rel="nofollow" confusion

don't follow

[Drumat5280]

I am using the rel="nofollow" tag to prevent the spiders from indexing content within one site that is duplicated on another site (mine).

I am afraid of the duplication penalty so I am using the tag.

However the confusion coming from Google's statement:

"When Google sees the attribute rel="nofollow" on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results."

I don't care about the credit, i just don't want them to index that page.

[volatilegx]

They will still follow the link to index the page. rel=nofollow tells Google and other engines not to give the link any weight in their ranking algos.

[wilderness]

i just don't want them to index that page

The proper request is "NOINDEX"
[robotstxt.org...]

[pageoneresults]

I am using the rel="nofollow" tag to prevent the spiders from indexing content within one site that is duplicated on another site (mine).

Did you mean you are using the Robots META Tag to prevent spiders from indexing content within one site?

By adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines).

So, if you are using the rel="nofollow", then you are only affecting those links that it is assigned to. To prevent pages from being spidered and indexed, you would use the Robots META Tag like so...

<meta name="robots" content="none">

Or...

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

They both mean the same thing. Also, Google and MSN both have specific Robots META Tags for preventing the indexing of content and following of links.

[Drumat5280]

Unfortunatly I am using a framework structure that makes it difficult to add the meta tag just for those pages.

I thought that the nofollow might be the tag for me, but i guess not.

For me it would be neat if there was a tag that you could just do that - no follow.

That is why i was confused, the tag should be called "noCredit"

[Lord Majestic]

That is why i was confused, the tag should be called "noCredit"

You are 100% right about that - "nofollow" is a very misleading name.

[volatilegx]

Let's not get Drumat5280 into trouble here...

So, if you are using the rel="nofollow", then you are only affecting those links that it is assigned to. To prevent pages from being spidered and indexed, you would use the Robots META Tag like so...

The meta tags would have to go on the target pages, not on the pages that link to the target pages. I'm assuming he does want his own pages indexed. If he doesn't have editing authority over the target pages, then this discussion is moot... he doesn't have the right to say whether they should be indexed.