"rel=external nofollow" and "rel=nofollow"

[John_Lee]

hey guys is there a difference between "rel=external nofollow" and "rel=nofollow"..plus can i search only dofollow blogs. is there any code for that? like : "site:.com "keyword" inurl:blog "Post a comment"..." can i search dofollow blogs?
And yeah my market samurai has gone crazy. It's showin nofollow backlinks too under the BLEG section (well not all but some of it). But I've heard that google rejects the nofollow links right? On overdoing it can harm my blog isn't it?

[tedster]

As long as nofollow is included in a space-separated and quoted string as one of the values for the rel attribute, then Google will not pass PageRank through that link. This would be true for any other attribute values as well as "external" - for example rel="next nofollow".

The value "external" is often used as a way to trigger special JavaScript handling for an external link, such as opening it in a new window. That alone does not instruct Google not to pass PageRank.

I don't know of any way to do a search that will find only blogs that don't use rel="nofollow". One challenge is that the comment area may include "follow"-ed links but other links on the page may be nofollowed, such as paid advertising. So finding such blogs is a research effort. There are sites online that list "dofollow blogs" - in fact that is one of the Google Suggestions for the word "dofollow".

You still won't know until you check it out for yourself. Also,note that just because a blog doesn't use rel="nofollow" in comment links is no guarantee that Google will positively value seeing a link there.

[John_Lee]

that means i have to do it manually..the dofollow thing...takes a lot of effort...actually i was commentin on TLDs but most of them were nofollow...useless isn't it?

"Also,note that just because a blog doesn't use rel="nofollow" in comment links is no guarantee that Google will positively value seeing a link there."
--yes! but it can surely boost up my ranking in SERPs if the top competitor that i want to defeat has got only small TLDs as backlinks ;)