External Nofollow

When reading someone's post about Matt Cutts using nofollow tags on user comments (duh!) my little handy dandy javascript function wasn't picking those links up as nofollow.

Looking at the source, I see it's not the typical rel="nofollow", but instead rel="external nofollow". What's the scoop? I found this on the wordpress site:

Isn't that alittle redundant? Wonder if their's more to it?

 

Interesting find. Not sure what they mean by that

 

So are those attributes "external nofollow" and "external" supported by the search engines?

 

all the tags are same in google eyes .

 

hmm, so why have them in the first place?

 

It's a way of telling Google not to weigh the link juice passed through that link.

 

I initially thought maybe the rel="external nofollow" syntax would nullify the statement, but because there is a space between external and nofollow the function is the same.

 

you mean to say finally it won't follow the link?

 

Correct, it will not follow.

 

Still won't follow it one way or another, it is just adding an extra phrase so that search engines know it isn't a link within the page.

 

So am I correct in saying that there is no SEO difference between rel="nofollow" and rel="external nofollow" in eyes of google?

 

Here is everything you need know about existing rel microformat values. That one page contains tables of known rel values from specifications, formats, proposals, brainstorms, and non-trivial POSH usage in the wild. In addition, dropped and rejected values are listed at the end for comprehensiveness.

external = Indicates that the referenced document is not part of the same site as the current document. It is also an Html 5 Spec proposal.

nofollow = indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines).

 

yup he explain it wel.

 

others are saying that it will boost your link popularity...? Is it true?

 

wel explain Dodger!

 

Yeah, that's what I thought.

 

If they both do exactly the same thing, I'd suggest using rel="nofollow" for both external and internal links. This then reduces the size of your page with no downside.

Good for the user (slightly quicker load)
Good for your bandwidth (a few bytes multiplied by a million over a few years might add up to something)
Good for SEO? Less of the "same old stuff" means your template is slightly smaller than it would be, possibly reducing the likelyhood of a duplicate content penalty?

Any further ideas?

 

The rel values of 'nofollow' and 'external' are NOT the same. I think a few people are getting confused about this.

Everyone knows the meaning of 'nofollow' and there is no need to rehash that here. There does seem to be a lot of clouded stares over the 'external' value and, why it is there or what is it's purpose.

What I know is that 'external' is new, and is part of the specification draft for HTML5. Without any surprise, 'nofollow' is part of that draft also.

Other link/anchor rel values proposed in the HTML5 draft include 'archives', 'prefetch', 'feed', 'icon', 'pingback', 'sidebar', and 'up'.

Now, if you have a WordPress blog (or read one) and analyze the link rel value in the comments area, you have undoubtedly spotted the this combo of microformats. That is because the powers to be at WordPress have hardcoded the pair into one of the core files (wp-includes/comment-functions.php).

The reason for including 'external' in the rel value is pretty clear in my mind, Wordpress wants your Html to be HTML5 compliant

 

External means, the link will be opened in another window. Nofollow means it will not be indexed. Your little javascript or CSS tweak needs to be updated to reflect the external nofollow tag as well.

 

Umm, not quite true.

External does not open a new browser window/tab. The attribute target="_blank" does.

Technically, Nofollow only states that the link should not receive any link merit. Nofollow is actually a misnomer. SE crawlers are still free to follow the link to the other side -- and I think that they all will follow the link.