I have been reading that the rel="external nofollow" is actually improper usage and some search engines do not actually recognize this... how is "external nofollow" different from "nofollow" and which search engines overlook this if any?
Google treats Rel="External Nofollow" same as Rel="nofollow" Yahoo approves both the attributes and counts in back links. MSN in not yet clear about it.
From what I`ve read this new tag was brought in by Wordpress who erroneously assumed it related to all links outbound, whereas just "nofollow" would only affect links to other pages on the site/blog, etc. Whether that`s all true or not I`ve no idea.
the "rel" tag was used to determine the RELationship of the link to your site.... the main usage became "nofollow" because Google didn't follow that and pass on your page rank. As others have stated, by adding "external" to it, doesn't affect it being nofollow either way.
From what I understand, it should still be counted as a nofollow link. Some browsers will open up new windows when users click on a link with rel="external"