I am adding rel="nofollow" to certain external URLs, particularly to those which I don't want to be associated with; rest don't have it.
Is it a good practice? Any potential of penalties from G?
tedster
2:07 am on Jan 20, 2011 (gmt 0)
As far as I know, Google won't give you any ranking problems based on the occasional nofollow link. The attribute was first created for that kind of protection for a website that invites user generated content (UGC).
But there's an obvious question. If your don't want to be associated with those websites, why even link to them at all? Why offer your visitors an invitation to visit a site that you don't want to be associated with?
[edited by: tedster at 5:23 am (utc) on Jan 20, 2011]
MonkeyFace
5:13 am on Jan 20, 2011 (gmt 0)
Well, my websites has a collection of user-submitted websites; like Digg, but at a very small community level. The app checks for certain words (adult content etc) in the content of the URL and flags them.
Thanks for the feedback, tedster, I guess I'll keep it the way it is now.
tedster
5:23 am on Jan 20, 2011 (gmt 0)
So you are using it for user generated links - then nofollow does make sense, unless you can effectively police whatever links your users publish.
