Test Proves That No-Follow Links Are Now Being Followed

Just recently SEO company Graphic SEO has tested to see if Google No-Follow Links were being indexed. The conclusion was that they were. The full test can be found HERE

 

Useless test.

I've regged so many domains that got indexed before even ONE nofollow or dofollow link pointed there.

Nice linkbait try, next time, try ranking for a word only by nofollow links (it's possible, by the way, just to save you the trouble)

 

Google always follow the no-link attribute but its useless because they are not drive traffic to your websites.

 

So the funny thing is, Google invents this attribute, tells other search engines that it would be best practice to use it (eg yahoo!) then secretly uses the No-Follow attribute. Hmmm im speechless

 

Of course Google will still index a site that is nofollowed. Google wants to index as many sites as possible so it will not ignore links that are nofollowed. That is nothing new. What the nofollow tag does do is stop any authority being passed to that site.

 

this is googles exact saying on no follow:

How does Google handle nofollowed links?

We don't follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without using nofollow, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it's important to note that other search engines may handle nofollow in slightly different ways.

 

it's correct, some link juice transfer even there's set no follow tag.

 

Nothing new here. What the nofollow attribute does is stops the flow of Pagerank from one page to another. Google still indexes nofollowed links though.

 

The test is extremely flawed... Here is what their conclusion was:

Pay attention to the bolded statement above... There is absolutely NO way that you can be absolutely sure of this. The very fact that they "think" they can be absolutely sure of this SHOWS they are very inexperienced as an SEO.

Sooooo.... this person posted 3 nofollow links and 15 days later they noticed the sub-domain was indexed. What if someone who read one of the 3 comments created a 4th link to the site and Google followed that link to discover the sub-domain? You NEVER know for sure which links Google knows about. The LINK: operator shows a small sample of backlinks... and even in Google's Webmaster Tools they show only a sample of your backlinks (a larger sample than LINK: but STILL a sample in most cases). So they CANNOT be absolutely sure of this...

I can think of a dozen other scenarios which could have caused this page to be indexed WITHOUT following the 3 nofollow links... Once again, an SEO "expert" spouting off misinformation and test results based of a flawed test.

 

Yahoo! or another search engine that follows No-Follow Links (I think Yahoo! does), finds the site and then there is a do-follow link for Google.

 

Its great news for many blogger like me thanks for updating us.

 

Nothing new. NoFollow means that Google will index that website, but they won't pass you the juice.

 

Matt Cutts has already stated that the nofollow attribute attached to a hyperlink WILL NOT effect your site's ranking in Google Search results. I can admit that I use to say other wise in the past, however after officially being proved by a Google employee I know stated that the nofollow attribute will strip a backlink of all SEO value.

Now... to end all this useless discussion here is a direct quote from Matt Cutts on June 15th, 2009.

Notice the *, well it just had to be clarified further.

Original Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

Now, it clearly states the following...

A. nofollow prevents Pagerank from being passed
B. nofollow will give no anchor text value
C. nofollow backlinks will not help improve your rankings in search results

So, can we end the discussion? I don't care how many tests you throw out, a site can simply be indexed without one backlink and even rank for a specific keyword with no backlinks.

Let's face it.... NO FOLLOW BACKLINKS ARE NOT USEFUL TO SEO

 

I agree that no follow on the whole isn't useful. But I was just watching a youtube video where a guy added some no follow backlinks because his site had a penalty and this removed the penalty. It's more natural to have some nofollow backlinks.

 

It was pretty much the change we were anticipating anyway. No-follow links do not pass PR, no-follow links do not pass anchor text value, but no-follow links DO count toward your total of outbound links.

 

Why do we even care about this anymore? Just build links for people, not for search engines. That's the most natural way any site operates. Not too many too fast, not too few to far apart. Promote it like you would, on sites that you would and you can outrank many sites doing the blackhat, greyhat or even over-do SEO...

This argument is useless... No-Follow or not, a link in the right place is traffic, because it's that, a link in the right place. Don't place links on page 100 of sombodies PR 6 domain because it's a PR 6 domain... Post a no-follow link on a popular forum, or in an article directory and it will do a lot more use!

Just my 2c

- Chris

 

@Canonical Hmmm pretty harsh words. I think I am a very experienced SEO. I have been in it for about 11 years now and I have generated over 10 million dollars for my combined clients in the last year.

But I am not going to get in a pissing war with you today. I gained about 70 backlinks off of that article alone (bad thing I am not trying to monetize the site). In less than 2 months I have over 1000 backlinks coming to my mediocre site with out having even tried to get them (again I am making zilch off of the site).

ooh yeah I forgot to mention I have also been nominated for top marketers of 2009 award. But I guess if you say I m inexperienced then I should take your word for it.

 

@Canonical ooh and I was just sitting back thinking of all the other ways that I can find in links back to a site. I came up with 11..

Your brain is completely flawed

 

No use of pr now, so don't just wanna get a dofollow link for the pr, place you link on the site where where the target visitors often go is better(even just a nofollow link will give you more traffic not pr).

 

I honestly almost pissed myself laughing at these comments. You should consider starting a humor based website, writing like this and you'll be #1 in no time. Regardless of this so called "test" as I stated above with factual evidence nofollow links provide absolute no value in terms of search engine optimization.