Linking out... when to nofollow?

[Broadway]

I have a page that reviews the various model's of a manufacturer's product line (say TV's).

I have linked out from my page to the PDF's on the manufacturer's website that give the technical details of each model. I have a lot of the information found in the PDF's on my page. But am simply linking to the source from which I got my information (linking to my reference sources). And it's good for the user because the PDF's contains additional information that I don't cover.

The PDF pages are a dead end, in the sense that they don't link to any other pages.
But on the manufacturer's website (same domain as the PDF's), you could actually purchase one of their products directly from them if you wanted to.

Right now I have used rel="nofollow" in my anchor/hyperlink tags because I was unsure if Google would possibly see a commercial (paid, affiliate) intent in my creating these links.

In reality, I have zero affiliation with the manufacturer, and would probably prefer to let these links be "follow" ones, like I do when I link to articles in scientific journals.

What would be the appropriate way of linking in this type of situation, follow or nofollow?

[JesterMagic]

Since you have zero affiliation with the manufacturer and you feel it is of value to the user technically it should be a nofollow link

Obviously Google makes mistakes all the time and doesn't care about us small web developers. If you are affiliate for some products but not others it probably is best to nofollow all the links linking out to all products.

[engine]

In the past links were so heavily abused; the safe approach from your side is nofollow.

Google still follows things anyway, but it knows it's a nofollow, and therefore doesn't attribute it as a bad link.

[not2easy]

Because the link targets are .pdf files, many manufacturers noindex them anyway, they generally make a poor landing page. If you don't nofollow the links, your links to the files could theoretically cause indexing problems for the site that is trying to avoid listing their manuals in Google's serps.

Manufacturers try to set up careful paths to lead visitors to exactly the right information they seek for their specific products and external links without that sorting can be a poor user experience. I would add nofollow just in an effort not to lead to unwanted visitors on the manufacturers' sites.

In case you might have missed this recent change, Google has a new policy for "nofollow": [webmasterworld.com...]

[Broadway]

That's not really the answer I was anticipating, so thank you everyone for the reply and explanations.

And per the link not2easy provided, with my application it seems that rel="nofollow" would be the proper form, as opposed to rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc".

Thanks again.

[lucy24]

I would add nofollow just in an effort not to lead to unwanted visitors on the manufacturers' sites.

What difference would it make? A <nofollow> doesn’t send a message to the human visitor’s browser saying “don’t respond to clicks on this link”. I hardly think that a single link from a single site would suddenly result in someone else’s PDF leaping to the top of the SERPs, against the will of that site’s owners.

Either a link is trustworthy if it isn’t. If it isn’t, don’t link to it at all. If it is, why the nofollow?

[not2easy]

The point there wasn't that visitors would see anything different, the idea is not to encourage G to index the pdf file(s). If the files' owners want them indexed they can take care of that.

[tangor]

Just seems odd to me ... the link is either valued or not... and by devaluing ALL LINKS it makes one wonder how link building can actually work.

Sounds like only g can determine that if the webmaster uses "nofollow".

[JesterMagic]

It doesn't work very well anymore for small sites. My site receives lots of back links in forums and comments but now days everyone just automatically nofollow those. Even Wikipedia nofollows all links.

[topr8]

Either a link is trustworthy if it isn’t. If it isn’t, don’t link to it at all. If it is, why the nofollow?

i agree with Lucy, i don't use nofollow at all on any site

having said that, i'm not swanning around on the top of all the SERPS - so maybe i'm doing the wrong thing!

[JorgeV]

Hello-

In all events, nofollow is only a"hint", Google can think whatever it wants of these links and their legitimacy or not.

Google Adds new options to NO FOLLOW
[webmasterworld.com...]

Google might count your nofollow links if you overuse it
[webmasterworld.com...]

How Google Will Handle INTERNAL Nofollow Hints
[webmasterworld.com...]

[sunjun]

nofollow&#65292;i would keep the link for user to make next action.Remember SEO for user all time.
By the way can i get list &#65292; i am a manufacturer which offer cosmetic container