Checking a competitors back links on my link popularity tool I came across a back link from a site. I didn't think that site had do follow and sure enough the link is in fact a no follow site. This back link was in MSN Live and they are picking up the no follow links, unlike google and Yahoo as well. Not sure about that. My question is this. I know many on DP consider a no follow link of no or little value as it does not register as a "vote" and its only value is for traffic, not link popularity. Here the no follow is a "vote" although not in google. Is there any reason to, or not to pursue these no follow links to my site since they are appearing at least in Live and likely elsewhere? Does having a link back in Live matter to anyone. I am aware that the quality of the back links in Live are not great as I am seeing links from parked domains, ....... but does the "every link has a value" theory pertain here plus a bit more since they are showing up as back links in some search engines, albeit not the mighty google?
Links, whether nofollow or not, have some intrinsic value. They can provide traffic, but they can also get your page indexed (in Yahoo anyway). Yahoo will follow links that are nofollow (contradiction in terms, eh?), for the spec on Nofollow says nothing about following the link in the first place. Nofollow is a bad naming convention, IMO. As for link weight. Both Yahoo and Google says that they do not apply any consideration to the links when it comes to SERPS (or PR in Google's case.). For now, I have to take them at their word. The last time Yahoo got caught with its britches down back in 2004 in regards to Slurp, they got reamed for it over at WPW. I do not think they will be making any statements that will not be verified later as being false.
There is conflicting data on whether Google follows the link or not. Look at the matrix below the citation provided by Vagrant above. You will note that in the cell underneath Google heading, it has a YES in the following links row. Google is in the business of cataloging the web. It would be fool-hardy of them not to follow any and all links to get the page into their index if it doesn't already exist. There may be restrictions applied to that page, but I am sure that they have crawled it none-the-same.
I personally don't go after any nofollow links, unless there is a good chance that it would send at least some direct traffic. It doesn't make sense to focus too much on a link that not all the search engines will give you credit for. Instead you could be using that time to please all the search engines and increase your rankings across the board.
Even though its no follow you can still get alot of traffic from them, so they are still good to have
While I am going to concentrate my efforts on do follow links, I think it is worthwhile to obtain links from a variety of sources and not just for increasing my pr. I too have gotten some decent traffic from Yahoo answer. The time it takes to get a link justifies in my mind a small amount of effort in getting a link regardless of do or no follow.