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Two days ago I wrote Google May Have Changed How PageRank Flows With Nofollow Links. It basically covers how Andrey Lipattsev from Google said something different from Matt Cutts on how PageRank flows from a page with dofollow and nofollow links on it.
I reason I covered it was because it differed from what Matt Cutts said years before. The question itself is interesting only because Matt went into it in great detail in 2009. Then we have a new Googler saying something else, so that is interesting - at least for the readers here.
Philip Busk asked Google's John Mueller about this in a Google+ hangout this morning at the 7:50 minute mark:
Recently Andrey Lipattsev, Google Senior Strategist, answered a question on Google+ about nofollow links. He seemed to be saying if you have 3 links out, 1 nofollow and 2 follow that the passed PR is 1/2 instead of the assumed 1/3. Is this now the case?
John answered that I took the question out of the context and that I should use more than Google Translate when translating the Russian statement. He said:
So this is one of those questions we get all the time. Andrey likes to loosen things up from time to time. I recommend you kind of understand the conversation around this and specifically because it was Russian it probably makes sense to use more than just Google Translate to try to understand what is happening there.
So I did, I emailed Google PR immediately when I heard it asking for clarification. I have yet to hear back. I did ask native Russian speakers to help translate it as well and in context, it came out right. But I did ask Google for an official statement on the remarks Andrey made and yes, I am still waiting to hear back.
That being said, John did dodge the question - possibly because (1) he doesn't know and (2) he really doesn't want webmasters to focus on this. But that all being true, the question is only valid because Matt Cutts addressed it in detail back in 2009. John said:
From out point of view, this is really something where you need to take a step back and ask are there more important things to worry about than where PageRank flows. Like is it 80% here, 20% there, or is it 70% here and 25% there. That’s really not something that will be affecting your site in the long run. So I would recommend kind of ignoring those kind of things.
Of course, most of us would agree with that.
So ignore PageRank flow.
Forum discussion at Google+.
