I have heard a rumour that Google no longer differentiates between dofollow and nofollow links and just looks at the relevance of the link? Is this true? Again, it seems to be one of those rumours that gains weight and truth because more people keep repeating it, but does anyone know if the source of this information is reliable or from Google?
The difference is still there, because Google bots are not following the rel="nofollow" links on any site, so if there is a no follow link, there is no possibility that Google bot would visit that link while traversing the page So I hope, that's really the rumour!
Actually, there's been evidence presented that google has been following some no-follow links, and even counting them as backlinks. They're not supposed to, but in some cases they have. Personally, I think it's just a slight mistake, and that those links 'fall off' or are 'weeded out' over time. I think it was just an over sight on google's part, and they'll correct it over time. No one's perfect, not even google. That being said, relevancy is still either the first, or second most important factor when discussing backlinks.
Oh, that is great...if this is true, then the one who gets those links should be called lucky, as theoretically it should not happen
I wish this is true too, but it is NOT TRUE. Matt Cutts even admit that a few times nofollow links does help in SERP ranking due to bugs but got fixed. Ref: Pagerank Sculpting (refer to end of the post) Nofollow links don't pass pagerank value and don't help in google SERP Ranking. This is true.
Where did that come from?? Since January of 2005, when Google announced it was adopting support for the new HTML tag. Very simply, rel="nofollow", when attached to a link, tells the engines not to ascribe any of the editorial endorsements or "votes" that would boost a page/site's query independent ranking metrics. Today, Linkscape's index notes that approximately 3% of all links on the web are nofollowed, and that of these, more than half are sites using nofollow on internal, rather than external pointing links
From my own experience spamming the nofollow social bookmarking sites won't improve your SERP by much (if anything at all). So if you want to rank high in a highly competitive niche you will need a lot of DoFollow backlinks.
it is still has difference. getting no follow links is easy so people like to belive that there are no difference. anyway no follow links can also help a bit.
no follow is still there for sure, what I dont know is whether no follow is not counted at all or counted but only a fraction of do follow or as some posters suggested ist just a bug in their programs.
Don't focus on DoFollow backlinks though. NoFollow links will help you stay under the radar. Make sure to get enough NoFollow links in order to make your link profile more natural.