Does google still consider it a backlink? I understand that pagerank doesn't carry over but as part of your total backlink count does a nofollow link increase your total number of backlinks in googles eyes?
nofollow means the search engines will not follow that link, therefore the crawlers will never land on your page... there goes no indexing for you.
No-Follow is pretty much just based around traffic generation while "follow" can be used to increase your SER as well as promote your website .
Nofollow links still appear in my webmaster report, and still counted as links. Dofollow link is obviously better than nofollow.
I don't think so. When I'm starting new blog network, I'm using links from my old blog comments. 15-20 links ro every new blog usually and within 16-20 hours all new blogs are indexed (at least 3-5 pages are seen in google by site:domain.com operator). No follow links are working to speed up indexing at least.
I think if you want to look natural. You will need both unfollow and follow link. Thats what I think.