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Google's Matt Cutts posted a video yesterday on the topic of PageRank sculpting using the nofollow attribute and/or using the nofollow attribute on internal links. Here it is:
In short, Matt says do not use it for internal links - never.
But do you agree? Some webmasters do and some don't. Here is one SEO on Twitter that said no:
Don't follow his advise :) @mattcutts from @google on nofollow used for internal links http://youtu.be/4SAPUx4Beh8 /via @rustybrick
Tomy Lorsch
tomylorsch
But in a WebmasterWorldthread, Tedster said it does work and shared a story. He said:
Last year I was asked to look at a site that had major ranking troubles. They had used nofollow extensively, trying to sculpt PageRank to go only to those pages they wanted to see in search results. Even some main menu items had nofollow!At the time they were below 10% of total traffic from search. I suggested they remove all of the nofollows and they did. One month later they were up to about 30% traffic from search. I haven't checked in with them lately, but I'd guess they continued to improve - unless they got tricky again.
Do you use it at all? Take my poll below:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
sunil
06/30/2010 01:14 pm
The thing is that, On your webpage, If you have multiple URLs pointing to a same page, you can add nofollow one of the links. what do you think?
Michael Martinez
06/30/2010 05:53 pm
There is no need to worry about multiple outbound links on your pages. This is another SEO myth. Google is already already normalizing or ignoring the secondary links.
Chris
06/30/2010 08:14 pm
Why is there discussion on this? It is pretty cut and dry. Google changed the way they treat nofollow over a year ago, and instead of removing the link from their PR calculations, they keep the link in the calculations but only zero out the PR it would have after the fact. This means a nofollow link dilutes the value of the other links on the page. So using them for internal links is stupid. Ever since Matt, over a year ago, explicitly announced the nofollow treatment change, this has been a rather obvious side effect. If you disbelieve it, then you're basically accusing him of lying, or the mathematical underpinnings of the concept elude you.
Aj
07/06/2010 04:41 pm
I don't agree at all. For the most part there is no point in spreading page rank to your contact page, privacy policy, terms of use and other pages that have no relevant content to the niche of your site.
Mickey
07/08/2010 02:27 am
AJ -- That's the point; now you DO want to pass PageRank to those pages, so they can flow it around to the other pages via your navigation. By nofollowing those links, the PageRank is simply evaporating with each iteration. Even if you don't want those pages to rank well, it'd be silly not to let PR flow to them so you can keep it flowing throughout your site.