Dofollow AND Nofollow Links are against Google's Rules?

I have long had a rule on my blogs that all outbound links would be nofollow, I believed that this way Google would not penalize me for having nofollow links, Matt Cutt would say this many times, boy was I wrong!

All of my blogs have been hit with manual penalties for outbound links.

So Google has changed the rules? dofollow AND nofollow are against their rules?

By the way I looked through the links and I'd say 95% of them were linking to sites related to the niches my blogs are about!

 

Hi Dean,
I don't think dofollow/nofollow links are breaking any written rules of Google.
By the way if you have builded some "unnatural" or strange links/cross to your other blogs Google, can have decided to penalize your network.

You talking about 95% links to sites niches related, but are all yours?
How have you seen the penalization, via webmaster tool?

 

Yeah, nofollow links should really not be a problem. Are you sure that it's the links that have cause the ban and not something else?

 

Yes I checked Webmaster Tools, here is the notice:

For example one of my blogs is about automotive vehicles (cars, trucks & motorcycles) and how to take care of them. I looked through the links that are in the articles and pointing to other sites and I would say that only a handful of them are not related to car, truck or motorcycle niche, and they are all NO-FOLLOW as I use a plugin that automatically does this.

The bit about passing pagerank confuses me as I always thought that if you had your links as no-follow then they would not pass PageRank, or have I got that wrong? I have been accepting a lot of guest posts over the years, but was always careful not to take guest posts that had links in them that did not automotive related.

 

According to this:

https://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/fighting-spam.html

Your site has been marked as the problem.
Have you ever hosted Guest Post (LOT of them can be considered as article marketing)?
CommentLUV plugin or similar?
Have you ever sold links?
Circular links with other yours blog? (it can be considered a manipulated link scheme)

Consider to remove all links garbage and transform all dofollow->nofollow,
this plugin can help (if you are using Wordpress)

http://wordpress.org/plugins/nofollow-for-external-link/

then wait a day then try a reconsideration for your site/blog here:

google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration


Good luck, hope this help.
Regards.

 

The best is make all links nofollow. No worries.

 

DoFollow and Non Follow links never works for me, I do work on quality links whether they are do follow or no follow. i really don't care about that.

 

After many update of Google recently. I don't care what type of backlink: dofollow or nofollow. Just make quality and related backlink is the best

 

Nofollow and dofollow are not a problem. People always understand search engines in wrong way (including me in the beginning) . Its all about the quality and natural linking. Linking a plumbing website with wildlife website can raise alarms (just an example). The key is that link has to be natural and that is the reason guest posts came under the Google scanner although guest posts are still the best way to increase online visiblity if done correctly. How to do it is another story.

 

yeah no/dofollow it's not the problem, always fault of spammy links

 

I don't think dofollow and nofollow are against rules but google changes its mind everyday, so you never know. Anyway, the problem must be spam links

 

It's not the problem of the no/dofollow links. Check the guest posts: are they posted too often? Are they related to your website? Do you add/remove links after publication. Those actions can be considered as spammy activity too.

 

You actually need to use nofollow if you do not want to be penalized. For example if you have a link in the footer on every page that links back to your parent site. If you do not use nofollow the site you are linking to in all those footer pages may be penalized. To correct the problem, leave the home page footer link alone but add nofollow to the link in all other footer pages.

 

The problem began when you started using nofollow, I think. You see, a photographer does not even know what nofollow is. He just places his photos and his links on his blog, period. If you start using nofollow on your site it means you know what it means, and you can be judged accordingly.

I would advise you not to nofollow all your links. I would review article per article and make editions instead.

 

How do you know whether you received a penalty?

 

Sorry to hear about your difficulties I hope things improve for you. It's a shame if you are linking to other high quality content, even if it is to other blogs or websites you own.

 

Are you on Myblogguest or Postjoint? Google has punished all sites they have found on those networks.

 

making all links nofollow solves the problem. but you must really be sure that ALL the links are nofollow, so check all of them carefully or you lose your opportunity to have your site reconsidered.

 

Why someone would like to purchase a nofollow link from your site and why you have that much links on your site? Were you selling those?

 

If you're not selling page rank (by giving away dofollow links to advertisers), then maybe you got hit because of the links that your site has pointed towards it. Maybe you have more spammy links than you do credible links; maybe some of the top ranking sites that linked to you got hit, and indirectly your website got "hit" because you don't have as much "link juice".