment and get a link back as long as it is not spam, spam will be deleted, Cheers Mick…
Property Abroad | Jul 30, 2008 | Reply
I believe the great thing about no follow is that a) yes it may pass some link juice to the benefit of the recipient site but b) at the same time it absolves the linking site of any risk in placing the link.
So I can link from my real estate portal to individual real estate sites without having to worry about their individual SEO practices.
When I find a site I think thoroughly reputable I will give a do follow link as I believe this will benefit my site by linking to appropriate authority sites within that niche.
Google hates dead ends!
Just my opinions BTW.
Personalized Gifts | Jul 31, 2008 | Reply
I really believe that Google takes nofollow links in to account, that they pass link juice.
When I do a search in Google for all external links pointing to my site Google comes up with pages and blogs that were using nofollow tags and yet Google still added that link to its list. Also I think it would be only normal for a site to have a bunch of nofollow links pointing to them.
So if you only go after links that don’t include the nofollow tag, wouldn’t that start to look a little unnatural to Google.
Website Hosting | Aug 6, 2008 | Reply
I’m pretty new to SEO, so this was a very interesting blog to read.
I’ve found that using nofollow on sites helps limit the spam that can come in on comments. It appears that most spammers or people that aren’t really interested in adding relevancy to the internet believe that nofollow means what it says. Which has made me believe the same.
Now I guess I’ll need to do even more research and find out what is really happening.
Enfotainer | Aug 6, 2008 | Reply
I am currently changing my blog from nofollow to dofollow. I hope this won’t have any significant impact on my PR.