40% Of SEOs Do Not Nofollow External Links

Sep 23, 2010 - 7:40 am 2 by
Filed Under Link Building

A few months ago we shared the poll results showing 50% nofollow their internal links for PageRank flow. So a month ago, I posted a poll asking how many people nofollow external links.

Nofollowing external links is thought to be a way of "hoarding" your PageRank or just being very careful with who you link to. So we asked in our poll the percentage of links nofollowed on your sites, on average.

We had 208 responses and 40% said they don't nofollow any of their external links. Here is the break down:

  • 40% said Non Of My External Links NoFollowed
  • 20% said only 25% Of External Links NoFollowed
  • 15% said 50% Of Of External Links NoFollowed
  • 13% said 75%+ Of External Links NoFollowed
  • 8% said 100% Of External Links NoFollowed

There were some "other answers."

Are you surprised by any of these results?

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Note: This post was written September 21st and scheduled to go live today.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Google Search Volatility

More Details

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google

Google AI Mode More Query Expansion Interfaces

Sep 14, 2026 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Search: It's Normal For Image Thumbnails To Be Slow To Update

Sep 14, 2026 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Product Value Optimization Beta

Sep 14, 2026 - 7:21 am
Google

Google Al Contribution Pilot - Paying Publishers For Use Of Content In AI

Sep 14, 2026 - 7:13 am
Google

Google AI Overviews Practice Knowledge Quiz

Sep 14, 2026 - 7:11 am
Web Analytics

Dashboards Available In Google Analytics

Sep 11, 2026 - 12:32 pm
Previous Story: Programming Note: September 23 & 24