I'm under the impression that NOFOLLOW links don't give your site any link juice but do they give any SERP benefits? The reason i ask is someone replied to a yahoo answer question with a link to my article directory and now that article ranks well for a single keyword that was relative to the yahoo question. I don't think my sites article would rank that well without the backlink so there must be some benefits. What are your views on NOFOLLOW links? Are they worth pursuing??
I heard that Google still follows those NOFOLLOW links. But I am not sure if they can increase your SERPs
I think Google still see nofollow link but its not too important to Google SE. while at Yahoo and other SE still crawl nofollow link.
Nofollow is good to use for paid, reciprical or links to crappy sites, as search engines will associate your site with other sites they crawl from yours.
I've been a bit confused about this issue, too. Near as I can tell, Yahoo counts these links as regular backlinks - so it may be only Google that follows the standard and ignores them for crawling. If you go to your Yahoo SiteExplorer, you'll see NoFollow links appear in the "Backlinks" area. I don't go out of my way to get them, since I'm not sure if they're useful in Google... but I wouldn't pass up a chance to get the link anyway. If it helps in Yahoo, then it's better than nothing. - Walkere
If you use Google webmaster tools you probably know that google lists nofollow backlinks amongst other backlinks. We can only make assumptions until someone runs and experiment of some sort
no no no you're getting it wrong.. Yahoo basically said they follow nofollow links only if the link is to a site not already known to Yahoo, so if they don't know of the site being linked to - they follow the site and index it. But they won't credit the site as being voted in by you - so that site will be 'found' by yahoo, but it won't receive any authority or rank because you set it to nofollow (it means no vote basically). Google on the other hand does not index or follow any sites which it finds have nofollow relation attached to it. So even if Google doesn't know the site on the end of the link - it will continue to ignore it as if it didn't exist. However if any other site has a link going to that site (assuming it doesn't have nofollow on the link), Google will index it. NoFollow means "I don't give any credibility to the site", so both Yahoo and Google will not give any benefit or 'credibility' to the site. But with Yahoo it will still use all links to find new content, while Google will ignore any new sites it finds with these nofollow tags. So to answer you're question, nofollow links are beneficial if you're site is undiscovered by Yahoo and any other search engines using a similar method, but it will not help you gain in SERP rankings. So yes it does have benefits, but only if you're looking to get pages indexed initially in Yahoo.
Google does not count the nofollow links. However, if you made a post to a high traffic forum, many people may just land on your site. Also, I've noticed if the title to the post has a keyword phrase in it, this post may also get indexed high on the google search engines. So even if you want to post on a forum with nofollow links, make sure that it is high traffic.
The biggest perk of nofollow links is that it cuts down on the number of spammers your site will get. (Sad that such a defense is needed). I mean, look on this board, there are threads dedicated to followed forum lists and blogs. Then people ask why many of those sites are nofollow now... well, the answer to that is simple. Less spam. Personally, I'd rather make my blog/forum nofollow then need to spend hours a day in the queue so I can remove wedding links from my automotive site *boggle*
I think no follow still crawl by other search engine which will give traffic and also like Qryztufre said prevention for spammer.
Incorrect, Google does follow NoFollow links; it just does not go towards a sites PR. Google announced this way back in 2005... Rather than taking it literally as "don't follow this link", it's more like... "don't take this link as a vote"... They may still help your SERP a small amount