Brett_Tabke - 4:38 pm on Jan 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

First, lets backup and clear up a ton of misinformation about this subject that is out there:

a) Google fully obeys a meta NO INDEX tag. Has never failed once at that function that I am aware of.

b) Google does not support use the "no follow" in the robots meta tag. The attribute means nothing to any of the modern search engines. There is no requiement on the engines to obey the tag as there can be any number of ways to discover pages other than from the links on that page. If you put a page on a public server that a browser can get too - then the search engines are under no obligation to stay away from that page or not list even the url. If you don't want a page or the url in a search engine - then don't put it on the web or specifically block it with a bots.txt.

I can not see Google inventing a new tag to address problems with it's own methodology. If google introduces a new tag or obeys an old one, there will be a headline story in SEO, "Google Admits Page Rank Problems". It would be the first public admission by Google that their algo is still based around links and that there is a problem with that methodology.

If Google were to publically admit a problem with link counting methodologies, it would send a signal to every seo on the web to dust off the algo crackers and fire up the link buying campaings because it is open season.

To give us the "no follow" tag, would be the best SE spam tool we could be given. It would effectively stop comment spam, but blow open the doors to blog spam the old fashioned way...bring it on.