Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Nice find from Matt Cutts' blog post above (thanks annej):
Anytime you have a user that you’d trust, there’s no need to use nofollow links.
Many sites have highly trusted direct link ads.
Say our small town dentist buys an ad on the small town's newspaper website and the dentist has been working on the newspaper publisher's teeth for years. Plenty of trust there; it's a relevant ad for the local community, and it's useful for the newspaper readers.
Less than a year ago Google's rules didn't require nofollow on the ad. Today they do. What will their rules be next year?
In contrast I see Gooooogle ads to "Lower My Bills" and "Free Teen Chat" all over the web. I see these junk ads on scraper sites, on parked domains, and on MFA sites. Does Google trust these companies? Are these ads good for users? Do they add value to the web?
The hypocrisy from Google is rich in so many different ways. You'd think fixing their algorithm would have been easier than jumping the shark.
[edited by: tedster at 4:13 pm (utc) on April 25, 2007]
Google isn't hunting Wikipedia. It is hunting YOU!
Funny how people accuse Matt of fearmongering and then you read posts like this which is 10 times the fearmongering, with absolutely no supporting evidence.
Google isn't hunting me, I don't sell nor buy paid links. Using nofollow is one way of showing this.
It is a WONDERFUL way though of google tracking people who are actually interested in search results.
Lets face it. MOST PEOPLE know nothing about web search. It's only people like us hanging out in places like this that are actually skewing the search results.
White hat or black hat we are all doing things to be as best we can be in the search results. Google just wants to see your hand :)
It is a WONDERFUL way though of google tracking people who are actually interested in search results.
And people who use off-the-shelf blogging, Wiki and CMS software who are amateurs and have no idea how search results are calculated, so that argument doesn't hold water.
Uhm...now let me think. Off the shelf. Right. Lets discount all those that are using OFF THE SHELF and what are we left with. WOW PHD egg heads, we are left with the cream of the search result hunters. Go get em egg eds.
Lets discount all those that are using OFF THE SHELF and what are we left with.
But there are hundreds of scripts added every day which have the added functionality of the nofollow attribute (I've written a few dozen myself) and these are being used by novices who skim through the documentation and expect nofollow to work just like it was originally intended: As a way to protect against unverified or untrusted links.
Nofollow is being adopted at a rapid rate by novices and professionals alike. I don't see how Google could accurately differentiate. I also don't see why they would want to. It would be easy to spot if they started using the presence of the nofollow tag to penalize sites, and if they did, no webmaster would trust them again.
There was a need for the nofollow attribute, and though it is an obvious misnomer, it does fill that need.
1. Biz organizations (both profit and non-profit) who charge an annual membership fee to be a member and which includes being listed on their website along with a 'free' link to the members website?
2. Forums which, charge for membership or for their use and allow members to link their own websites from their personal account pages?
3. Online editorial columnists like restaurant/entertainment reviewers who usually get a free meal/ticket to write about a restaurant/show and include a link to their website? Is that considered payment?
Like I mentioned before, I think this is only the final "clean-up" of the finer points of an algorithm which has been sliding into place over the last year. Disregarding and/or reducing the effectiveness of links from the major obvious players like Yahoos paid directory listings was the start and now they're just trying to pick up the less obvious ones. Nothing will drastically change IMHO.
BTW, I wish I'd known about this nofollow thing earlier. I added it to my link to G yesterday and to ALL my many googlemaps links today. HAD to! G pays me as an adsense publisher. :) Besides I figure they already have enough PR to not need mine. Hmm, do you still get credit for outlinking to GOOD authority sites if you put nofollow on their links? :)
On the other hand if we are SEOing to the point that we look more like a supernova Google might pay attention to what we do.
Huh? How on Earth does that follow?
Exactly. Nofollow means no vote and that's all it means and that's all it will ever mean. It's not about profiling a site because they have nofollows pointing at them, it's not about penalizing a site because they have identified themselves as a seller of links. It just means that you've linked to a page and have declined to have the link equal a vote. For Google to use it otherwise would mean a PR (public relations, not pagerank) disaster.
How about repeating that "experiment" again and watch on several DCs what will happen to the said page?
Good point! That nofollow was in there for around 36 hours but i didn't check other DCs because that
site is very International what may explain, that there had never been any difference in rankings at
various DCs.
And to be honest, that site is too important for me to do too much testing. Sorry, mate!
MikeNoLastName
Nothing will drastically change IMHO.
I agree. Too many Google results are utterly disgusting and damaging whole global industries.
My wish would be, thast these algo experts get their act togther. But my fear is, that things gotten
completely out of hand.
I think this is only the final "clean-up" of the finer points of an algorithm
Asking for snitches helping them to do their job looks like a final outcry of someone, who has lost the fight. At least for the top 5 result pages their algo does not seem to work at all for far too many basic keywords.
Nofollow means no vote and that's all it means and that's all it will ever mean.I disagree. Nofollow has already shown the ability to morph from one thing into another. Google originally said
when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.Nofollow has changed a bit since then and I think it's reasonable to assume the way it's interpreted has too. Google is the master of mining and manipulating vast amounts of data. If they determine that the presence or lack of nofollow on a link tells them something, they will use that information to maximize their shareholder value. What that means for all of us or any separate groups of us is still up in the air since we and they don't know what the information will prove at this point.
I insist that paid links on topic are not currupting the google results compared to many other tactics that google has never fixed.
Just curious. Where did you find that quote ("when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks...)? The webmaster central blog?
It's about preventing comment spam.
So why not give Google the benefit of the doubt? I am.
Another dumb idea not letting new content to rank for a year or so
Some new sites of mine went up to PR 3 and 4 within a few months and i never ever have paid for a link. All are strictly content with relevant pictures and info.
So why not give Google the benefit of the doubt?Because I don't have any links that I don't consider votes.
So why not give Google the benefit of the doubt? I am.
Google doesn't give you the benefit of the doubt. Why should you give Google the benefit of the doubt?
As I outlined in a long post way back in this thread, this is the key trust issue for me: We don't know when Google's rankings are biased by financial gain. We have no reason tell them when our links biased by financial gain.
Frankly, Google has given webmasters far more reason to mistrust their search results than webmasters have given Google to mistrust their links.
Evidence, please?
As for Google biasing results based on "finananial gain," did you by any chance catch the Senate hearings regarding Net Neutrality? I did, and the Google rep vehemently objected to the cable companies accusations that Google was engaged in that. You might want to check it out.
Frankly, Google has given webmasters far more reason to mistrust their search results than webmasters have given Google to mistrust their links.
Evidence, please?
No, I don't have any evidence Google is biasing their rankings for financial gain. Likewise, nobody has any evidence they are not.
We can, however, look at Google's rankings, actions and motivations for indications of bias. Here's a start:
1. Google created an advertising product (AdSense) that creates an inherent conflict of interest in how they choose to rank sites, as there is enormous financial benefit to ranking an Adsense site higher.
2. Google is proceeding with a THREE BILLION DOLLAR acquisition of DoubleClick, upon the culmination of which there will be an additional and greater conflict of interest in how they choose to rank sites.
3. Google continues to rank "made for Adsense", scraper and other low quality but Google revenue generating sites they could easily identify and remove from their results.
4. Google arbitrarily and capriciously changes their algorithms to shake up the rankings with no noticeable improvement in their search results, forcing sites that previously received organic traffic to purchase Adwords.
5. Google has intentionally made their ranking algorithms so complex and obfuscated their data (PageRank, links, indexed pages, etc) so as to camouflage any indications as why sites rank, providing substantial cover for biasing their ranking.
And that's just off the top of my head. What other indications of Google bias are people seeing?
Any PhD economics students out there looking for a thesis topic? I'll bet all my PageRank if you do an academically rigorous study of bias in search results you'll make the front page of every newspaper in the world. The economist that recently won fame by finding the backdating of US stock options will be jealous.
I'm not going to link to and/or even consider selling a link to someone until I'm satisfied that it benefits my users. At that point, I'm confident that my decision was justified and I don't need to tag that link as nofollow. I'm not running a blog where comments can be made freely. I'm running a freakin' website that one, provides the users with information and/or products/services they are looking for. Two, provides alternative resources that may be of interest to the users.I've been linking to those sites the same way since the mid 90s. Why do I have to change my methods now? I'm not doing anything differently now that I wasn't doing then. What gives?
I agree wholeheartedly. Not sure why people feel that SE's are developing the next W3C HTML markup language, which everyone needs to follow. If I haven't looked at a site or don't feel good about linking to a site, what difference does it make if I use nofollow or run it through a click counter - I simply shouldn't be linking to it.
Hey, are reciprocal links considered paid links since they were bartered for and/or traded? How about if you hire someone to get them for you?
The whole fricken thing is nonsense in my opinion, trying to sort out problems that the search engines created.
Some new sites of mine went up to PR 3 and 4 within a few months and i never ever have paid for a link. All are strictly content with relevant pictures and info.
My comment was about sandbox and it never prevented anyone from getting a new PR whether the links paid or not. My opinion is that sandbox is not a verygood idea to control the MFA sites back in 2004. Howver they were successful.
Infact they could kill the visible PR which is of no help for most of the normal web users and can cotrol PR manipulation too, but that may not have much effect on the advertising industry inturn with google's revenue.
Does any one believe that 950 penalty is directly connected with google revenue?
The nofollow issue isn't that thin or simple.
If I wanted to write an online expose of scam sites and link to them as examples for my readers, I wouldn't feel good about linking to them in a way that would give them a vote in the google search engine. I could satisfactorily do this with nofollow.
If I had a news site and linked out to as many as 50 other sites on a daily basis and even updated my news links every 4-6 hours, I might feel better doing it with nofollow.
If I linked out to a competitor's site because they were featuring a great article that they'd just posted, I wouldn't mind giving them some traffic and some exposure from some of my site's users. But I'd draw the line at giving my competitor link juice to use against me.
Is it webmaster who manipulates search engines or it is search engine that manipulates webmasters? A vote is due but Google dont allow to do so for their benefit.
rekitty: So inspite of Google testifying before the Senate that they keep their search results independent of their advertising, you prefer to believe otherwise. Suit yourself.
That's not even illogical considering the fact that google's search results are based on the concept of freely given votes. You give them out if you want to. You don't give them if you don't want to. Withholding a vote isn't a relevant consideration and nofollow conveniently allows you to link without giving a vote if you so choose and for whatever reason.
"Want to cause trouble for a competitor? Make a block of "sponsored links" to them and nofollow them all. Any links to that site on other domains will now be suspect as paid links."
That doesn't even begin to make any sense at all. You're essentially saying that if:
1. A site buys advertising links (google has no problem with this according to Cutts and Lasnik)
2. And the link seller (let's say Daily Cal, to use one of MC's examples) labels them as sponsored and puts nofollow on them
3. Then the buyer of the links now has to worry that all of his links from other sources are now suspect and open to being devalued?
Let me rehash. Okay, Daily Cal already uses "Sponsored Resources" on their paid links. So all they have to do is nofollow them and all I have to do to screw myself with Google is buy advertising on Daily Cal.
Nope. Not even in the bizarro universe would that make sense.
Right. So when a US president proclaims that he never had relations with that woman .... you just have to believe it. RIGHT!
Come on .. Just because they deny it does not mean to say they don't do it.
Um, its self-evident. Let's not go too overboard in the discussion. It's obtuse to not see that any site with nofollow links pointing at it froma sponsored link section has bought links. This means... wait for it... that the site is known to buy links.
If you buy links in one place, there MUST be a presumption that you MIGHT buy links in another place. So, if you are marked with the scarlet letter of of link buying in one place, you might be judged as buying links in another place. To pretend otherwise is delusionally irrational, particularly since Matt has specifically asked for examples so they can try to identify paid links that are not tagged with nofollow.
If I linked out to a competitor's site because they were featuring a great article that they'd just posted, I wouldn't mind giving them some traffic and some exposure from some of my site's users. But I'd draw the line at giving my competitor link juice to use against me.
A perfect example of the misuse of no follow. You are trying to manipulate the SERPs!
In my niche is a site owned and operated by the national association that I will not link to for a number of reasons - one being SERPs. It is a decent site with decent information and it deserves mention.
So, I give it mention but no link...
Oh, the site in question has somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 OBLs - all paid for to the tune of $375 + per year. None are identified as "paid links", nor do they have a no follow attribute. These links represent a small portion of the members of the national association - those willing to pay $$$ for a link.
Now, where is Google's interest in devaluing or negating such obvious relevant paid links? I would guess that the site in question ranks as a true hub and authority site in this niche. The OBLs are clearly relevant to anyone doing a search in this niche. They deserve the transfer of PR, not because they are paying for a link, but because they are relevant sites of use to searchers.
That said, I am thinking that perhaps I should do more than simply not link to the site. I think I will report them for massive link selling.
WBF
