I noticed few links that are definitely nofollow, as a google backlinks to my site. So nofollow is not strictly nofollow
I have actually noticed the same...not sure if they were follow when I linked them then swtiched to no follow but they are there
If I'm right, nofollow just means that no pagerank juice go through the link, but it's still a "backlink" anyway. Classic example is that Yahoo Answers can help you get quickly indexed, but it won't give you any page rank. That backlink can still appear in your webmaster tools.
Google still see's the actual html of the link and indexes it, it just means it doesnt follow it back to your site - therefore gives you no link juice whatsoever.
Google actually follows nofollow backlinks, so they know they're yours...they just don't count them toward your link popularity.
A lot of people believe that no follow links do still help with serps, as to if there is a different valuation that they are given I'm not all to sure, but I've definately seen bonuses from nofollow links, again like PR I think it's something that we shouldn't really concern ourselves with to much.
nofollow can't increase your page rank,its only count as ordinary backlink.go to backlinkwatch to see sample of website with nofollow attribute.
Nofollow will not pass PR but will pass trust and authority from the linking site to yours - perfect example: wikipedia.org
The whole idea of nofollow is that you can't vouch for the page you are linking to, so how can nofollow links pass trust and authority? Unless you want traffic or to get your site indexed, nofollow links are pretty much a waste of time.
A link is a Link I also pefer no follow link and I'm also getting traffic from it. Yes Google will catch it but thye will not count it's your link popularity. but other search engine like yahoo, mns they will count it