Are "nofollow"ed link texts still part of the page content?

[yosmc]

Does anybody know if the link text of a link that has been equipped with rel=nofollow is still part of the page text (=content) for Google? Because on the one hand, I've heard that using nofollow on the link level is pretty much the same as using nofollow in the meta tags, only on a more granular level - on the other hand, since the original idea was about fighting link spam, it would also make sense if Google completely cut out the entire link - link text and all - from the page.

Is this known, or just anybody's guess?

[tedster]

Yes, that anchor text is still an on-page factor. We've heard of people getting out of a -950 penalty by removing a large group of footer links, even though those links were all no-followed.

My understanding is that removing all that anchor test clarified the semantic value of the page -- both keyword repetition and co-occurence that appeared spammy was eliminated.

[edited by: tedster at 3:31 pm (utc) on Jan. 12, 2008]

[yosmc]

Good to know - thanks for the quick reply.