Google considers "nofollow" as a hint as of 1 March, 2020

[andreicomoti]

Hello,

As you probably already heard, Google now considers the "nofollow" attribute as a hint as of 1 March, 2020.

What does this exactly means for SEO. Can you share you thoughts on this?

Thanks

[Robert Charlton]

Google's announcement about this and several new attributes, was on Sept 10, 2019, roughly six months ago, suggesting that rel="nofollow" would, at Google's discretion, be treated as a hint after March 1, 2020. Here's the WebmasterWorld thread from September...

Google adds new options to NOFOLLOW
Sept 10, 2019
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4963657.htm [webmasterworld.com]

And here's the official Googleblog article, by Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes, covering how Google had treated "nofollow" since its arguably necessary introduction some fifteen years ago, to fight comment spam.

Evolving “nofollow” – new ways to identify the nature of links
by Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes
Tues, Sept 10, 2019
[webmasters.googleblog.com...]

I suggest re-reading both the Googleblog article and the WebmasterWorld thread.

Essentially, as I saw it then, and still do, Google wasn't requiring anything additional from the webmaster. For those who wished to play by Google's rules and be indexed by Google, flagging ads and sponsored links was still required, but Google, in deference to an installed user base, was not asking for any changes... rel="nofollow" would still suffice.

For those who wish to use new attributes which it is expected might eventually help the algo become more granular, Google offered several new options. As summarized in the last paragraph of the Googleblog article...

All the link attributes, sponsored, ugc and nofollow, now work today as hints for us to incorporate for ranking purposes. For crawling and indexing purposes, nofollow will become a hint as of March 1, 2020. Those depending on nofollow solely to block a page from being indexed (which was never recommended) should use one of the much more robust mechanisms listed on our Learn how to block URLs from Google help page.

More detail in the article and the WebmasterWorld thread. To prevent confusion, I'm going to close our Sept 10 thread, and continue discussion here which will include the new attributes.

Also, please note that Barry at seroundtable has been on top of this with Google, and it appears that, thus far, Google has made no changes regarding "nofollow", so there's nothing yet to see. Here are two references...

UPDATED - WRONG: Google: Nofollow Hint Ranking Change Has Not Been Worked On Yet
Feb 7, 2020 - by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

Google originally said they would make this change after March 1, 2020 but I guess it might be delayed a bit? // Just to clarify, prior to September 2019, Google would not crawl or index or use for ranking purposes {any} link with a nofollow on it (they would index the page linked to if there are other ways for Google to get to the page. After September 2019, Google would still not use it for crawling or indexing, but may use it for a hint. After March 1st, Google would also potentially be able to use nofollow links not just for ranking purposes but also for crawling and indexing, if it wanted to.

And, subsequently, with spectular animated gifs...

Google Nofollow Change March 1st But Google Says Don't Expect Any Change Yet
Feb 28, 2020 - by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

I do think, btw, that Google has recently made some big algorithm changes having nothing directly to do with nofollow, and that by reserving the option to use "nofollow" as a hint, Google will eventually be able to do some more spidering to help calibrate and improve its new algorithms. As I had posted elsewhere on the web about this...

Way back, Matt Cutts stated that rel nofollow links were not crawled by Google, even for discovery. That said, I'm sure a lot of search engineers have looked at them (without Googlebot); and I'm thinking they've decided they wanted to go where no Googlebot has gone before. Thus...

[JesterMagic]

@Robert thanks for the condensed update. If you read the last post by Barry and all the back and fourth (and Google's inability to give a straight answer) I still am still confused if it has been enabled or not

From my reading it looks like the update has been enabled for a while but the dial on the importance of the update has been turned way down so most will not notice any change in the SERPS from the update (not that we could ever pinpoint such a change with the flux the SERPs are in now days)

[andreicomoti]

@Robert

Thanks for your answer.

So, if Google considered the "nofollow" rel until now to stop a page from transferring any page rank and authority to the targeted URL, does it mean that the "nofollow" rel is now not strong enough to do so any longer?

Will links with "nofollow" rel now transfer authority to the targeted URL, if Google decides to ignore "nofollow"?

Is this right?

[Dimitri]

I've never used nofollow, all the outbound links on my sites, are "follow". I am old school, and to me this is how the Internet works. Now, I monitor and doesn't let spam links being posted.

I wonder if all these sites linked from wikipedia, will finally get a "reward" to be the source of the information... I have hundreds of links from wikipedia, so if it can helps a bit, this is welcome :)

[iamlost]

From the very beginning I’ve always treated rel=nofollow (and all its spawn) as indications of that with which Google is having trouble; similarly with semantics org markup. I have no interest in being part of their ‘live’ data training set(s).

As Dimitri I've never used nofollow, all the outbound links on my sites, are "follow". I am old school, and to me this is how the Internet works. Then again I never joined in all the hyped SEO games... at least not once they went public :)

[jediviper]

Moz updated their article (https://moz.com/blog/nofollow-sponsored-ugc) and they are mentioning:

"In some cases, they may be used for ranking
Emphasis on the word "some." Google is very explicit that in most cases they will continue to ignore nofollow links as usual.""
So it looks to me, that we cannot trust any nofollow link to pass the link juice.

[Dimitri]

the hyped SEO games

I see a lot of a SEO-ists who want back links, but :
- they don't want you to use the nofollow attribute,
- they don't want to link you back in exchange, because that is bad (for them),
- and at their own sites, outbound links have the nofollow attribute,
..

[RedBar]

Right, I am going to be totally dumb and ask precisely why is Google doing this?

Are they trying to negate old / dead / spammy / worhtless / whatever links?

I have a 23+ year old widget trade directory with many out-going links to associated widget trade sites. All these links are checked every few months for validity and still being alive, 95+% are.

I have never, ever asked any of these sites for a backlink and, to be perfectly honest, it has never, ever been a consideration ... Is Google now saying these links I have made may become "less trusted" if I don't no follow them?

Well, I can tell you right now that I am not going to bother and play its game, G can go stuff itself.

The last time G performed a "similar request" was with the marking-up of images ... I am sure that ALL image owners remeber extremely well what happened within a couple of years, Google stole the lot and those of us with image galleries etc LOST 95+% of our traffic within 2-3 months.

No G, you do not have to follow links IF you do not want to, tell us precisely what your game is.

[JesterMagic]

From the very beginning I’ve always treated rel=nofollow (and all its spawn) as indications of that with which Google is having trouble

Totally agree. Same with structured data.

Still I do use both as the battle with traffic always has been an issue and I figure they probably have positive ranking signals associated with them..

All links on my site are follow except affiliates and any advertisers. This means about 99% of links on my site is follow. The problem Google has with nofollow is a lot of sites (for example Wikipedia) went completely nofollow all out bound links. This in part I feel is why a lot of niche sites these last few years slowly gets pushed down in the serps as they are affected more by nofollow links than the large media companies.