encyclo - 10:31 pm on Jan 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

The proposed "solution" (adding a rel="nofollow") sucks badly in a technical sense too. It is a completely non-standard (although validating), user-agent-specific bit of cruft - a throwback to the old days of creative attribute creation by browser makers. The attribute has no meaning outside of a very narrow context (one spider from one search company), has no guarantee of future compatibility and is meaningless outside of that context.

What would happen if MS and Yahoo invented their own attributes, all incompatible, in order to control their bots?

<a href="http://example.com" rel="nofollow" rel="msn-noindex" rel="slurpnot" rel="nah-its-spam-mate">link</a>