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Yesterday I posted that John Mueller of Google said to a publisher that they shouldn't worry about links and just link naturally. Then people started getting upset with Google about the nofollow link attribute and why Google has it at all. John Mueller responded that it helps some publishers simply focus on building out content, without having to worry about the other things.
Here is what John said:
Either that, or they've just had it with folks asking for or sneaking in links and want to have a way of focusing on their primary content without having to worry about that part...
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 14, 2018
John is basically saying this gives publishers more time to focus on writing content that is useful to their readers. I cannot tell you how much time I spend daily dealing with spam on this site. Yes, links in comments are nofollowed but still, I spend the time trying to make sure the comments here are clean and useful and fun. And that takes time away from my writing here and my other business and family obligations.
Spam is a time suck and it is part of doing business. But John is saying at least the nofollow attribute gives some publishers a bit of piece of mind that they do not have to spend an overwhelming amount of time worrying about spammy links on their site and instead they can write content.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
