What is nofollow?

Discussion in 'Link Development' started by wyattt, Jul 22, 2007.

  1. #1
    I see some people talking about links or affiliate links without nofollow.

    What is nofollow and why is it bad/good?
     
    wyattt, Jul 22, 2007 IP
  2. trichnosis

    trichnosis Prominent Member

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    #2
    trichnosis, Jul 22, 2007 IP
  3. tennisplayer89

    tennisplayer89 Peon

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    #3
    No follow means that a search engine spider will not follow the link. This means that that link will not count as a backlink to your site. People will still be able to follow it, but it will have no SEO value.
     
    tennisplayer89, Jul 22, 2007 IP
  4. uniqueasitis

    uniqueasitis Peon

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    #4
    No follow is an attribute which can be added to any outbound link on your website. The purpose of the nofollow attribute is to tell search engines not to credit the link on the website.

    Hence, if website A links to website B but uses the nofollow attribute in the link then website B will not be credited a backlink from website A.

    Good or Bad?

    That really depends. There has been talk in SEO circles that outbound links can hurt your website's page engine ranking so by using the rel="nofollow" attribute you can prevent that from happening.

    Generally, I put the tag on all my links so that my website rank is not affected but I have been told that is not fair because the website I link to does not get any credit when it deserves credit. Which is true, but I am very selfish.

    So, if you are a moral person do not use the attribute whenever you want to credit a website and if you do want to credit it just link to the website without the tag.

    If you have any more questions or still do not understand the tag let me know so I can give you more specific examples.
     
    uniqueasitis, Jul 22, 2007 IP
  5. Blogspotter

    Blogspotter Notable Member

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    #5
    The link juice stops right there :)
    It was passing on the link juice till a few weeks back though :)
    Now it doesn't anymore.. but it sure give u some decent traffic.
     
    Blogspotter, Jul 22, 2007 IP
  6. Gatorade

    Gatorade Peon

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    #6
    Simply put, search engines do not follow links with the nofollow attribute therefor they will not help in SEO.
     
    Gatorade, Jul 23, 2007 IP
  7. Mihai

    Mihai Active Member

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    #7
    Search engines do not follow the links that have such an attribute attached and as a result the page rank of the targeted website will not be influenced.

    Many times websites use the nofollow attribute in order to avoid being penalized by Google or any other search engine as being a link farm or linking to illegal / spam based websites.
     
    Mihai, Jul 23, 2007 IP