Can Linking To noindex Pages Be Bad?

[Planet13]

Is it a bad idea to link to pages that have a meta noindex tag in them?

I just realized that some pages link to about ten other pages that have the meta noindex tag.

Since they will have the noidex tag until I can beef up their content (may be a month or two), should I nofollow the links pointing to them?

thanks in advance.

[goodroi]

IMHO the worst case is that you are leaking some link juice while the page is noindex and you are reworking the content. Since this is temporary and relatively small scale I personally would not worry.

[Planet13]

Thanks, goodroi!

[deadsea]

I wouldn't use nofollow on the links. You are either going to be passing pagerank to a page that can't be indexed, or dropping the pagerank on the floor. Either way the pagerank is probably lost. At least in the case of the noindex page, maybe google allows the pagerank to be recycled to other pages that the noindex page links to. (That's one of the items on my list of things I'd like to test.)

[Planet13]

You are either going to be passing pagerank to a page that can't be indexed, or dropping the pagerank on the floor. Either way the pagerank is probably lost.

Yeah, I am coming to that conclusion, too.

The pages are unfortunately the type that are helpful to USERS but not that helpful in the eyes of google (since they have duplicate content on them). Otherwise, I would just get rid of them.