Should the COOP use NOFOLLOW tags to prevent SERP penalties?

There seems to be a huge debate going on at the moment about the possiblity of the COOP, Link-vault and other link scheme's causing penalties in google. This has coincided with Matt Cutts recently posting about why certain sites/webpages recieving penalties because they are providing outgoing links to irrelevant por quality/spammy sites.

This seems to be a very big coincidence, and google is finally catching up and penilising websites involved in link networks or as others have speculated a cover up to explain away google having serious with Big Daddy.

What is clear though is that link schemes which can manipulate the search engine results must be very high on the target list to erradicate of all search engines. To put it simply a search engine hates to be manipulated, and will target anything that tries or succeeds in doing so.

Now there are two camps when it comes to the COOP:

Camp A/. The group that believe the COOP is excempt from punishment by the search engines because it was originally set up as a pure advertising network and was never ment to have any effect on SERP's. If it does have an effect on SERP's then that is just a coincidence, however this still should not cause any penalty from SE's because this was not what COOP was designed for.

Camp B/. Who believe that even though the COOP may have been set up as an advertising network, they only participate because they know it can effect SERP's. Therefore as they know they are in the network purely as a method to effect their SERP's, they accept the consequences that the SERP manipulation can and possibly will cause a penalty.

Now it seems to me that it would be simple for the COOP to show what it really is buy using a NOFOLLOW tag (or other links that do not manipulate PR or SERPS such as JS or SS Redirect) on all results. In this way the COOP will not effect SERP's but will be what it was designed to be - ie a pure advertising network. This should keep Camp A happy as if they only claim they are in for the sake of the advertising network, they can't complain if there is no effect on SERP's.

So to find out what percentage of people are actually in the network for advertising and those that are in the network for SERP improvements, it seems like a good idea to place a poll. If there is a majority of people that would be happy with NOFOLLOW tags in the links(or other links that do not manipulate PR or SERPS such as JS or SS Redirect), then it would should show to COOP admin that that they should impliment it - as this would keep all the advertising benifits, but stop any penalities being possibly applied by SE's.

If however, the majority would not like the NOFOLLOW tags (or other links that do not manipulate PR or SERPS such as JS or SS Redirect) then, it seems obvious that most people are in the COOP to manipulate the results, therefore it should carry a warning tag that the COOP can effect SERP result both positively and negatively. This would make sure people know that they are using the COOP at their own risk, and people cannot complain if their website subsequently gets a ban/penalty.

 

Co-Op generates bad results when the links goes to bad neighbourhoods(don't approve Nintendos spamsites, Shawn). Another reason is because Co-Op links isn't static despite that you chose static in the preferences so Google might believe it's some kind of link exchange. Nofollow is not needed. But Co-Op needs to be improved.

 

The problem is that not all the SE's even use it, they are still fighting over it with Yahoo bad mouthing the tag now!

But it is a major issue and something to take into consideration!

 

That poll is way too limiting. I don't think no follow tags should be added but I wouldn't agree with the second choice so I can't really vote

You are also assuming no follow tags somehow equals no penalty

 

Yeah, I think the second question is kind of silly in light of recent events anyway and should be edited out if you want to know the truth!

 

embarassingly enough, even though I definitely would not participate in anything that generated nofollow links to my site, I certainly do not wish to be listed as voting affirmatively that Im trying to manipulate the SERPs, what kind of nonsense is that?

 

I think the thread is alright, the poll should be deleted because of a bad choice of questions!

 

Not to mention the entire thread is based on assuming Big Daddy was some great fix for all sites that manipulated links (whether Coop or not). Google may spin it as some great fix but there are countless examples of how it is more "broken" then ever and that the massive deindexing we saw recently didn't cleanly affect Coop sites or LinkVault Sites or crap sites specifically for that matter. It affected a lot of my sites (and others judging from all the examples that came pouring in) that never touched any type of link scheme.

If nofollows are so effective, why has blog spam only grown? Those spammers still know that they can benefit from nofollow links and keep going.

PS. Im interested in why you think nofollows would help the current situation Minstrel (Maybe I haven't thought of something so i'm genuinely interested)

 

As google at least uses it (and states that it is for links that are not officially approved by the website) and I am sure it would be a very simple implimentation, then I think that it would put a clear stamp on the COOP that it is an advertising network (as it would mean that it should have not effect on Google SERP's), rather than a SERP manipulation tool under the guise of an advertising network. However, I believe most people know and want the benifit of the SERP manipulation and are prepared to take the consequences of a ban / penalty as they only run it on their "no profit" sites. Therefore I guess it will remain as it is until so many sites jump ship because of the penality applied or risks involved. I do think though that it should be made clear on the COOP sign up page that it is well known that the COOP can effect SERP's and as a consequence sites joining may be a target for potential penalties by SERP's because they state that you should not join any "link schemes which effect or try to effect PR or search engine ranking".

Any sensible webmaster worth his salt knows that the COOP carries inherant risks of serious penalities, but take the chance with the COOP on their non profit sites, in the hope they can gain something on their profit sites. So thats fine, all well and good for them, they take the risk so they can't cry when they are knocked for six by the SERP's. However, consider a small mom and pop business who know nothing about the risks involved in the COOP and join up their family business website, thinking their are no risks - ban they get hit with a penality and their business goes under. That doesn't really seem very fair on them - and I'd personally feel pretty guilty if I ran a system that caused it without warning them of the possible risks beforehand.

Maybe there should be an option for having nofollow tags on your site or not and a bonus for sites which don't have the nofollow tag.

 

Its pretty much all or nothing in this case

I think this is kind of humurous...Would you just blindly sign up for something without at least looking a little bit into it (especially adding code to your site). The coop has its own dedicated forum and it only takes one click to get all the info you are talking about....All of which is just theory. I just don't see how the no follow changes anything

 

That is the point I am trying to make - there are a lot of people that want the SERP benifits of the COOP, but at the same time refuse the accept that their are serious risks involved and try to hide under the cloak of "It's not an tool to help my SERP's its and advertising network".

If you say "even though I definitely would not participate in anything that generated nofollow links to my site" - then why? If you are in it for advertising only then why should you worry what way the links are formatted ? A nofollow link or a redirect link would produce exactly the same amount of traffic - so by saying you would definately not participate if the links are nofollow you are most definately saying that you want the links for SEO benifit - else please say why ?. - Then you say that "I certainly do not wish to be listed as voting affirmatively that Im trying to manipulate the SERPs". - However, this is just hiding under the cloak again and saying although I would not participate in something that is just about advertising (which the COOP is supposed to be), I am not going to say I am participating in something that effects the SERP's, when you clearly know it is.

 

But what you haven't answered is why even bother? I don't get how no follow links do anything to classify it as an advertising network.

I have never advertised on a site and had them say "I have to make it a no follow because that means its advertising and that way there is no penalty"

No follows are only used by bloggers (only because its the default) and PR hoarders

 

Ok the nofollow tag could be a JS link, or a serverside redirect - whatever, but a link that will not effect the SERP's. The nofollow tag example is really just to make a point to see how people would react if the COOP did not manipulate SERP's.

Maybe the analogy of the mom/pop site is over the top, however I bet a lot of people sign up and use the COOP without reading loads of posts. - And everyone very well knows that the COOP does manipulate the SERPS, and its not just theory. If it is well known to manipulate SERP's then why hide it from the main details page ? - Atleast it is being open and clear about what everyone really knows.

 

Why do you care Big Richard? This seems to be a fanatical subject for you.

 

Yahoo is not all the way on board with this tag, it may become a complete flop, so now is not the time to push it man!

The industry is still in flux on this issue and they are still fighting over it!

 

Why make it more complicated though? If you could show proof that doing that somehow shielded me from the debacle of Big Daddy then you would have my ear but I still don't think the sites in the Coop were affected any more then other sites.

I wish it was a case where all my sites in the Coop were affected and all that weren't were fine because then I could just remove the Coop and Google would love me again. But it isn't like that

 

Why should the co-op use a broken standard like NOFOLLOW? It would be like IE6 trying to interpret CSS with its own renderer. Just doesn't work everytime. Nofollow may or may not keep Google happy, but there is more than just Google in this world as far as web traffic is concerned.

I understand the "use nofollow to make a statement", but if you want to make a statement, why don't you just keep google from indexing your site via robots.txt? That'll show em.

 

OK - lets forget the nofollow tag and change it to: -

A) links that can affect SERPS (as they are now)

and

B) Links that do not affect SERPS, nofollow, JS, or Serverside redirect (which are probably more appropriate than a nofollow as they are the ones used by most large ad networks - which also means they can be tracked and reported on).

A pure advertising network (as the COOP claims to be) should not have to gain the majority of its users because of its ability to manipulate the SERP's but because it is good at advertising. IE if it is a pure advertising network you should not give a dam how the link is formatted on the other persons site as long as they get to you.

Therefore if you are really in the network for advertising you should really want the links formatted in a way that are going to give you minimal risks of a search engine penalty. Now as you know the penalty risk are directly related to SERP manipulation, you should really want to have links that DO NOT manipulate the SERP's. As we know the COOP does manipulate the SERPS (heavily) with the current plain links, then you should be naturally wanting to minimise a penailty risk and this would be by using links that do not affect SERP's.

On the other hand if you want the link type that does manipulate the SERP's you have to hold your hands up and say you are in the COOP for SEO benifits over advertising.

 

Well there is always going to be debate and theory on this but I would point you in the direction of the Matt Cutts posthttp://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/, where he clearly points the finger to sites hosting no relevant spammy links.

I personally believe that google has threshold trigger points that it relies on. Therefore it is much harder to knock a well established site with a high trust factor and lots of natural backlinks than a new site with low trust factor, therefore different sites get affected different ways depending on the amount of percieved spam links, and their relative trust factor.

This in some ways has been born out by google bowling test where it is extreamly difficult to knock a high trust established website of the charts but relatively easy to do it to a new low trust website.

Although many have speculated that what Matt Cutts is saying is a smoke screen for Big Daddy issues (and probably so), but I do not believe he would outright lie - I doubt google would let him do that, and I'm sure some evidence would come out. Therefore, you should really be prepared to accept possible penalties for providing links to non relevant spammy sites - particularly if you are doing it in such away that it affects those sites SERP's.

I think the COOP is raising a lot of blakc flags at the moment and Google and the other SE's are only going to come down harder on sites in netwroks like this, purely because they do affect their SERP's - which has to be their number on hate.

 

I think people will vote with action. If they like the Co-op, then they will keep using it. If not, then they will stop. Why all the drama??