Google webmaster tools show nofollow links- why?

I'm curious. I'm using the Google webmaster tools and looking at all the people who link to pages on my website.

I'm seeing some nofollow links on yahoo answers and wikipedia where my site is referenced. Why does Google remember these links? Does it actually use these links for its search algorithms??? Or are they simply trying to make their webmaster tools more useful and show everyone who links to your site? (Or maybe a bit of both.)

To me, I would've assumed that Google could simply ignore all nofollow links and it wouldn't be too harmful to do so, and therefore its databases would be smaller.

EDIT: Sorry, should've done a search first. One of the previous discussions:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=502694&highlight=webmaster+nofollow

 

Mr Cutts addresses this here

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-provides-backlink-tool-for-site-owners/

elsewhere its stated ,

1. rel-nofollow does not pass anchor text value ( for Google)
   
2. Does not index page that the link goes to ( it does index the page the link is on of course )

 

If Google TOTALLY ignored nofollow links, then they wouldn't show up in their lists. There is an inconsistency here that I've never seen an explanation for.

 

Yeah well, Matt also said that you should report spammy links and they will be taken off but guess what? I see more spam than ever before. I know this dude who reported 100% spam sites around 5 months ago but they are still appearing on the search result pages. I am the kind of person who minds his business but yes, I would also be very much pissed if I see spammy results instead of a legit site I worked on for months.

 

for nofollow link, google will still claw them, nofollow is ONLY a tag about PR juice.

 

Regarding spam reporting:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

 

Well guess what ( only my opinion ) these inconsistencies are deliberate , not in a harmful manner but more " we will show you only what we think you should see , but not enough to game our system " the equation for visible backlinks would be something like "visible backlinks=true 95% + 3% rel-nofollow+2%trash links"

 

I am pretty convinced that nofollow does not do exactly what we think that Google says it does.

I have seen cases where nofollow links from highly ranked websites DO help with overall linking and rank. How can that be? It just is.

So while you are chasing down "dofollow" links, I would not spit at a nofollow link from a strong website.

 

it follow the nofollow link, but it didnt give importance to that link.

 

They are also links
aren't they?

Google webmaster tools not only showing links they do show search terms too.

Perhaps not all Google fellows agree with the term "nofollow"

 

Google follow but not index pages

 

Right answer.

Thanks Brian

 

google just show you how many links link to you ,that doesnt means google will index you pages

 

Yes, google with index your pages from a nofollow link.

And if nofollow does not pass "PR JUICE" sometimes it seems to get google to notice your other PR JUICE faster, especially if that nofollow is from a page that, itself, gets crawled a lot.