1. Advertising
    y u no do it?

    Advertising (learn more)

    Advertise virtually anything here, with CPM banner ads, CPM email ads and CPC contextual links. You can target relevant areas of the site and show ads based on geographical location of the user if you wish.

    Starts at just $1 per CPM or $0.10 per CPC.

Will PR Sculpting Someday Be Penalized?

Discussion in 'Google' started by CommonDavid, Apr 15, 2008.

  1. #1
    Here's my first post here :D

    I personally love to nofollow all the privacy, contact, driving directions etc on all my clients sites, but it seems to me like penalizing for using the nofollow to sculpt PR would be just too easy. It would be the easiest thing for Google to see the above links, see the nofollow and boom... penalize.

    Do you think they'll ever do such a thing? Or would it be a pointless penalty effecting people that were just doing something that was previously approved?

    I would hate to have to undo all the nofollows I've done over the past year or so! haha
     
    CommonDavid, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  2. chaitanya.seo

    chaitanya.seo Banned

    Messages:
    625
    Likes Received:
    12
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #2
    WC to DP David.
    Enjoy your stay.
     
    chaitanya.seo, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  3. promomanagers

    promomanagers Peon

    Messages:
    234
    Likes Received:
    3
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #3
    Why would they penalize something they practically invented for that specific purpose?
     
    promomanagers, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  4. CommonDavid

    CommonDavid Peon

    Messages:
    440
    Likes Received:
    9
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #4
    I thought it was actually invented for comment spam in blogs?
     
    CommonDavid, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  5. rainborick

    rainborick Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    424
    Likes Received:
    33
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    120
    #5
    You're right. It was invented to fight comment SPAM and then was recommended for issues like linking to pages you really didn't intend to be associated with (ie. "bad neighborhood" suspects), and for advertising links. But Matt Cutts has discussed the practice of PageRank sculpting several times without any warnings about negative implications. And when you think about it, it makes sense that the search engines would not care if you used rel="nofollow" within your own site because there are many legitimate reasons for using it besides PageRank sculpting. For example, you can use it to prevent duplicate content issues, which is another common problem for bloggers. So, don't worry about using it.
     
    rainborick, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  6. CommonDavid

    CommonDavid Peon

    Messages:
    440
    Likes Received:
    9
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #6
    Good point, I never thought about dup content issues.
     
    CommonDavid, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  7. snowbird

    snowbird Notable Member

    Messages:
    3,036
    Likes Received:
    395
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    290
    #7
    Nofollow is not designed to prevent the indexing of pages. One should use their robots.txt file or noindex meta tag to deal with that.

    Using nofollow within one's own site should never be a problem.
     
    snowbird, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  8. CommonDavid

    CommonDavid Peon

    Messages:
    440
    Likes Received:
    9
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #8
    Yeah, but does the nofollow avoid sending the original content to the supps?
     
    CommonDavid, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  9. snowbird

    snowbird Notable Member

    Messages:
    3,036
    Likes Received:
    395
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    290
    #9
    Nofollow simply stops pagerank from flowing to the destination site. That link will still be indexed.

    Anyway, Google is the only SE that supports nofollow. Yahoo and Live/MSN treat them as any other link.
     
    snowbird, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  10. lzy

    lzy Peon

    Messages:
    480
    Likes Received:
    2
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #10
    Dont nofollow have any weight at all in Yahoo, MSN? :eek:
     
    lzy, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  11. Lexiseek

    Lexiseek Banned

    Messages:
    2,499
    Likes Received:
    115
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #11
    The point of Nofollow has been conveniently bastardized to mean just about anything.
     
    Lexiseek, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  12. snowbird

    snowbird Notable Member

    Messages:
    3,036
    Likes Received:
    395
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    290
    #12
    Yes, nofollow links are treated as any other link to Yahoo and Live/MSN. Even Google reports these links in Webmaster Tools and they help you rank for your anchor text. The only thing nofollow links don't do is pass Google PageRank.
     
    snowbird, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  13. rainborick

    rainborick Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    424
    Likes Received:
    33
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    120
    #13
    Yahoo! and MSN also support rel="nofollow". Just because a link appears in the link reports of Google's Webmaster Tools and Yahoo!'s SiteExplorer does not mean that link is passing PageRank or link popularity. That's been acknowledged by both companies many times. See http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728 for the SearchEngineWatch coverage of the initial announcement by all 3.
     
    rainborick, Apr 15, 2008 IP
    snowbird likes this.
  14. snowbird

    snowbird Notable Member

    Messages:
    3,036
    Likes Received:
    395
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    290
    #14
    Good post rainborick. I should have been more detailed in my post, but you hit it right on target.

    + rep added :)
     
    snowbird, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  15. Nora

    Nora Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    2,105
    Likes Received:
    76
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    140
    #15
    I thought Google supported the nofollow tag.. why would they penalize sites for using it when they're promoting the use of it?
    I do think that as people start nofollowing every outgoing site, Google's algorithm will get messed up.
     
    Nora, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  16. actinoco

    actinoco Peon

    Messages:
    105
    Likes Received:
    2
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #16
    But in my site I've 14.000 internal links pointing to index.php and it doesn't have 1 external link pointing to. (sorry for english. I'm not too good).

    []'s
     
    actinoco, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  17. godsofchaos

    godsofchaos Peon

    Messages:
    2,595
    Likes Received:
    124
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #17
    Honestly, there is no reason for ever experiencing that. No follow is simply for pr spam protection. For a PP there shouldn't be any such issue anyway as I would expect comments/trackbacks to be turned off. No follow is absolutely clearly defined by all three, and the summary is really simple, do what you do, PR cannot be influenced by commenting or trackbacking to other high Pr articles/posts.
     
    godsofchaos, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  18. jmafonseca

    jmafonseca Peon

    Messages:
    195
    Likes Received:
    5
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #18
    Think of it this way: If you find a way to make money off nofollow then there's a chance it may be used the wrong way.
     
    jmafonseca, Apr 15, 2008 IP
  19. angilina

    angilina Notable Member

    Messages:
    7,824
    Likes Received:
    186
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    260
    #19
    Why will google penalize for the use of no follow tag ?
     
    angilina, Apr 16, 2008 IP
  20. CommonDavid

    CommonDavid Peon

    Messages:
    440
    Likes Received:
    9
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #20
    I'll make sure to bump this thread if if ever does happen ;)
     
    CommonDavid, Apr 17, 2008 IP