Tue 29 Jul 2008
What Is Nofollow? Should I Use It On Internal Links?
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TIP 22Adding rel=”nofollow” to a link effectively stops a link being a link, as far as Google is concerned. This means the link does not count as a vote, does not pass page rank, nor topical relevance(!). For instance, most blog comments are nofollow links, unlike this blog;
<a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">Hobo</a>
There are a lot of people who argue every single thing about nofollow and PR. That nofollow links pass PR, that you cannot sculpt page rank because you cannot see it. I think nofollow is as Google says effectively a non-link - and I think you can sculpt PR, just not ‘accurately’ lol.
You can certainly control PR on a granular level (page by page in this case) - ie which page gets available Google PR.
Some think, if that’s the case, you can sculpt Pagerank, and channel page rank to important pages in a site. For instance - adding nofollow to your contact page, or disclaimer, or privacy policy. I’m attempting to get to the end of this series before I mention Pagerank, as it really is not something you should be that concerned about. You get page rank by building links to your site - PR is a by product. Just get links. 
I think it was Matt Cutts from Google who said (paraphrasing);
- Yes, it’s ok to do this
- Yes, it can have a ’second order effect’ (cryptic as usual)
I tested it, and as far as I am concerned, on a 300 page site at least, any visible benefit is microscopic.
Unlike some of the White Hat Shock Troops, I have no problem using it, but I would prefer to keep it to a minimum, and, old school, sculpt PR by having an intelligent navigation system.
As I said, I have no problem using it. It’s up to you. And Matt Cutts was telling the truth - it’s very much a second order effect, if not less.
I am using it on the Hobo site at the moment, although most of it will be going shortly. I will be keeping the nofollow link on my home page, to ensure the link back to my home page is a keyword. Just old habit really.
Nofollow can be a ‘complicated’ construct, depending on who you are listening to. I go into it more in the article;
If you have never heard of Rel=”nofollow” before, probably best to forget about it - but I thought it best to touch on it
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We close old posts on the Hobo blog, but you can link to the article from your own blog, and get a trackback link to your website from the post.
Another great tip (I’m reading them all through my aggregator) If you don’t talk about nofollow and external links tomorrow, please do it soon!
Shout Out by Dave — July 29, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
Thanks Dave - Nofollowing external links to other websites? I don’t believe Google counts these as links and transfers no link power whatsoever. Google says that’s the way it is while many conspiracy theories persist I see it that way.
For me, I use the Linky Love Plugin so I control who gets a search engine friendly link and who does not. In short, you need to hang about in the blog for a number of sensible comments and the link you get is followed by all search engines.
I like it that way, and I heavily moderate everything. Intelligent contribution for a link.
Most blogs however have comments nofollowed, so spammers cannot get links from real blogs. This isn’t in the spirit of blogging for me although there is a risk if you link out, I’d say extensively, to a bad neighbourhood, Google might penalise you.
Shout Out by Shaun — July 31, 2008 @ 1:41 am
So, basically sculpting is for PR. Doesn’t seem to make much of a difference in ranking…yeah?
After reading all those links in your other internal link scupting post, I decided to take one of my 10 page sites and start it from scratch. Well, I made every link on the site nofollow. I plan to work backwards by taking away the nofollow one link at a time using this pr tool.
http://www.search-this.com/pagerank-decoder/
Any experience with this tool? I heard it wasn’t accurate but gives a good idea. Any other way you suggest figuring out the best sculpture? I read that you like to avoid math. I wonder how you determine the ‘perfect architecture’ then. Bet its all based on experimenting, huh!?
Shout Out by James Harrison — September 17, 2008 @ 10:00 pm
Thanks for the comment James.
Yes, from my tests, PR Scultping using nofollow is very much a ’second order effect’ and one I really wouldn’t bother with (using internally I mean and a site with a few hundred pages and lots of IBLs).
From what I see, Page Rank gets you into the main results pages, especially internal pages. It may kick in when all else is equal - and it never is.
Beyond that, I cant determine what else it is useful for. Sure, you need to get page ran to internal pages, but really, you should be doing this via an intelligent usable architecture and siloing of content.
I carried out a very simple test to see if I could determine the real page rank of my site internal pages recently. I might have an interesting result to publish shortly, but it’s such a noisey fluctuating signal, and I could be chasing flat earth theory here.
The pages on your site with the most page rank are your home page, the pages you link to from it, pages linked to from a sitewide navigation and the pages you link often too - of course, internal pages gain page rank when other sites link to them too. You don’t need maths to work this out (thank f*k!).
The only tool I used to determine my real page rank was Google. Wonder if I should share?
Thanks again for the comment
Shout Out by Shaun — September 17, 2008 @ 10:23 pm
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Cited By by The Most Useful Posts On This Blog (Probably) | Hobo — November 13, 2008 @ 4:15 am