Will google again start to count no-follow links ?

[casr123]

Hello,

Day By day , site owners putting nofollow for the all outbound links.
Even after spending many months , I only got 15 do-follow backlinks.

Now today I go to check all that links , I shocked.Most of all , 14 links are marked as no-follow.

Now toughest thing is that , it's completely impossible to get do-follow links. Because no more sites exist that allow do-follow.And site that currently allow do-follow , that also will be converted as no-follow within next 1-2 months.

Even I check for one of my competitor , that has all links do-follow.It was a big question to me , how is that possible.Then looking at manual review , I found very famous method to rank pages using blog network Or Link network.(google is not catching private blog network)

Here my writer has spent so much time to create content , but link is no-follow.

So here in my case , I lost all backlinks in terms of google ranking factor.

SO now google will again start counting no-follow links ? OR google will count links based on the content quality ?
What new sites will do ?
Old site don't need to worry.

One famous thing in SERP is there , partial match domain are getting lots of traffic.don't go to EMD but Go to the PMD .
Using PMD , one of my competitor covered thousands keywords in SERP with 0 backlink to homepage within 7 months.Surprising thing !

What do you think ?

[aristotle]

Will google again start to count no-follow links ?

We've discussed this idea a number of times. But everything involving backlinks, both dofollow and nofollow, has gotten so messed up, nobody can make any sense out of it. The whole thing is just a giant quagmire.

[EditorialGuy]

Google may count "nofollow" links now--not in terms of transferring PageRank, but possibly in terms of citation value or other factors. We just don't know.

[tangor]

Links are what makes thew web work. G screwed the pooch early on by making links/rank THE measure... and all that followed was abuse and tricks which totally destroyed the original purpose of linking. These days we don't know which way to go, or how G (in particular) treats links.

[lucy24]

They definitely keep a record of all links. Otherwise why would nofollowed links be included among the "links to your site" listed in gwt? If nofollowed links were truly meaningless, search engines could simply pretend they'd never seen them.

[EditorialGuy]

Actually, the notion of "link popularity" predated Google.

And "abuse and tricks" certainly haven't "totally destroyed the original purpose of linking." Some of us still link editorially. (Try it. It's surprisingly easy.)

[tangor]

Google's money machine made things worse.

Some of us still link editorially. (Try it. It's surprisingly easy.)

Do follow or no follow? Both are surprising easy, too. :)

[aristotle]

We've already discussed this matter many times in earlier threads. At any rate in my opinion the best way to judge the value of a backlink is by how much traffic it sends you, not by whether it's dofolow or nofollow. The vast majority of links on the web today don't send any traffic at all and therefore aren't fulfilling the basic function of a link. They're just a lot of garbage cluttering up the web.

[EditorialGuy]

Getting back to the original post:

Now toughest thing is that , it's completely impossible to get do-follow links. Because no more sites exist that allow do-follow.And site that currently allow do-follow , that also will be converted as no-follow within next 1-2 months.

To put it bluntly, that's nonsense.

Some types of sites may find it harder to get conventional (a.k.a. "dofollow" links) than in the past, especially if (a) they're used to getting links from UGC sites or platforms that add rel="nofollow" to links automatically, or (b) they're commercial sites that historically have gotten most of their links through link-building activities and not as "freely given editorial citations." But the notion that "nofollow" links are now universal (or will be in the next one or two months) is simply wrong.

[nomis5]

I only have normal, straightforward links on my sites, not a single no-follow link ever. I've never investigated how to set up a no-follow link, what the hell is the point of a no-follow link anyway. What exactly does it say about you, as owner of a site, to add a no-follow link? In my books it says the owner is scared of what G will think about the link.

But then again, I have never added a link as a result of a request in any form or fashion. Just links that I think may help my readers. And yes, I have had thousands of requests for links which just clutter up my in box and get deleted.

[lucy24]

What exactly does it say about you, as owner of a site, to add a no-follow link?

It says that you've got user-generated content without the resources to hand-check every last URL that might appear. Heck, some places' comment forms out-and-out ask for a www site along with your real name and email. Why? Who knows.

[tangor]

I don't give many links... frankly in my niche areas the competition is rarely worth quoting (I would, and sometimes do if it is worth it).

What we ARE seeing is G, in particular, putting pressure on webmasters to no follow, in other words, to break the links ... for whatever master plan they may have in mind.

Those of us who do the web right won't have nay problems. Those who like what we do will give us the correct kind of links.

It all comes down to this: are links worth anything these days if we have to NO follow? What really screwed the pooch is UGC where the spammers did their dirty and (mostly) clueless webmasters let it happen... so there's plenty of blame to go around.

[nomis5]

What we ARE seeing is G, in particular, putting pressure on webmasters to no follow, in other words, to break the links ... for whatever master plan they may have in mind.

I've missed where the pressure is being applied for this, not unusual because I fail to see most things!. Any actual examples?

[kenroar]

In my mind, because so many websites (including mine) are now "nofollowing" all external links as standard policy, Google will have to count them in some way. However, they will never tell us when or if they are counting them.

[nomis5]

It says that you've got user-generated content without the resources to hand-check every last URL that might appear.

That makes the assumption that G will honour your no-follow request and treat them in the manner you expect. If they do then fine, you can publish user-generated links without a care in the world. But if they don't honour the no-follow, and none of knows for certain, then lack of policing published links on a site definitely runs a risk. How much of a risk, we don't know. It's certainly a risk I'm not willing to take. Every single link I publish is one I am happy with. Maybe G isn't, but at least I am!

[aristotle]

It says that you've got user-generated content without the resources to hand-check every last URL that might appear.

I agree.
It simply isn't practical for operators of sites like facebook, wikipedia, amazon, and even many smaller sites, to personally approve every user-generated link. In these situations it makes sense to add nofollow tags as a counter-measure against spammers. Obviously it won't completely stop spam, but it could reduce it. And it might also protect the site itself from looking spammy to search engines like google.