This is a question on off page "Search Engine Optimization" I believe the general consensus is that nofollow will not help your PR. I don't think anyone can put forward an intelligent argument against that statement, however have been wrong at least once before. Ok, so what about serps, this is what I am really interested in, will a nofollow link help my serps at all?
I'm sorry, but you are wrong. Matt Cutts made it "very clear" that nofollow is designed to pass "no value" to that outbound link. That means it will not provide any value towards Pagerank or SERPs. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/quick-comment-on-nofollow/] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow
I've no real comment to make on the original question, I just feel I should point out that what comes out of Matt Cutts mouth shouldnt be taken as the absolute truth. Its in googles interest to not have webmasters fully in the know how google sees sites/links etc.
The whole point of the nofollow attribute was to prevent any value being provided to an outbound link. To say on one hand it doesn't provide Pagerank but does provide SERPs value is actually silly. Pagerank is a factor in search engine results for Google, as it can be used to put a "value weight" on a sites inbound links for certain keywords in the anchor text. This doesn't mean that you need Pagerank to rank in the top search results, considering many lower PR sites outrank higher PR sites. Had to throw in that disclaimer before everyone went nuts on the "Pagerank in search results fact".
Dont get me wrong, I agree with you on the points you make. I'm just saying because Cutts says something, doesnt make it true. I think he blatantly lies when it suits him.
At the risk of taking this off-topic, for example I think he lies when he says all tld's are seen as equal. I just find it very hard to swallow that a .info ranks as well a .gov, if everything else is equal. Of course thats the beauty of seo, nobody knows for sure the answers to all these questions. All we have are our opinions!
Just had look at the site in your sig Ssandecki, looks like good reading. I'm in the pub and and it shuts soon so I've bookmarked it to take a proper look tommorow.
Thanks, it's still in "beginner" stage. I kind of disagree on the TLDs, actually on my site there is a great article I wrote about them.
IMO no follows help out SERPs - I don't know how much but I think they play a role in some way. I think Vic_mackey is right about Google purposely misleading SEOs in some cases. The best, and safest way to build a website is to create natural looking link patterns and a website with nothing but "do follow" links does not look natural. If adding no follow links does nothing more than diversify your link portfolio and helps keep you safe, then you could probably argue that it helps your SERPs. I was even looking for a no follow link building campaign service a little bit ago - LOL! how's that for absurd
I believe the general consensus of this thread is that you don't know what are you talking about. No need for any further "intelligent argument", just a quick advice - read, read, read...before you post, post, post...
Two cents from the search police. I am sure everyone here thanks you for your useless contribution, in fact when someone "searches" and comes across this they will find no value in your reply, hence the major problem with the search feature ... replies like yours. Thanks for the other replies, seems like there will be no definitive answer to this question.
Hehehe...don't mess with the g search police That was probably the best advice you received today and I'll keep on saying...read, read, read...before you post, post, post. Usually I take my time in answering questions when they seems to be honest and interesting but when you come with things like "I know for sure that's not possible, can anyone give me an "inteligent" answer and prove me I'm wrong?" then all I can say it's to repeat...read, read, read...before you post, post, post. If you understand what I mean I'm sure that will help you a lot in future before starting this sort of threads. Now relax, take the back seat, a cold drink and read, read, read...before you post, post, post... Thank you
ok, fair enough. Next time don't mess with my posts when I'm in a pissy mood. (Was trying to be a bit sarcastic with my opening remarks ... being wrong at least once, supposed to be sarcastic ... except now I remember that there are actually people out there that believe they are never wrong ... hence a complete failure at any sarcasm.) And in order not to ruffle anyones feathers I am not pointing fingers at anyone here. From a SEO point of view its tough to perform SEO yourself when all you read is conflicting answers and on top of that the SEO industry is supposed to be evolving all the time, so you never know what you read is still current. I guess we have Google to thank for that due to algorithm changes.
loredan Perhaps you should read, read, read before you post, post, post... What you thought the OP said: A is impossible, so give me an argument to prove me wrong. What OP actually said: A doesn't work, but what about B? General consensus is nofollow provides no PR, but does it provide SERPS benefit? The OP did not ask anyone to prove him wrong, the way I read his post that comment was there to specifically steer the conversation away from PR and keep it on SERPS (unless there was a real argument). He was not asking people to prove him wrong at all. [Back 2 Topic] Personally, I think that Google probably does (or will do) some sort of calculation with nofollow links either giving them a much lower weight than a follow link or doing some sort of link pattern analysis to affect the trust rank (which actually does make a difference on SERPS).
That's a fair view. nofollow links are most certainly picked up as are non-linked domain names, so they all seem to count except (probably) not as much as good quality follow links.