"What The Google-Bot Sees" (GWT -- External Links)

I see a lot of misinformation being spread about NO FOLLOW links and how they are considered by the Google Search Engine.

You will need to have a Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) account to see what I'm referring to in this topic!

Those without GWT account, please don't waste your time responding because you will not know what I'm talking about!

Here is what Matt Cutts is not telling people:

1) Google still looks at No Follow links. True, there is no PR value, but that is not the ONLY reason Google is looking at them.

2) The No Follow links listed as External Links in GWT are crawled by the Google Bot

3) "What The Google Bot Sees": they are crawling the ANCHOR TEXT in every External Link. they count the words and they compare them to the content in your site....

4) Google is counting hundreds of "no follow" links at GWT, they are crawling them AND they are using the data in the SERP algorithm.


No Follow simply means "Do not follow the Page Rank"

the links are still being used by Google.....don't let anyone fool you!

However, if the No Follow Link is NOT crawled by Google and not listed in GWT External Link count......then it probably has no value!

 

very good post, a lot of people doesn't know that!

 

Thanks a lot, never knew that before!
Just checked GWT and I can confirm that for one of my sites.

 

well, I knew that also nofollow links are crawled but the question here is if those links will effet our SERPs!

 

I'm suggesting that it does affect our SERPs, assuming our anchor text crawled in these links is actually being used in the algorithm. Maybe not as much weight, but they still have an effect?

 

I'm not sure what the gravamen is here. Did anyone think that a nofollow link was some sneaky way to provide a link to a bad neighborhood? If so, that's sad.

A nofollow link is very simple: it's a link that doesn't, in effect, transfer PageRank. It's a way to avoid bleeding PR from a page. (And please, let's not start that whole thing again: yes, external links do effectively reduce net site PR.)

So? If I have a site page on which I provide a number of links to places I feel no special obligation to reward, from Amazon to Wikipedia to sites of possible interest but no "exchange value", all I do is gain, because I amm seen as providing useful pointers. Whether the SEs' algos give black marks (or, more likely, faint grey marks) to pages with a lot of nofollow links is another of those impossible questions, but I'd reckon it is less than the effect of removing the nofollows.

All I know is that I have a lot of them on sites that seem to do pretty well in the SERPs. I provide ordinary links to sites that either link to me or for which I feel a charitable urge to help out. No big deal . . . .

 

Maybe, for me I don't ignore sites with nofollow attribute for I know they have something to do in relevance to my site.

 

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread....