Here is why I think they do, especially after reading this article: http://www.michellemacphearson.com/do-nofollow-links-count-redux/ As a newbie at SEO, I decided to employ some of the techniques, as both my sites wern't doing so good. It wasn't being crawled very often (almost never), and it wasn't so high in ranking. Yet, since posting comments to no-follow photoshop tutorials (even big sites like psdvault & pshero), with appropiate anchor text, BOTH my sites rose in rankings. They were both also crawled the next day - I was incredulously surprised. All the people who say they do not count, don't actually have evidence. I am aware that just because it shows in link checkers it doesnt mean it carries weight. And even if they don't count, they can still attract human visitors, so there isn't a total loss. So... What do you think?
Not sure if this helps, it's an interesting test. http://www.hook.me.uk/index.php/2010/01/do-nofollow-links-affect-rankings/
There is no effect in PR when it is no-follow. But i feel that it will have some 'popularity' in it. In the sense when google crawls and find your links in many pages you get some popular for that given keyword. And also no follow links can bring traffic to your websites. Like twitter facebook etc.
I don't think that it's possible to conduct an SEO experiment based on a mis-spelled phrase that doesn't appear anywhere else on the web. They should have chosen a term that has some minimal competition rather than no competition at all.
Well in the hook.me experiment that was provided just now, that was taken into consideration...so the conclusion was that google is true to it's word. Arrrgh, so stressful