I just nofollow'ed my entire site

Why not horde the PR?

[martingale]

So I've just done marking every external link on my site REL=NOFOLLOW.

I wonder if google will retract this NOFOLLOW idea when every single site on the net marks every single link they've got NOFOLLOW. My understanding of it is that you lose PR for any link you have that aren't so marked...

This is what the econ folks call a "Nash Equilibrium" where we're each of us going to lose a little in order not to be the sucker who loses a lot. I think this NOFOLLOW thing is silly, but I sure don't want to be the sucker.

[Sanenet]

Of course, this strategy assumes that Google hasn't thought of this, and hasn't included an inbuilt penalty for sites that do this. Should be an interesting experiment! :)

[Macro]

Why would they have an in-built penalty for authoritative sites like wikipedia?

[victor]

I think it's a great development.

The web started as a place for people who wanted to share information.

It got hijacked people who had something to sell; and then by people who wanted to make a commission from the people who had something to sell.

And, more recently, it's been swamped by the people who just want to talk.

All these groups have risen to the top in search engines by, in effect, trading links.

Let's get back to the situation where a link is the site author's endorsement that there is something of interest at the other end of the link, rather than as a way of articifially inflating the importance of the linking site.

I hope you'll start a race to the bottom among sites who link for commercial purposes. Eventually, none of them will have links of value as far as Google is concerned.

The bloggers are already being taken care of by this same initiative.

So soon, maybe, valuable information sites -- whose owners provide links because they value the time of their visitors -- will naturally all float to the top of SERPS.

I'd be happy with that. Thanks for starting it off.

[pageoneresults]

So I've just done marking every external link on my site REL=NOFOLLOW.

If your site had any rankings to begin with, expect those to change over the next 30-60 days while those nofollows are indexed. Without the OBLs (Outbound Links) you are missing an important part of the equation and your rankings will most likely be negatively affected.

P.S. This is not an attribute to be used by developers to influence ranking criteria. ;)

[Iguana]

Just because a link is marked as NOFOLLOW doesn't mean it will be treated any differently from other links as regards the PR distribution on your own site. If you have 2 links on a page one internal and one external (nofollow) then Google may well only pass on 1/2 of the PR (minus dampening factor) to your internal link.

Another thing to think about is how your pages themes/meaning may be defined by outgoing links. Certainly with the Adsense technology (which is probably now incorporated as a factor with Googles algo) you can change the sort of adverts you get by changing your out-going links. It could do you harm to your pages rankings if you add NOFOLLOW to relevant outgoing links

[PCInk]

If you add NOFOLLOW, Google may class the site you link to as worthless in your opinion. Using this theory, a reciprical link may not pass any PR back - after all, you told Google that you thought is wasn't a particularly relevant link.

Also, who will want to link to you if you never link out? Link partners may begin to drop your inbound links or treat you the same way you have treated them.

This may work to your benefit, it may actually cause your own listings to plummet or your own PR to go into freefall.

[keywordguru]

I agree, only use it where ethically necessary. As we all know, this is a brand new change and nobody knows the true outcome.

I am sure a loophole will be figured out and people will benefit from it for a while....until G figures it out.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
KG

[kevinpate]

May your bandwidth be strong
May your server never see an attack
May your in bound linkers be next to decide
"What a great idea is that!"

[martinibuster]

Ooooo!
Let us know how you're doing next month! I love a guinea pig.

[pmkpmk]

I always searched for a way to link out to my competition (because I'm confident about my widgets) without giving them any other benefits like PR.

If this feature does not backfire, I will probably use it for these competition links (and not other links).

[Import Export]

It's not like it was hinted, but moreless they came straight out to say that sites abusing/missusing this will be taken into account differently.. Because it is impossible to actually know what google/other se's considers abusing/missusing, and more importantly what sites qualify for each, there is nothing useful someones test could give back to others.. Playing around with this tag, if not using it for what it was intended for, is like throwing another aspect of your site to chance. For what you are trying to gain, there are too many other, safer, methods to be using.. Best of luck..

[dregs33]

hi

I have different view point on links in my sites, I have had sites since before Google and I will probably have sites after Google, if someone links to me honestly, then I will link to them. Things like PR are temporary, but a link from a proper website owner lasts a long time.

I have no intention of marking all my links rel=nofollow, I consider one way links playing to the current SE's and want no part of it. Links are links with no fancy stuff inbetween.

dregs33

[iblaine]

Much like a search engine is unable to recognize the difference between a normal blog and one that has been littered with spam, a search engine is probably unable to detect the difference between legitimate and illegitimate use of the nofollow tag.

[pmkpmk]

I'm not sure about that one. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I guess the days of innocence have gone by, and search engines must use quite a lot of techniques in order to evaluate sites.

Forums, guestbooks and blogs - the type of pages the nofollow-tag is aimed at - share many similarities:

• Even in the days of CSS, many of them will still use a 2-column table structure
  
• They will have many repeating graphics like user-icons, new-icons, add-comment-icons, private-message-icons
  
• Telltale phrases like "add comment", "add message", "post new message" in combination with links/hrefs.
  
• Timestamps
  

I guess it does not even require hardcore pattern-recognition programming in order to spot such similarities. You can count them, and if a page surpasses a certain threshold, it is most likely a forum/blog/guestbook and the nofollow tag would be legitimate.

[dregs33]

Hi

Its not easy to say who I was replying to in my previous post, I was mainly replying to the intial post.
<<--
So I've just done marking every external link on my site REL=NOFOLLOW.
-->>

The rest of my post was aimed at people that think that PR is so important, at the moment it maybe but things change. Link development is about one thing exchanging links with other website owners, this is the only important thing, scheming and cheating to enhancing your ranking in the flavour of the month SE will bring you nothing in the long term.

Over the last 8 years I have have seen search engines, directories, and the like come and go. Most of my orignal link partners are still with me.

dregs33

[chrisnrae]

>>> unable to detect the difference between legitimate and illegitimate use of the nofollow tag

I tend to agree with ya iblaine. However, I do think a search engine will notice that a site has no outbound links to any on topic or authority sites. I've always believed outbound linking to good sites to be a good, and natural, part of a website for SEO purposes.

[graywolf]

Why not just send all of the links you don't want followed to a bounce page on your site. Then dis-allow that page from being indexed in your robots.txt?

[larryhatch]

It should be easy for the SEs to distinguish between a PR hoarder and a wiki or blog.
Nofollow was designed for wikis and blogs, so no penalty for them.
The PR hoarder may very well be penalized, once they SEs get their number.
It may take a while, but the footprint of the nofollow sites should become pretty obvious.

If someone wants to nofollow all their outgoing links, please keep us advised.
I'm sure we all want to hear the results. - Larry

[ogletree]

Your assumption that links diminish your pr is not true. If that were true DMOZ would have no pr to rank. DMOZ ranks quite well. A lot of SEO's keep saying this and treating it like it was doctrine. Outgoing links do not hurt your PR. It's a moot issue anyhow because PR does not mean much these days. Anchor text is whats all the rage.

Also someone said to use the tag for it's purpose. I thought the purpose was to stop blog spam. Meaning that bloggers can turn on links again and never worry about them because with the nofllow tag spammers won't want to spam your site. At least that is what G seems to be trying to say.

I don't think your site will have any affect negitive or positive.

[victor]

Good points ogletree.

Another perspective on that....PR is almost irrelevant compared to the other 99 factors that determine SERP poistioning.

It seems obvious that Google wants to send people to quality destinations.

So why should it send them to a site that appears to be a dead end?

Google is indexing the web so it seems reasonable to assume it does not give much priority to stray threads that dangle from the web.

So if you don't link out to what google recognises as quality destinations, there is higher chance that Google will rank you lower than those other sites.

"Hoarding PR" is a bit like airports trying to hoard passengers by only allowing incoming flights.

[Macro]

Link development is about one thing exchanging links with other website owners

No, it's not. That's reciprocal link development that you're talking about.

scheming and cheating to enhancing your ranking

And your reciprocal linking is not designed to influence search engine algos? How innocent.

It's "scheming and cheating" only when you do it surreptitiously to your link partners. There are a lot of sites I provide one-way link to because their related content may be of interest to my visitors. I haven't decided what I'm going to do on nofollow but, if I do add it to these links, whom would you say I am cheating?

So why should it send them to a site that appears to be a dead end

Your site can be a dead end for widget services but a relevant destination for widgets. We'll see a lot of innovative uses of the tags in the months/years to come.

"Hoarding PR" is a bit like airports trying to hoard passengers by only allowing incoming flights.

Not an analogy I'd use. Airports charge outgoing passengers a fee.

[ryan26]

Firstly, I can't imagine Google spending their precious company time working on a way to penalize websites that decide to use the nofollow attribute in this manner.

Disqualifying your outbound links from the scoring algorithm is fair play. Google has given you this option.

However, your trial 'abuse' of the attribute tag is based on an assumption that you will benefit from it. Many other webmasters are also really excited at the possibilities. Do you really think that they would have given you this type of control? Way too easy, dude.

The saying "You Are Who You Link To" goes a long way here.

[balam]

> Firstly, I can't imagine Google spending their precious company time working on a way to penalize websites that decide to use the nofollow attribute in this manner.

It's not a waste of company time if Google feels that it's abuse and damages the quality of their index.

.....

I've been sitting on this for several days, waiting to see if someone with more, um, authority?/credibility?/believability? would bring it up:

I have it on good authority - I asked Google! - for more specifics on "nofollow." To nutshell the answer, Google won't follow "nofollow" links (really? ;), nor will they be used in PR calculation. But!, in the near future they may give these links some weight if there's other evidence that the linked-to site is good.

So in other words, if you want to hedge your bets and not run the risk of passing any PR, then you should REMOVE COMPLETELY any outbound links from your site.

If you're anything but a blog, it would seem that "nofollow" is a grey-hat technique at best. I'm not touching it until the guinea pigs report back.

[pmkpmk]

When did you ask them, and how? Because I asked them as well via email from my GMail account when this thread started, and I got no reply so far.

[pageoneresults]

In the near future they may give these links some weight if there's other evidence that the linked-to site is good.

They would first have to follow that link to make any determinations, am I correct?

From Technorati on the rel="nofollow"

By adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines). Typical use cases include links created by 3rd party commenters on blogs, or links the author wishes to point to, but avoid endorsing.

Based on the above information, it appears that links may be followed, but there won't be any additional weight or ranking afforded to it.

I'm with many others when I say that I'll wait and see how this progresses. Right now, I wouldn't use it on anything other than a blog, forum, or anywhere a user has control over posting links without them being reviewed beforehand.

This solidifies my above thinking...

Preventing Comment Spam [google.com]

They've updated that blog entry since it was first posted.

[balam]

pmkpmk,

> When did you ask them, and how?

I asked them the day after "the story broke," using the email address they posted in their blog entry.

WW thread with link to blog (Message 3):
[webmasterworld.com ]

Specific Google blog entry:
[google.com ]

(Remove the space between "google" & "blog." Why is that term obfuscated?)

The email address is in the paragraph after the "Is this a blog-only change?" question/answer, right after the part where they ask, "Got more questions?" :)

pageoneresults,

> They would first have to follow that link to make any determinations, am I correct?

I don't think so.

They don't have to follow the link to know where it goes (and I don't think there's been any suggestion that a nofollow link is totally ignored), and unless it's a brand new site, there's a decent chance the site is already in their index. Therefore they already know the theme of the linked-to site. If other sites with the same theme link to it (without nofollow), there's your "evidence," the "vote of confidence" that the site is a quality site - in other words, the status quo, as we knew it this time last week, is maintained.

I think we're all aware that nofollow means "I don't trust this link"; the other side of that coin is, "But I still think it's worth it to have this link." So if you're still maintaining the link - or more pointedly, you added the link in the first place - why wouldn't the SEs (eventually) take that into consideration (to some degree)? Especially if your & the linked-to site have the same theme.

And that's where I think Google in particular will catch "abusers" of nofollow. The guinea pigs will cheer or cry soon enough.

(There are definitely times when it's better to not be on the bleeding edge. Anyone want a used BetaMax?)

<added>
pageoneresults, your link is broken. Victim of obfuscation. You'll need to copy 'n' paste the link, as I note above.
</added>

[martingale]

How can Google tell the difference between a link that I added, and a link that my users add? That's some serious sophistication. Some SOME pages could be analyzed and determined that they aren't very blog like. But a lot of blogs don't look very blog like; and Wiki sites certainly don't.

If they do what's been suggested here and penalize anyone who nofollow's their links then blogs and wiki site are going to get hammered in google.

[martingale]

Basically, if they could do this well enough to penalize people who "abuse" nofollow then they could do it well enough to detect abusive links in the first place... clearly they can't or they wouldn't be adding the nofollow tag.

[MatthewHSE]

I'm not doing a thing with this until I've heard some of the actual impact it has on sites that try it. Sure hope the important directories don't add this.