EDIT June 16th, 2009.
Originally posted in 2007, and updated a year later, this post on nofollow quells some questions and rumors on how Google handles the nofollow tag. Although nofollow has been actively used by Google for a couple of years now, there still wasn’t widespread clarity on how to use the tag despite Google being quite clear on its application.
All three major search engines said they’d start obeying rel=”nofollow” tags inserted into links. This was supposed to be a major method of combating spam. Essentially nofollow means the webmaster does not ‘vouch’ for the link and as such no ‘PR juice’ is sent via the link.
Google at one time even said you could use nofollow internally to control Page Rank flow. Turns out none of this is true anymore after Google did an about-face and changed their mind (they actually changed their mind a while ago but only told people now.)
Nofollow is Now Useless
Initially developed to combat spam in, among other things, blogs, the uses are wider now. All WordPress blogs have the featured automatically installed for all blog comments.
The question for the longest time was: “Does Google follow the link but not count it? Or do they simply not follow the link?”
The answer from the mouth of Google is here. Google will NOT follow any link with nofollow attributes unless it is found elsewhere.
However, they will use it for DISCOVERY of links, but won’t pass Page Rank.
Another interesting application is the use of Nofollow for INTERNAL LINKS. Sculpting page rank distribution within your web site is a method of giving certain pages more precedence for the Google eyes. Think of your web site as a bucked of water, all incoming web links giving you a bit more water.
The entire site will ‘bleed’ water across the web site; you can plug these holes using nofollow. You, however, MUST nofollow every instance of internal links for it to make sense to Google. So EVERY contact page must be nofollwed. If you leave one, then google will find it and index it.
Well, now it seems none of this is true nor relevant. Google (through Matt Cutts) have revealed they no longer support nofollow (or don’t count it) and you shouldn’t bother trying to ‘sculpt Page Rank‘.
Ok, fine and dandy. What are the impacts? Well you aren’t hurt from using nofollow, but it brings up an important question you should address if you haven’t already–that’s internal page navigation.
Ensure you have useful, clear, and concise internal navigation. Furthermore, if you really don’t want Google to find certain pages then you use nofollow or noindex tags, or robots.txt files to accomplish this goal.
So one less thing to worry about in the SEO field, but still highlights the need for clarity on the web site–the user experience. Huh, what a concept, thinking about your user…. :P
[tags]nofollow, google nofollow, no follow, nofollow links[/tags]