Will I get a penalty for "no follow" paid links in directories?

If I was to create a bidding directory, but use a "no follow" for the winning links (assuming that the bidders are in it for traffic exposure and not PR rankings), will Google still penalize my directory like the other paid directories?

Thanks in advance,

-DigiP

 

No you wont get penalized for using "nofollow" but i dont suppose you will get many bidders either because even if they are not in it for PR they will still want a backlink, for serps and various other reason, which they aint gonna get from "nofollow" links.

 

This is true. Nofollow still gets indexed..

 

Interesting, i was never under the impression it counted as a backlink , i stand corrected lol

 

Yes it will still count as a backlink, I’m testing this on one of my new directories.

Adding crap sites will not harm you if you are using no-follow on them.

The hardest part is in promoting your site; If you promote too aggressively you risk getting penalized, don’t promote enough then you will get little traffic.

if you are getting 1000s of visits to your site then I’m interested in being top.

Thanks Brian

 

There was an argument on the issue about two years ago on the same issue. A certain directory got penalized due to nofollow attribute on all links.

Some assumed that Google interpreted as "all links are not important". So, they penalized the directory listing bunch of unimportant links.

Matt Cutts even encouraged to use nofollow for advertising links, so I guess the situation is different now? I would tend to think it's safe, but it would be even better if you can show links with nofollow in a different way, not on a page with 50 "nofollowed" links.

 

no problem, use it.

 

thats totally legal just like what google state help center:

 

penalized ? yes but not by google, you will get penalized "financially" because nobody will be submitting to your directory if you use no-follow

 

When you lose PR, it is always by Google