Hi Everybody! I'm back once again after Christmas! This time with another hot topic...I don't how many of you chase Matt! But he is the Googler to be chased so far as SEO is concerned. I was just scanning through whether Matt has something interesting and good for the SEO in the Year End. He has said, "Typically, our policy is: a link is a link, is a link; wherever that link's worth is, that is the worth that we give it. Some people ask about links from DMOZ, links from .edu or links from .gov, and they say: "Isn't there some sort of boost? Isn't a link better if it comes from a .edu?" The short answer is: no, it is not. It is just .edu links tend to have higher PageRank, because more people link to .edu's or .gov's. To the best of my knowledge, I do not think we have anything that says social bookmark links are given less weight. Certainly, some sites like del.icio.us and other people, may choose to put individual "nofollows" in and they may choose to take actions to try to prevent spam, but we do not typically say anything like: social bookmarking by itself - give less weight." This one is extracted from the interview between Matt and Stephan Spencer, the owner of StephanSpencer.com. Really a great issue to be discussed. Recently most of SEO experts and webmasters do bookmark their web pages in various social bookmarking sites. But the above comment from Matt has really surprised me entirely. Suddenly I checked the source codes of my site's bookmarking links and truly speaking Matt is right and I found Most of my bookmarking links are with rel="no follow". So what to do next? But I know well that social book marking sites have the potential to drive traffic, but the real SEO aspect of Book Marking links will decrease once all social book marking sites start using rel="no follow" in their links. So now SEO experts do need to be careful towards Social Book Marking as one of the SEO Strategies. It would be better to prepare a list of Book Marking Sites that do not use rel="no follow" in their links and start book marking their targeted web pages.
They have been like this for awhile now. Most people never checked them now they know they add no Pr to site.
Your post takes two things for granted. 1. You think Cutts tells the truth. 2. You think Google pays attention to nofollow. I think Matt says whatever is best for Google. If he didn't, he wouldn't be an EMPLOYEE. If you do as Google says and put a nofollow on any links except comments you're telling them which links are paid links (usually sidebar links).
You forgot another thing, majority of the traffic that come through social book marking site converts poorly. Which according to me is worthless unless you are just after stats or are running CPM based ads. Of course if the traffic from social book marking sites is natural, then its ok.
I've not known Matt Cutts to lie, quite often he doesn't tell the whole story or is a bit cryptic but that's understandable he's quite limited in what he can say. Most his stuff involving Google needs to be run past a few people to ensure he's not letting anything out he shouldn't. No you're telling them not to follow or give any credit to them.