Hey guys. Here is a cool post about Google's new link policy. I found it very helpful. Everyone Needs to Switch to Dofollow
I'm really wondering about dofollow on my blog. I've always had it set as such, mentioned it within the comment form but never really promoted it much. Since I added the link in my sig here and promoted it as such, you wouldn't believe the sh*t I've received. From checking the webserver logs and comparing it against the IP addresses of commenters, it looks like they're picking a single post and leaving a "Cool blog" comments. Those get tossed. And a quick check of your blog shows that it is still nofollow. <a href='http://www.thefutureofblog.com' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>Jeremiah</a> Code (markup): edit: Confirmed: <a href='http://drmikessteakdinner.com' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>Dr. Mike Wendell</a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrMikesSteakDinner/~3/LphiB5CXaxw/" rel="nofollow">The US Raises Some Cash the Old Fashion Way</a> Code (markup):
Readers need to post five comments to get the Nofollow attribute removed. I am only giving the benefits to loyal commentators.
Well, this "change" doesn't affect me, but I do get to write a few new blog posts that amount to "I told you so!" I've had nofollow removed from my sites for most of their lifespans, because I just never saw the benefit in it outweighing the slap in the face. Now that we know nofollow simply destroys pagerank rather than keeping it internal, it seems like all the nofollow blogs and social sites are just hurting their contributors for absolutely zero personal gain. I hope this announcement helps bring things closer to the way things used to be, where webmasters actually have to invest some effort into controlling and moderating what gets posted on their site. Its a matter of quality control, and anything that passes quality control should also be vouched for in terms of PR and linkjuice.
It is my belief that 'rel=â€nofollowâ€' is infact already dead, or, ... As of right now, nofollow links may not be as highly regarded as “dofollow†links; ...
The guy who posted that doesn't know WTF he is talking about. The REAL reason that nofollow was invented STILL exists, and it is STILL recommended by Google that you use it for that purpose. The change at Google in regards to nofollow ONLY had to do with how it affects the flow of Page Rank (PR) to outbound links on a page. In other words, the ONLY change to nofollow was that Google made it so that it cannot be used to do PR sculpting anymore, which was NEVER the intended use of nofollow. It was always intended to be used to fight spammers. When blogs first became popular, all links on blogs were dofollow. Spammers quickly saw this as a way to promote their cheesy, spam sites by running around making blog comments on every blog they could find with with a link back to their site containing the keyword phrase they wanted to rank for as the link text and the URL set to one of their site's pages. As you SHOULD know, if Google catches you linking to a site who is using blackhat techniques (i.e. linking to a "bad neighborhood" site) with a do follow link, Google can penalize YOUR URL as well as theirs for helping to promote that site. So NOTHING has changed in this regard with nofollow. Google STILL recommends that you nofollow links to sites that you are not willing to vouch for... sites that you don't trust 100%... sites for which you are not willing to suffer the consequences of their actions should they later get caught using blackhat techniques. So you had better continue to moderate your blogs or leave them nofollow if you don't moderate them. What DID change about nofollow is the following... Prior to the change in Google's algorithm, if a page was worth 100 "actual" PR points and had 10 followed outbound links on it, Google would pass each outbound link approximate 10 PR points (100 PR pts for the page/10 followed outbound links). I say approximately because there IS a decay or damping factor that causes PR to decay by about 10-15% each time it flows to another page. But for the purpose of this example just say the PR passed out on each link is approximate #PR pts for the page/#dofollowed outbound links on the page. Prior to the change, if you were to nofollow 5 of the 10 links on the page, suddenly the remaining 5 followed links on the page would have their PR passed to them doubled (100 PR pts for page/5 followed outbound links) to 20 PR pts passed out on each of the 5 followed links. The recent announcement simply stated that the amount of PR passed out on each of the followed links is now approximately the #PR pts of the page/(TOTAL # of followed and nofollowed outbound links). So the remaining 5 followed links would be passed 10 PR pts each (100/10) even though only 5 of them are followed. The other 5 nonfollowed links do NOT get passed any PR... the 10 PR pts that would have been passed to each nofollowed links is simply lost... goes into a PR blackhole... falls on the floor as waste. Here's a great post by Matt Cutts explaining the changes to nofollow and how it affects PR in the paragraphs just prior to the question and answers.
No. I have lots of sites with plenty of nofollow links that do quite well in the SERP's. Don't worry about it.