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This is more of a theoretical question... So last week we covered how Google will use unlinked URLs for discovery. I.e. If I list out a url, like www.bigbluepineapplechart.com/unlinked.html, Google will pick it up as a URL for discovery purposes but not pass any PageRank.
This got me thinking while writing the QR codes URLs article...
What about links with nofollow. If Google stripes out the link part, would they pick up the URL part and use it for discovery?
Google's nofollow FAQ said that Google won't pass PageRank or trust from a page that links to another page using the nofollow attribute. Google goes further to say they won't even use it for discovering new content and they said, "Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web."
So if they drop the target link from the graph, and they are just left with the citation without the link part, would they use the citation for discoverability?
According to this help document, it seems not - but maybe this is a corner case?
Forum discussion at Google+.
