I was doing to serps checking on a couple of my sites this morning, What I found was one of my sites was in the top 10 for a competitive search term. When I clicked the link I found it was a details page on a directory I submitted to that was using the nofollow tag. I checked a little further and found my main listing was also nofollow. I personally couldn't care about PR as traffic will ultimately gain me more sales. I believe little g is putting more value in a link with nofollow. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd sooner have sales than a big green bar. With that said, I have no immediate intentions of making my directory nofollow... I think this needs to be studied further before doing that. I just wanted to share what I have observed...
Ever wondered why wikipedia ranks so high? if a site uses nofollow on external links it means more links juice/PR power to its inner pages, probably the reason why that page rank so high. Same reason as why wikipedias serps improved after use of nofollow.
pctec, thanks very much for posting about this, myself being naturally cautious il be happy to see what else gets said about this and to see what starts happening in the search engine. No sudden decisions or moves by myself, but il be interested to see how things go.
Because it has a billion pages of useful information and a zillion backlinks? As far as I know a no-follow link will not help you in the SERPs as it is no-follow as in not counted. I wondered about this a while back to and everyone in the 'know' seems to say a no-follow link is not counted as a backlink.
Yes the site has many backlinks(thousands) but the point is my details page on the directory came up in top 10 for the search term. It makes no difference to me what their page rank is as long as I come up high in the serps for a search term. If someone searches for a term and they get my details page on a directory, thats the same as getting my page in my humble opinion.
nofollow might not count as a backlink, but in my case it did count in the serps. I am reluctant to post the search term because I have had some trouble recently over this site and I don't want to bring direct attention to it. As we all know, search engines are constantly tweaking and with the recent penalization just maybe there is a lean to give nofollow more weight in terms of serps.
Giving no follow more weight (or any weight) would be contradictorary to what they (Gooogle) say the problem is. More than folks buying links to get the little green bar higher I think they would be more concernced about folks buying links to 'game' the search results. I would like to see them make their algorithym 'smart' so it would give weight to relevant anchor text, meaning if the anchor and the content of the site match well then the link should have more value.
Just a thought... The way I see a good directory is like 70% editor added quality links and 30% submitted. I may consider adding no-follow to all quality links I had manually added. Most of these sites are authority or very popular websites so I don't think they will need my backlink so much. This way your directory should have a big percentage of no-follow links listed...what do you think?
A great idea, but what if a potential submitter comes along, checks a category and finds nofollow. they may assume all links are like that and not submit.
Well...hard question, isn't it? I'm sure someone will check more than one link and he can clearly make a difference between manually submited sites and those paid reviewed. I think it might be better to state in the guidelines that the manually added websites are no-follow and the rest of them do-follow.
mikey... Everyone changes their minds on things... Even you started to use nofollow on zorg links for top bidder sitewide. As I recall you were adamant not to use it at one point in time. Whats agreed upon to be the standard today may not be the standard tomorrow.
the serps of the details page has improved not your site, that is linked from that page. Yes a website can benefit from nofollowing its outgoing links, as mikey said, more juice to the site itself. linked sites can't benefit in any way from those links in terms of google and probably other search engines serps, by definition of the nofollow tag (the linking site doesn't endorse the linked site) and this is why I don't agree with Marius on nofollowing the quality sites listed by him, eventhough I thought about this...
Google was simply picking up on the keyword text you searched for. Doesn't mean it was crediting your site for the text, only the site containing the text. BTW Yahoo counts nofollow links as back links... But that also does not mean they credit you for them in serps either. I have come across nofollow links in serps lots of times before, doesn't mean anything like search engines changed their mind about nofollow.
100% agree with you, Tarek. My thought was based strictly on directory owner's point of view I have tried to answer myself the following questions: - Does a big site benefit from your tiny backlink? - Very little... - Does your site benefit from having 50% of your links no-follow (presuming that at least 50% were manually added)? - yes - Can you do any harm to your directory by adding no follow to the manually added websites? - No I'm thinking that the useful resources which are manually listed will provide the visitors quality links to follow...in this case you won't pass your PR juice to these sites but only little traffic if someone will visit their links from your directory. Don't know what to say...it's pretty complicated...to be honest I wouldn't hesitate to turn these sites no-follow if I knew this will benefit to my directory in terms of maintaining the juice for every page and helping me in the rankings from google's point of view... hmmm...complicated isn't it?
Yes Dan is right. Linking to NASA with nofollow is intended to give your users something to look at in the aerospace category, not pass PR onto their site. I am considering taking up this policy.
I have purchased a few no-follow links that bring good traffic, I don’t care about PR. I use no-follow on one of my directories for free links only, as long as people know what there are getting then that’s fine by me. (and I get submissions) Good luck with the serps PCtec and you are right not to reveal the keyword or site. Thanks Brian
I don't mean that you need to pass PR to NASA because you did pass for paid listings. However not endorsing NASA (nofollow) and endorsing sites that paid for listings won't make google like your site, au contraire. that's why you should be clear, either adopt the nofollow tag or drop it for all listings.
This is debatable; we keep saying “useful to the end-user†so why not add sites that the end-user may find useful? If you come across an interesting site do they care if it’s followed or not? Thanks Brian