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
[tags]dofollow, nofollow, google webmaster, Yahoo, link building [/tags]
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 2:20 am and is filed under Do Follow Tuesdays, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:25 am
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July 22nd, 2008 at 3:55 am
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.
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:32 am
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
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:02 pm
[...] Google’s Take On NoFollow vs. DoFollow, Link Building Best Practices [...]
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
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
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
@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.
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
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.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:49 am
I’m absolutely sure that nofollow still has juice. If done well it shows relevance and that is usefull.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:18 am
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.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:33 am
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…
July 30th, 2008 at 2:41 am
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.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:55 am
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.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
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.
August 6th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
I am currently changing my blog from nofollow to dofollow. I hope this won’t have any significant impact on my PR.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
To my knowledge and as a result of my link building I have noticed that links with nofollow still provide itself as a backlink but it does not pass and PR juice. I think it’s still valuable. A link is a link for me as long as it’s in a quality place and your not on a farm.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I believe the lady with the glass website, the most. though i believe nofollow on blogs is alot stronger. i also think that blog links definitely fade so you have to keep at it if your going that rout. i think nofollow is not to be underestimated though
October 28th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
I am starting coming to come around on the whole nofollow argument. I believe Google does not follow “nofollow” links, but Yahoo! and MSN ignore the “nofollow” attribute. Of course I could be wrong!
December 6th, 2008 at 11:26 am
The main thing here is not do-follow or no-follow links. I believe that the website owner should make a website that will be of interest to the visitors. Some are successful by definition: big companies, public websites, search engines, government. Those who don’t belong here must find their own way up. And the only way is to think of new ideas and work hard. Link building is essential at the beginning, but afterwards it’s all up to the website content.
December 19th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
I guess this is good to keep down some of the link spamming.
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I agree with Chris Lang. Google is not unlike the govenment. They can “do” or “not do” at their own discretion. They are the all knowing big brother of the internet. You better believe that for all the things that we know about that they are involved in, there are 5 times as many things that they are involved in that we don’t know about. Lets try a test, I will put links to 2 of my brand new blogs (just made last night) here, assuming that you let them go up, and have the “no follow” code in place. And see if my links get any “juice”. I am asssuming we would watch stats for visitors from your site to mine, pagerank, and rankings.Even though my blogs are well optimized and contain a lot of content, I believe we will still be able to tell if I receive any additional anything from being linked up here. I will monitor, and you can as well if you like. Now let’s see if the [link removed] and the [link removed] rise to the top.
Aloha.
Hacha
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
@Hatch – sorry but not going to help build links if you aren’t going to be totally honest. You didn’t build those blogs last night.
January 15th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
DoFollow technique awards the hard work and time of the commenters. It also acknowledges their knowledge and pays them off for their effort.
February 7th, 2009 at 4:45 am
One of the first things any individual would like for his website is the speed of the site. Though people would like their sites to be running full steam, every time when someone clicks on their site,
February 17th, 2009 at 7:06 am
But you can think about this, if social bookmarking is affecting search results so Google has to find a new 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.
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Great article, and thanks for keeping your blog as dofollow!
March 18th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I dont see why nofollows would still pass PR? Their original purpose was to stop PR craving spammers from dropping links all over the place. So, for nofollow to not successfully stop PR flow would be an epic fail…
I've done testing with nofollow and my reuslts showed that nofollow tags were completely ignored by googles algo, they are still indexed but as far as being used in pr calculation or content finding google do as they say…
March 21st, 2009 at 9:00 am
[...] http://searchengineland.com/getting-links-from-known-quality-linkers-14356 http://www.verticalmeasures.com/miscellaneous/googles-take-on-nofollow-vs-dofollow-2/ http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-count-your-outbound-click-stats-with-onclick-in-google-analytics/ [...]
March 24th, 2009 at 5:54 am
I am new to SEO and 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 all blogs.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:17 am
I think it helps with ranking but not PR.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
With a lot of years under my belt doing SEO, you would be remiss if you relied on just dofollow links and you think PageRank is the Holy Grail of SEO. Any SEO campaign should be well rounded including many methods. Nofollow links are for sure not irrelevant to a SEO campaign.
May 7th, 2009 at 5:40 am
NOFOLLOW is NO SPAM. If I am Google, I would follow NOFOLLOW in my algorithm somewhere.
May 17th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
It can be true. Google maybe do follow for nofollow. It can be google spam scare tactics
May 27th, 2009 at 8:51 am
I believe Google when they say they obey the rules of nofollow. I had a site that had a link from Wikipedia and shortly after they started using nofollow, my rankings noticeably dropped.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Has anyone conducted some backlink building exercises on two websites? One with all no follow backlinks and one with all dofollow backlnks? I think this would be a great measuring stick!
June 18th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Regardless of if they’re dofollow or not, if you have multiple links pointing to a page from one dofollow source, or if that source is also linking to other places that are giving you backlinks search engines will notice and may devalue your links to the point where they become worthless. Build links naturally and over time and provide value and they’ll be quality links. Otherwise, you’ll hurt your website’s link building efforts in the long-run.
June 19th, 2009 at 2:24 am
[...] on dofollow blogs (although Matt Cutts recently implied that Google will not weigh those links as heavily [...]
July 20th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I used to be obsessed with “do follow” tags with the thought that it would pass link juice and therefore leaked link juice.
However, after much testing, whether “do follow” or “no follow”, i see that there are little effects on the search rankings of any sites.
You could have a high PR and “do follow” backlinks yet rank lower than a site with lower PR yet having tons of backlinks, “do follow” or otherwise.
I agree with gilbert that building links (any links) over time is the best strategy. Coupled with continual value added content will make for a high ranking. From experience, posts with constant comments coming in have rank higher than stagnant posts.
Will
July 24th, 2009 at 9:40 am
“nofollow” is a good choice if you don’t want to share your PageRank with the targetted sites or in case you do link sales, that’s a good point so people have an alternative to choose.
IMHO setting all of your links to “nofollow” is not always good. Just let if flow, if targetted sites have great contents, related niche with yours, why don’t we just give them a buzz
I think they will be glad to share some of their PageRank as return, you know, I always believe on “the more you give the more you get”.
I found some sites keep “nofollow” on comment section, let’s say you are the person and you write a comment manually to respons an article, do you think you’re proper for a link love?
I do and I think most of you will agree with me. A “dofollow” show that we have a respect to what they typed.
So..how about if we linked to untrusted sites and set a “nofollow” link to their sites?
I could only say, if you don’t trust that site, why bother to link to them, just delete it from yours lol
August 1st, 2009 at 2:00 pm
With the latest changes PageRank changes, nofollow really no longer benefits webmasters in terms of “PageRank sculpting.” All outbound links including nofollow links are now included in the link juice denominator. There’s a very good artilce on SEOmoz that explains the changes:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow
All blogs may as well just get rid of nofollow so that the link juice doesn’t just go to waste.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
What is especially annoying are websites that present a dofollow link to UI browsers, and a nofollow one when they detect Googlebot.
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
As an SEO novice, I can say with relative confidence that nofollow can’t possibly be an absolute barrier. In drumming up SEO and site traffic for my business [] I have a database of blogs that I post on. I would say half of them dofollow, half of them nofollow. I started 3 weeks ago with 5 inbound links. I make probably 50 relevant blog posts per week, that’s all. I’ve generated 2500 inbound links already (according to the Yahoo Site Explorer).
November 25th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Most dofollow sites become nofollow sites when they detect surf bots. The life of a site should never depend on dofollow links.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Looks like i am late on this discussion friends & geeks..
Well , In my view it is not the passing of juices from nofollow links but some phenomenon like an algorithmic factor for relevance that seems to cause this.
The understanding of a niche (for backlinked site) in eyes of a crawler only comes with blog or article directories coz they are article rich with some keyword density.
I also suspect that google turns on and off the juice flag when ever it suits its algorithm.