nofollow your privacy policy?

PR boom or baby-bathwater nightmare?

[RossWal]

If I nofollow my privacy policy (and site map) in my global footer, will that cause me quality score issues with Adwords?

Is it better to exclude from specific bots using robots.txt?

Thanks for your insights!

[cabowabo]

Personally, I don't use the nofollow attribute much, and for my privacy policy, terms of use, etc. I exclude them from being indexed via the meta robots tag. I have never seen any ill effects doing so.

[RossWal]

Hi Cabo -

The problem there, as I see it, is that the 'no index' pages will accumulate PR. Not a big deal I guess, but I'd rather avoid the 'wasted' juice.

[buckworks]

PR that flows to your privacy page is only wasted if that page is a dead end with no links.

Give thought to what your privacy page and similar "housekeeping" pages link to. Careful link planning can funnel a bit extra PR to selected pages within your site or even across sites.

[Quadrille]

There is no reason TO apply nofollow in this way.

[pageoneresults]

The problem there, as I see it, is that the 'no index' pages will accumulate PR.

I keep seeing this statement being made and every time I have to check various pages to verify that it is not true. The pages I have with noindex on them do not have PR, the bar is gray and as far as I can remember, always has been.

[conor]

I see the same as pageone. No indexed pages do not accumilate PR

[cabowabo]

A follow-up question would be while the pages themselves do not have PR, if a page attempts to send PR to the Privacy page, do you then have "PageRank Wastefulness"?!?! Or is Google wise enough to recalculate PR distribution to the links to live pages?

[RossWal]

The problem there, as I see it, is that the 'no index' pages will accumulate PR.

I based that comment on this (hope posting this is OK - I won't link -- it should be easy to find). I don't know exactly what to make of it.

Eric Enge: Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank?

Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page.

Eric Enge: So, it can accumulate and pass PageRank.

Matt Cutts: Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won't be showing in our Index. So, I wouldn't make a NoIndex page that itself is a dead end. You can make a NoIndex page that has links to lots of other pages.

[pageoneresults]

Matt Cutts: Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won't be showing in our Index.

Hmmm, I just went and double, triple checked my implementation of noindex and not a single one of them have visible PR, it is all gray as intended.

I guess if Matt Cutts says it is so, it must be so. I need to see a page with noindex that has PR. And one that has had the noindex for more than a few months.

[Quadrille]

There's a few 'ifs and buts' in the interview [stonetemple.com].