Really? I think you need to go and check. The signatures are nofollow and are only visible to logged in members (ie search engines can not even see them). URL's in the body of a message are not nofollow'd ... but the mods at sitepoint do not tolerate anything remotely close to a self promotional link in a message.
If not, why do people have signatures with links like this? Best IT forum | Wireless Internet Cards rental service Just curious?
Its called 'advertising'; they are posting for the good of the community, they are contributing to the value of the community ... they are not just posting to spam drop their signatures to get backlinks (which they are useless for anyway) ... have you not noticed they delete fluff posts at Sitepoint.
Fair enough Agent000, but it's still all advertising. One man's spam is another's ad etc. I have seen they drop the fluffy posts and I am sure there are people in the forum who object to any and all ads which is fine too. Have a good one and thanks for the reply.
believe it or not but google actually does spider nofollow links, it just doesn't pass PR or cache updates to the site.
How do you know that? Are you calling Matt Cutts a liar when he explicitly says that Google does not follow them.
It is no-follow, but it is a good thing to mix your links to be a good combination of follow and nofollow. It looks natural and helps you, adding more weight to yahoo, bing, and even google!