NoFollow and Google.

Please, don't bother responding unless you're 99.99% sure or have confirmed with someone affiliated with Google. That is the point of this thread. TO maybe find someone from the Google woodwork who may know for sure but cannot identify themselves as working for Google for whatever reasons. If you do know the answer for sure, then please reply by all means.

Question: Does adding NoFollow to outbound links help regarding Page Rank? My PR dropped from "3" to "1" for no specific reason. Webmaster Tools says I'm clean with no errors and link count has risen. I don't carry any inbound links with very high PR sites. It was gained from getting links to hundreds of smaller sites.

Others suggested that not using NoFollow on outbound links was hurting me. I've read that it really doesn't matter. I could see if maybe my outbound links were not related to content, but they were. I have a Computer blog and linking to support.dell.com shouldn't make a difference unless I'm wrong.

I've also read that using NoFollow on all outbound links could trigger Google that you're using SEO tactics and "flag" your domain per say. (Unconfirmed). I am sick of hearing the "leaking PR juice" idea. I really don't believe this to be true and I think it's a lot of hear say BS going around.

Can anyone confirm any of the above? I thinking about removing the "NoFollow" tags I just put up because:

1.) I really don't think it's going to help. I don't really believe in the PR leakage idea (so far). I had PR3 not using the "NoFollow" tag, and I don't see why I'd get dropped on my face so hard all of the sudden.

2.) I can't find any benefit to using NoFollow tags on my links. The only reason I would, would be to assume the PR leakage idea were true. Why do something when you can't confirm it or don't fully understand it's effects?

*NOTE* All outbound links in my statements are 100% related to the articles content in some way. Not many new articles were added since the drop from my PR3 down to PR1. I believe it has something to do with a change in algorithm but I can't confirm.

Thanks to anyone who responds. I'm not looking for any replies that will just increase your post count. Good and reputable replies will always get +Rep from me.

 

To begin with, PageRank is not much of a secret. This classic old paper explains the subject rather well, and accurately. PR calculation is an iterative process: in principle, it could be continued almost indefinitely, though what it's measuring would change in the interim. How many iterations are used before the calculated value "settles down" is probably a Google trade secret, but doesn't really matter.

The point of it all is that by the last iteration, a given web page will have a certain value that we can call its "PageRank", though that is, of course, nothing like the simplistic 0 - 10 range too many people think means anything. Let's assume that for some particular page there were, when PR was calculated, no links whatever save a link to the site's front page. As part of the all-web iteration, every page in the site will have some PR value, and those values depend in part on the links from other pages in the site.

Now let us assume that you change Page X by adding an external link. If you review the mechanics of PR calculation, yiou will see that it is true that a given page has only so much mana (authority, "juice", whatever you call it) available to influence such other pages as it links to. If Page X initially has J amount of juice available and links to only one other page (external or internal), say Y, then Y gets J, all of X's juice. If a second link is now added, say Z, Y and Z each receive half of X's mana, J/2; if there are 5 links, each of them receives J/5.

Now none of that directly affects Page X's PR, which is why some people scoff at "PR drain". But think about it: the juice X was formerly sending to nowhere but the site's front page (in our example) is now diminished by being shared, so the site front page will, at the next PR-calculation iteration, have somewhat less PR than it did; since it, in turn, was passing some of its juice to Page X, Page X then suffers a drop in consequence. The exact structure of the internal linkages of a site will, to some extent, affect the exact effects, but it is obviously and necessarily so that the net effect of any external link is to slightly lower the overall cumulative PR of the site as a whole.

Obviously, nofollow'ing all external links will, to a first-level review, eliminate that "PR bleed". But--even putting aside for the moment the ethical and practical problems with 100% nofollow links--there is also the question of how the SEs look at sites with a very high fraction of external links that are nofollow links. Is there a penalty? I daresay no one outside of Google knows, which I suppose is why you phrased your query as you did.

But let's stop putting aside the real-world questions. In reality, almost no one is going to have each and every external link as a nofollow link. In some cases, there is the desire to reciprocate links (with, one much hopes, validly relevant sites), or the desire to assist a worthy site (maybe that's naive, but it matters to some), and--possibly overlapping those points--there are usually some sites whose owners would get mightily hot if their links from you were nofollow.

So, there is almost always going to be some core of non-nofollow external links, meaning one's nofollow ratio will almost never be, or approximate, 100%. How much below 100% it optimally "ought to be" remains unknown. There has also been speculation that some SEs, notably Google, may actually reward sites with a good number of outgoing links to other sites that are themselves strong and relevant: the "authority center" hypothesis. Whether that is so, and if it is how it plays off against PR bleed, are further questions.

But at least that defines with (I hope) some exactitude the issues involved.

 

and to add a little comment to owlcroft's excellent post - it can't be in google's interest to penalise all dofollow links, as backlinks are still very much at the heart of it's algorithm - it would be shooting itself in the foot. As I understand it, the original use that nofollow was intended for was blog comments and forums - places where spammers were dropping their own links, which obviously runs counter to google's idea of as a link as a vote.
It sounds like you're linking in exactly the way that Google intends - to authoritative and useful sites in your field -if everyone nofollows this type of link, nobody can ever get PageRank again!

 

AS far as I know then nofollow doesn't gives any link juice, right?

 

Right. In fact, the sole purpose of the rel="nofollow" attribute is to allow webmasters to mark individual links as having their ability to pass PageRank and other link values. It was designed primarily to allow blogs and forums to prevent links in user comments from passing "link juice" and potentially incurring "bad neighborhood" or other penalties. It was then encouraged to prevent paid links from passing PageRank. Many webmasters also found it useful in linking to pages that they didn't want to endorse for one reason or another, again, often to avoid being seen as linking to a "bad neighborhood" site, such as when they were pointing out an example of a bad practice. More recently, it has been used for "PageRank sculpting" - that is, to give fine control over the flow of PageRank through a site. In that regard, it's useful for blocking the flow of PageRank through links to housekeeping pages ("About Us", "Contact Us", etc.) from a site's main page.

But some people believe its a good idea to nofollow every outbound link when just the opposite is true. You damage your site by not linking it to other quality sites. Both Google and Yahoo! gain insights into a site's content, and therefore relevance, by its outbound links. A dead-end site with no outbound links loses that relevance factor. So don't fall into this trap. Limit nofollowing links to user comments, paid links and ads, links to sites you can't vouch for, and for PageRank sculpting within your own site and you'll be fine.

 

Wikipedia seems to benefit from it the most giving no link juice out even though many of its pages are just content ripped from other sites. Everytime I need to reference wikipedia, I pay it a favor back by nofollowing it.

 

I wish I could take this post, frame it, and make all DP users read it. So sick and tired of people talking like they know what they're talking about. I'm talking about those that said I should nofollow all my links when I knew this was a bad idea!

 

Beside to the above great posts, i just want you to know that by JUST adding NoFollow tag to your website outbound links.. then if will take a while till it becomes affective in the Toolbar PR calculation.. which might be out of date..

My advice, is to check your backlinks one by one.. specially the most valuable ones and consider if any of them have dropped in the PR as well..

And most important is to forget about PR at all, and focus more on your SERP's and Conversion Rates

 

I think the nofollow tag and follow tag can display the owner's will.

Your website's pr can be influenced by many Factors!

Nofollow tag can provider the owner one way to preventing spam,yes！

 

I have linked to others authoritative website that related to my article and always add nofollow to those links, even with Google.com, Wikipedia and such. If you have Google webmaster tools and observe a little more about your incoming links, you will find that Google "do" follow and "count" all links that marked as "nofollow". They know who you are linking to even you add nofollow tag but the value would never been that equal. From my experienced, the nofollow could tell Google to not give any weight and PR leaked to the site that linking to. This could save you from some bad neighborhood that you linking to and may unaware of. But Google still know who you are linking to in one way or another.

P.S. Google even follow the link in link tag in most forums, even those link is published as code not a link actually. Google even scrape URL from text that even not a link. This is only my observation and please do not count them as 100% fact.

 

Here are the knowns and the unknowns.

Known:

• external links without "nofollow" do reduce overall site PR;
• links with "nofollow" do not affect PR but are known to the search engines;
• few or no sites will ever have 100% nofollow external links.

Questions:

• Does a high percentage of nofollow external links have a negative effect?
• Does a large number of nofollow external links to SE-recognized relevant major sites have a positive effect? (The so-called "authority site" effect.)

Since, as I keep saying, no one outside Google knows the correct answers to those two key questions, it all reduces to opinion and deduction. You need to guess or deduce the answers as best you can, and apply the results as best you can to the sorts of sites you operate. (Because, for one thing, not every site can even aspire to becoming an "authority site".)

 

Hello,

I am looking for this question's Answer as well .

Peace,

 

Matt Cutts from Google said a few months ago in an interview I saw on a webmaster site that PR doesn't matter that much anymore. My site is at a PR of 3...but if it dropped down to 1 but my internal pages or site still ranks high in the SERPs - why do I really care. Don't worry that much about PR.

 

Great post.

"links with "nofollow" do not affect PR but are known to the search engines;"

I agree with this.