I understand exactly the difference between do follow and no follow links and the reason that makes Google decide to walk in that way. But i think there is so problems on that (or maybe im missing something). Forgetting all the SEO stuff and just analizing it from the webmaster and visitor point of view... the nofollow shows some not well defined situation. What is the usage of nofollow just from visitors point of view? (Please don't explain me that many people are trying to cheat Google, etc i know that, im just asking that beyond Google and its limitations, there is no much sense in nofollow). I can't see any reason why a webmaster should use nofollow (havinf only the visitor in mind). So if the only reason is because Google is not able to do a better job without forcing webmaster to do something that is NOT NEEDED i the webmaster thinks on his visitors... then the whole idea will fail at some point. Maybe there will come a time when all webmasters say to Google "that enought!!" and use just normal links, forgetting the nofollow and leave to Google the responsability to do their job without trying to force us to do anything not compilant with HTML. As i said before, i think that when Google will die, will die because THIS reason. Because thing is going crazy with all this "cautions" that the webmasters need to have. Just thinking loud.
If you link and follow you are endorsing the site you are linking to. If you link a no follow you are saying this link might be useful but I'm not vouching for it. It's pretty simple really. d
It has absolutely no effect on visitors one way or another. 99% of the people who use the internet have no idea what it means, and no reason to, same as they have no idea what PageRank is and have no reason to. Google introduced it as a way of getting some control over people trading in links for Google PageRank - you can use it or not - it's your website, do what you like. But if you want to do well in Google's search engine then you know to some extent you have to do things their way. There are alternataive ways to get visitors if you don't like Google's way.
I agree. Google insists that we shouldn't do anything to optimize our website specifically for a search engine, yet nofollow links only help the search engines. In no way does it help the visitors to your site. It does have a practical use if you happened to be talking negatively about a website, but didn't want the link to their site to help them. Google is getting desperate in their fight against paid links. They don't know how they can find all paid links themselves. So they are resorting to trying to scare websites into adding nofollow to all paid links. They also are trying to get webmasters to rat each other out if they see paid links.
lol... What is it they always preach? Build your website for visitors not the SEs I guess that now becomes null & Void As someone mentioned above... Just do it as its not hurting you and the repercussions can be very costly laterz malcolm
The normal situation is that if you post an url in your site, its a do follow. Otherwise (if you for some reason dont like that site), simply don't put the url and thats all. Im tired of Google trying to make everyone follow some non compilant rules to help them doing thwir job.
I always use the analogy of link juice. Only pass link juice to the pages you need to and save the rest by using the no follow tag.
They actually put the "nofollow" as a spam control so that people would not abuse the privileges and took the opportunity put their links indiscriminately. In other words, it is to prevent manipulation on the PR.
Kind of like putting up the disclaimer "The site owner does not necessarily endorse all sites linked here"?
google introduced no follow to try to fight spammers who posted spammed links to try and get good pageranks... lol , i think... nofollow doesnt affect any of the common surfers out there... it only affects webmasters...
by using nofollow, webmaster can protect from spammers. IF it is dofollow means many spammers try to post many spammy messages. It is really headache to the webmaster