Online Marketing From Home

The NoFollow attribute or NoFollow “tag”, as it is often referred to, has led to many heated debates amongst webmasters since it was first introduced by Google.

Although the debate on whether the NoFollow attribute should have been introduced, or should be used by webmasters, will probably never end, there are many misconceptions about it. I trust this post will clarify many of these misconceptions.

Let’s start at the beginning… What is the NoFollow attribute? Why did Google introduce it? Why do I need to know about it?      

What is the NoFollow attribute?

The NoFollow attribute is a bit of code that looks like this: rel=”nofollow”. It is not part of the visible content on a website or blog. It is used by webmasters to inform search engines, such as Google, how they should treat hyperlinks.

Example of a hyperlink not using the rel=”nofollow” attribute:
<a href=”http://www.website.com/”>My Website</a>

Example of a hyperlink using the rel=”nofollow” attribute:
<a href=”http://www.website.com/” rel=”nofollow”>My Website</a>

In both above mentioned examples the phrase My Website (Anchor Text) will look identical and will be a clickable hyperlink. However, by using the NoFollow attribute in the second example Google will not give the link any credit.

To quote Google: “When Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results”.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

The best way to establish whether a website or blog is using the NoFollow attribute is to follow the following easy steps:
Step 1: Open the site in your browser
Step 2: Right click
Step 3: Left click on “View Source”
Step 4: Left click on “Find”
Step 5: Type in: nofollow

Should the site be using the rel=”nofollow” attribute it will be displayed.

Why did Google introduce it?

The simple answer is to combat comment spam. For example, to discourage comments like “For cheap Viagra click here” to be posted on blogs.

Before the NoFollow attribute was introduced comments could be posted on blogs, resulting in the poster getting a hyperlink (backlink) to his site as well as some traffic (site visitors) from people clicking on the hyperlink.

Backlinks from sites that use the NoFollow attribute are basically worthless.       

Google felt that if blogs were to use the rel=”nofollow” attribute that fewer spam comments would be posted just to get backlinks.

The main arguments against using the NoFollow attribute are:

1. If Mr. A makes a good comment on the blog of Mr. B (adds fresh content to the blog) surely he should be entitled to get some “link juice” from the blog for his efforts. If he does not get any “link juice” will he still take the time to post good comments in the hope that it will result in some traffic to his own site?  

2. Surely the owner of the blog can decide to pre-moderate all comments first before they appear live on the site and, even if he does not pre-moderate them, he can still delete all inappropriate and spam comments.

3. It has not had the desired effect of reducing comment spam.

4. Blogs, such as Wordpress blogs can combat spam by using selected plug-ins that can help identify and prevent comment spam.

Note: The NoFollow attribute is set as default on all new Wordpress blogs but can be removed by the blog owner.  

In my opinion, the main reason why Google introduced the rel=”nofollow” attribute was not really to help sites combat comment spam but to prevent the manipulation of Google’s algorithm.    
 
This is a bold statement. In order to understand its significance we have to understand the importance that hyperlinks play in Google’s algorithm, and we have to understand the significance of PageRank (Google Trade Mark).

According to Google, the heart of their software is PageRank - “A system for ranking web pages”. In the eyes of Google a link from page A to page B is a “vote” by page A for page B. The more “votes” a page gets the more important that page becomes.    
http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

Note: Relevancy plays a big role. For example, a link from page A (pornographic site) to page B (desert recipes site) is not relevant and will largely be discounted.

Google makes no secret about the fact that “webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34432&hl=en
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349&ctx=related 

The number of relevant links from high-quality sites determine the PageRank of a web page (on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest). All else being equal, web pages with a high PageRank will rank higher in the search engines for a specific keyword or key phrase than web pages with a low PageRank.

Note: Google does not rank sites only based on PageRank. There are many other factors they take into consideration. However, the fact remains that PageRank is an important factor.

When blogs started increasing in popularity Google realized they had a serious problem on their hands. Many people would spend hours every day just posting little comments on relevant and high-quality blogs to get one-way hyperlinks back to their own sites, thereby increasing the importance of their own sites as well as their search engine rankings. 

If Google left this unattended it would make a mockery of their PageRank system. They realized that many webmasters did not pre-moderate or moderate comments, often due to the fact that some blogs have hundreds of blog entries and many webmasters simply do not have the time to review all comments.

Based on the above, it can be argued that Google did themselves a favor by introducing the NoFollow attribute and that combating comment spam to help webmasters was of secondary concern. After all, the rel=”nofollow” link does not prevent spam comments from being posted and it does not prevent the hyperlinks from being clickable, sending traffic to the spammer’s website or blog.

Are there any advantages for webmasters to use the NoFollow attribute?

Absolutely!

1. It does limit content spam

Many spammers specifically look for blogs that do not use the NoFollow attribute and will not post comments on blogs that do. It is hard to estimate by how much spam comments have been reduced thanks to the NoFollow attribute.

I still see a lot of comment spam on blogs that do use the rel=”nofollow” attribute, presumably posted by people that have not checked whether or not the blog is using this attribute or by people that don’t care and simply post comments in the hope that it will generate some traffic to their website or blog.

I have seen some webmasters complain that using the NoFollow attribute has had a negative impact on people posting comments… Well, I would rather have fewer comments posted on my blog than many stupid comments from people that are only after backlinks, have nothing really to contribute and will probably never visit my blog again after posting!

2. It is important who you are linking to!    

As previously mentioned, a link from page A to page B is seen by Google as a “vote” by page A for page B. You cannot control the sites linking to your site but you can control the links from your site to other sites.

Google is very clear that webmasters should take care who they link to. According to Google: “Avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected by those links”.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Checking out hundreds of posts and links to make sure they are not links to “bad neighborhoods” is practically just about impossible and a waste of time. 

By not using the rel=”nofollow” attribute you run a huge risk that at least some of the links on your site may point to “bad neighborhoods” and that Google may rightly penalize your site.

By using the NoFollow attribute you are basically saying to Google “I did not post this link, someone else did. The fact that this link is on my site should not be seen as a “vote” from my site to the other site.

People that post on blogs only to get backlinks will obviously be disappointed by the rel=”nofollow” attribute. What some webmasters do not realize is that even if a site does not use the NoFollow attribute, and is relevant to your own site, that if the site has a lot of hyperlinks the value of a hyperlink to your own site is very much watered down… Anyway, maybe this will be a good topic for a future blog entry.   

Thanks for reading this very long blog entry on the NoFollow attribute. I trust you have not had too much trouble staying awake. Looking forward to reading your comments!   

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Blogging, Link Building, SEO, Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.