What is Nofollow tag, and when to avoid it

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The nofollow tag was introduced by Google as a means of combating spam. The theory goes like this - Google search bots do not credit any links with a rel=”nofollow” tag attached to them. Google advised webmasters to nofollow all the unwanted, unrelated links so that Google could improve their searches, by eliminating any false links.

That is just the theory. In reality, spammers have taken it to a whole new level, by link-bombing comment fields of blogs, using automated bots and entering spam links in URL field of comments. Thus, the spammers have learnt to adapt to the new ecosystem that Google created. Now, the spammers rely more on click-through traffic as compared to the past.

To make matters worse, Google is the only search engine that honours the nofollow tag completely. Compliance of nofollow is partial in Yahoo, and none in Ask and other SEs. Thus, the nofollow tag that was heralded as the next big thing in fighting spam became limited to just optimization for Google.

The problem

The problem begins, when nofollow is actually a cause of concern for writers, bloggers and webmasters. Very often, you’d see fanatics nofollowing every link on their page, hoping to make themselves clean. Sometimes, they nofollow links in posts, when referring to a blog post or crediting/quoting a post. By doing this, they are depriving others of well-deserved link juice. Not only does this affect the other blogger in terms of links lost, but also search engines.

Let us take an example of blog A, quoting and linking to blog B. ‘A’ features partial content which is quoted and linked. However, the link is nofollow’d. Now, the search engines do not understand that the quote is actually sourced from blog B. Thus, B may even be penalized for duplicate content.

The reason is simple - search engines, notably Google, relies on the power of links to accurately point to a website. When you do not give a full SEO link, you are not only depriving the blogger of a genuine link, but also derailing the search bots.

The solution

The obvious solution is to link to source with a dofollow, but this is not just textbook application. I know that many bloggers hesitate to link to source in the fear of losing the ‘all-so-important’ PR. The fact is, linking out in post content does not matter as much, since your archives do not leak much PR. What you need to focus is on the on-page elements like outgoing links on the homepage - in the sidebar, header and so on.

Many blogs have gone so far so as to take out the nofollow tag in the comments section of posts - a tip of the hat from me to all of them. As I said above, nofollow really is an obsolete measure, and giving commenters much-needed credit can actually help.

A final thought - do not hesitate to use nofollow to link to blogs whom you are not familiar with, or has known only for a short time. Also, do nofollow links to corporate sites, as they are most likely unrelated, and do massive SEO and do not care about links from you.

October 28th, 2007 Leave a comment