Entries from Search Engine Roundtable tagged with 'nofollow'

Poll: 38% Will Keep NoFollows On Their Links

A few weeks ago, we ran a poll asking Will You Remove The NoFollow Attributes From Your Pages? Why did we ask SEOs and webmasters this question? With the recent update from Google on how they handle the nofollow'ed links,...

Poll: Will You Remove The NoFollow Attributes From Your Pages?

With the latest on how Google handles the nofollow attribute, I know of many webmasters who are removing them completely from their sites. Instead, they are either not linking out or linking out without the nofollow attribute added to the...

Are Blogs Doomed With NoFollow PageRank Sculpting Issue?

Yesterday we covered the news that SEOs are wasting PageRank by using the nofollow to sculpt their PageRank. In short, if you had 10 links on a page, and nofollowed 5 of them, the 5 that are followed only get...

NoFollow To Cause Revolt: Wasted PageRank via Sculpting & JavaScript Links Require NoFollow

Last night at SMX Advanced Matt Cutts of Google reportedly dropped a bombshell on the SEO community when he said that using the nofollow to PageRank sculpt might not work like you (SEOs) thought. Danny Sullivan explained it well: If...

Should Google Go The Rel=Follow Route? Opt In vs. Opt Out

There is a pretty funny thread for anyone who is somewhat familiar with the SEO industry. A thread at Google Webmasters Help has this SEO who goes on a rant about the nofollow and what have happened to links. In...

Do Search Engines Read The Anchor Text of NoFollowed Links?

A HighRankings Forum thread asks an interesting question. If I add links to my web page and nofollow them, does Google still read the anchor text of the link and use that in part of how they determine what my...

Do Nofollow Tags With Spaces Pass Link Value?

A WebmasterWorld thread asks an interesting question. If you have a space in the nofollow link attribute, does Google consider it the same as having no space? Let me explain. A standard syntax for the nofollow attribute looks like this:...

Craiglist Adds NoFollow Meta Tag To Pages

It appears Craigslist, the very popular and old school directory listing site, has added the nofollow meta tag to most of their pages. If you view the source of the listing pages, you should see <meta name="robots" content="NOARCHIVE,NOFOLLOW"> in the...

SEOs Split On Buying Links Have The NoFollow Attribute

In May I ran an informal poll asking Would You Buy a Link With a NoFollow Attribute? In short, a nofollow attribute is an HTML attribute you add to a hyperlink that tells the search engines that you do not...

Why Do People Nofollow Unimportant Pages?

Earlier this year, we discussed the possibility of page sculpting or siloing where you point your link juice to the more important pages and nofollow the less important pages. A month after the original post came out, we looked into...

Would You Buy a Link With a NoFollow Attribute?

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks members if they would consider buying a link that has a nofollow attribute appended to it. For those who don't know what the nofollow attribute is a snippet of code added to the html of...

Can PageRank Sculpting Get You Penalized in Google?

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if PageRank sculpting, be it through the nofollow attribute, JavaScript or robots.txt file, can it penalize you in Google? Will Google ever look at that to penalize your site? And so on. I am 99%...

The Implications of the nofollow Tag, Illustrated

The eVisibility guys, who gave out a super cool shirt at SMX West (see photo below), wrote an interesting post about the implications of the nofollow tag. They use an illustration that describes how nofollow works by not passing juice...

Yahoo's Flickr Slaps on NoFollows on Photo Owner's Links

As expected, Yahoo's Flickr has finally added the nofollow attribute on links generated by the owner of the photo. We have covered how you can use Flickr in your SEO and traffic building strategy but some of that has been...

Does Using a NoFollow Attribute Raise a Red Flag at Google?

Eric Lander wrote a piece at Search Engine Journal named NoFollow: An SEO Red Flag? which sparked some interesting debate over in a Sphinn thread. The question at hand is, does using a nofollow attribute on many of your links...

Google Drops NoFollow on Google Links After Being Called Out For Selling Links

Michael Gray discovered a very controversial tactic that Google is employing on their website. He notes that several partners who have implemented Google Checkout have PR8 links without nofollow. Obviously, there's some concern here. Why is Google not following their...

Why Would You Buy Nofollow Links?

With the entire ongoing debate about paid links, is there a benefit to buying links with nofollow? Perhaps. What would be your argument to go with nofollow paid links? For one, you can possibly get traffic from the link even...

Should Google Take Advantage of the Web 2.0 Dynamic and Follow Links?

As many of you know, I'm a heavy social media user. I love finding interesting content that is typically determined by an audience of my peers who vote on articles on many different web 2.0 sites. A WebmasterWorld member, whose...

What Does This Google PageRank Message Mean?

Yesterday we reported about a 2nd Google PageRank in October 2007 which turned out to be a message from Google, at least most of us think so. At Search Engine Land I wrote in Google's PageRank Update Goes After Paid...

Matt Cutts Clarifies Appropriate Uses of the nofollow Tag

A few days ago, we reported on Google's clarification of hidden text and how not to get yourself penalized. This is part of an ongoing "Popular Picks" series in Google Groups and Matt Cutts has decided to clarify the nofollow...

Hiding The NoFollow from Advertisers on Ad Links

A WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums thread discusses how some publishers are now applying the nofollow attribute to ads they had already sold without the nofollow attribute on them. One publisher actually was accused of "breach of contract" over applying the...

Matt Cutts Provides Insight into the "nofollow" Attribute

Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz tied Matt Cutts to a chair and pleaded with him asked Matt to provide some clarifications regarding the nofollow attribute. Matt essentially said that nofollow links aren't followed, but you can exercise control over what...

Are Nofollow Links Listed in Google Webmaster Tools?

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if the incoming links in Google Webmaster Tools list the nofollowed links. Yes. All links show up in Google Webmaster Tools, but Google Webmaster Tools does not make any distinctions between incoming links that pass link...

YouTube Video Links Are 'NoFollowed'

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if Google counts the links from YouTube videos. The simple answer is no. If you look at a YouTube video that has a link in the description field, you will notice that in the code...

New Tag Cloud at Search Engine Roundtable: Should Tag Clouds be Blocked from Search Engines?

This past Sunday I launched a new element for locating content at the Search Engine Roundtable, I launched the Search Engine Roundtable Tag Cloud. Ever since we upgraded to the new version of Movable Type, which supported tags, I have...

Interview with Google's Adam Lasnik on Paid Links, Duplicate Content, and Other Topics

A DigitalPoint Forums post links to an interview Eric Enge had with Google's Search Evangelist, Adam Lasnik. In the interview, Adam discusses paid links, nofollow links, duplicate content and crawling, validated pages and how they are handled by the algorithm,...

Can The Nofollow Tag Hurt Ones Rankings?

There is an interesting thread at WebmasterWorld about a site that appears to be losing ground in Google because they used the nofollow attribute for linking to some of their internal pages. For example, they nofollowed links to their privacy...

How Does Google Handle The NoFollow Attribute?

I spotted a good Google Groups thread that has Google's official word on how they handle the nofollow attribute in links. When Google began complying with the nofollow attribute, they posted this blog entry but people are still fuzzy today...

SEO's Force Wikipedia to Add Nofollow Back To Wikipedia Links

A Cre8asite Forums thread reports that Wikipedia has added nofollow attributes to all the links within the English Wikipedia. Joost had the scoop sharing that due to the most recent SEO contest, the founder, Jimbo Wales, has ordered that the...

Does The rel="nofollow" Mean Not Follow?

The rel="nofollow" was introduced by the search engines back in 2004 (I believe). Since then we have not had a clear understanding on how exactly each search engine treats them. Some speculate that the rel="nofollow" means that the search engines...

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