Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Webmaster Discussion
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#1

This is important for all of those of you who stay up-to-date on SEO. If you’re asking “what’s ‘nofollow’?” then you can just ignore this whole thread - it’s not relevant to you.

Google just made a rather huge change which you should be aware of… Put simply, if you had 10 equally important links on a page and had nofollow on 5 of them it used to be that each link got 1/5th of the link juice assigned to that page. Now, each link gets 1/10th of the link juice and the other half of the link juice just gets lost.

Bottom line, don’t use nofollow too widely - it’s now better to build your unimportant links with Javascript or put them in Flash where Google will have problems seeing them. That said, be careful with doing links in tricky ways. If I did that on my blog, all the people who read the blog with feed readers would have problems when they click on the links.

Here are some articles on the change…

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow
http://searchengineland.com/google-loses-backwards-compatibility-on-paid-link-blocking-pagerank-sculpting-20408

As soon as I read those articles I went and checked my blogroll of sponsors and saw that I still had in place a script to not do the blogroll if the user agent was a spider. I’m glad I kept it that way and didn’t use nofollow otherwise I’d be a bit screwed right now.

This is actually a big deal for us. We’re all about paid links and Google hates paid links. So dealing with these issues is important for those of us who are trying to develop sites with some authority.

#2

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

wow, i hate this change!

thanks for the heads-up.

#3

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

yes always a good idea to use scripts for sponsor URLs.

Never used nofollow myself other than in page headers. But I think with a good site structure it should be possible to sculpt page rank as they describe it without nofollow or hiding links.

#4

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Yeah, I’ve been using a script for sponsor links as well, but since it’s robots excluded it wastes link juice just like nofollow now does.

But part of my point is that it’s better if the search engine never sees the paid link - hence my script that doesn’t show the sponsor blogroll to spiders.

Also, in the articles it’s saying that hiding links with Javascript and Flash is becoming less and less effective - so that’s not a good strategy either.

#5

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

RawTOP,

Is that some kind of publicly available script? If so, do you mind sharing which it is?

#6

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

It’s something I wrote myself. I’ve basically written a CMS for sponsor content that automates much of the process for me. Part of that is tracking the links for every sponsor site and embedding them into every blog post I write in a consistent manner. So the CMS writes and manages the redirect script…

#7

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

This change is REALLY CONFUSING.

The way I read this, the more anchor links that you have on your website, the weaker your site’s page rank ultimately stands.

Well, if that’s true, that really sucks if you are a site with lots of outbound commercial links. (i.e. affiliate sales) Does this new google rule extend to the url’s in your robots.txt file?

One last thing – it’s not my business, but RawTop are you saying that you hide your blogroll traded links from the spiders? Doesn’t that mean that Google would never see that you link to the other blogs who might hope to benefit from a link trade from a relevant website? Just wondering.

Steve

#8

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Ah, cool. I didn’t realize you were a coder.

I was actually wondering the same thing when I originally read it. There are workarounds for that, of course, but am still curious if those are implemented or not.

#9

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Where did you see the part about amount of anchor links? Or do you just mean external links?

[quote=desslock;44516]This change is REALLY CONFUSING.

The way I read this, the more anchor links that you have on your website, the weaker your site’s page rank ultimately stands.

Well, if that’s true, that really sucks if you are a site with lots of outbound commercial links. (i.e. affiliate sales) Does this new google rule extend to the url’s in your robots.txt file?

One last thing – it’s not my business, but RawTop are you saying that you hide your blogroll traded links from the spiders? Doesn’t that mean that Google would never see that you link to the other blogs who might hope to benefit from a link trade from a relevant website? Just wondering.

Steve[/quote]

#10

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

[QUOTE=desslock;44516]The way I read this, the more anchor links that you have on your website, the weaker your site’s page rank ultimately stands.

Well, if that’s true, that really sucks if you are a site with lots of outbound commercial links. (i.e. affiliate sales) Does this new google rule extend to the url’s in your robots.txt file?[/quote]

I assume you’re saying the passing of link juice to internal pages is affected. That form of “link sculpting” is exactly what Google is trying to stop with this change. But the juice will stay with the page that’s doing the linking, so it’s not really lost and the overall PR of your site shouldn’t be affected.

But yes, sites with lots of external links (e.g. directory sites) will be affected, but they’ve always been affected by link juice issues.

As far as robots excluded URLs the link juice gets assigned to the robots excluded page, but because it can’t be crawled the flow of juice stops there. What this change in the handling of nofollow does is make nofollows function the same way as robots exclusion - which I like actually. The difference is robots exclusion is absolute since the page won’t be crawled, but with nofollow it’s a policy that may change in the future and even on a case-by-case basis.

I don’t really trade links, so it’s not much of an issue. There are very very few directories I want to be listed in, and I don’t link out to commercial competitors, so I almost never trade links. You did just remind me that there probably should be a link to Best Male Blogs - the only directory that I find gives much of any traffic at all - not sure how that one got dropped.

Second, only a portion of my sidebar is hidden from spiders. My blogroll of other sex blogs is visible to spiders, but the links are nofollowed. Given that I’m usually those blogs’ biggest source of traffic the nofollow is something I don’t feel guilty about at all. What is hidden is links to sponsors - but most of those go through a robots excluded redirect script, so they wouldn’t count anyway (and they’re not ‘trades’).

There are a total of 3 non-sponsor links that get dropped - one is to a hookup site that’s just happy I mention them (I’m the member who refers the most other members), another is to a directory that’s a professional courtesy (I work closely with the people who run it), and the third is to Gay Demon as a thank you for making my site an editor’s pick (not required). The Best Male Blogs link is a 4th - I just added that back in and frankly I’m not sure what their policy is but I’m pretty confident I’ll be giving them more traffic than they give me - so I feel a bit guilty for dropping the link, but don’t feel much guilt for the spider exclusion moving forward.

#11

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Oh dear, this will cost me 3 days of work :frowning: What an awful change…

#12

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

I’m a bit confused here actually. Because most of you guys seems to be talking about outgoing links.

Pagesculpting and stopping the PR flow is only relevant on your own site / internal links. It refers to how you can preserve your pages PR rank and make it flow through your own site as you want it to do rather than random.

This is why I said that you dont need nofollow to make that happen, good navigation and site structure would do it for you. There shouldnt really be any need to use nofollow. Nofollow would be used only for example if you didnt want to loose PR to say comments on your blog posts or unimportant internal pages.

From what I understand, outgoing links do not make you lose any PR at least very minimal amounts if anything. Infact Google and other search engines are supposed to like good and relevant outgoing links.

Which is another reason why using my Dicktionary link exchanges that I setup on gaydemon would be good both for incoming and outgoing links.

Linking to relevant rich content pages is good for your site.

#13

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

[QUOTE=gaydemon;44583]I’m a bit confused here actually. Because most of you guys seems to be talking about outgoing links.

Pagesculpting and stopping the PR flow is only relevant on your own site / internal links. It refers to how you can preserve your pages PR rank and make it flow through your own site as you want it to do rather than random. [/QUOTE]

Honestly, I’ve never really played the game and don’t fully understand how PageRank flows. I just worry about whether Google can see and follow sponsor links and whether I really want to give credit to a link when I put it on a page. Beyond that I just forget about it and let things happen.

#14

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

I’m not sure now either to be honest.

But my understanding was that you do not lose PR on outgoing links, only internal links are affected.

So you might not worry about your external links.

#15

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

I do know Google HATES paid links. So all sponsor links have to be nofollowed or put through a robots excluded script or else you’ll get penalized and your site will be prevented from passing link juice to other sites. That’s really the only aspect I’ve worried about…

#16

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

[QUOTE=gaydemon;44628]I’m not sure now either to be honest.

But my understanding was that you do not lose PR on outgoing links, only internal links are affected.

So you might not worry about your external links.[/QUOTE]

You certainly do lose weight with outbound anchor links.

A PR4 site with 5 outbound links is going to much stronger then a similar site with 50 or 100. Just keep tabs on your outbound links, because they really do effect your overall appearance in search results.

Basically I have developed this as a system: For affiliate links — the fixed ones that just land on a paysite’s homepage — I push them through a special directory that I’ve specified in my robots.txt for the spiders to ignore.

When I trade links with other webmasters, such as gaydemon, that’s an anchor tag without a nofollow restriction because the whole point of our link exchanging is to send authority back and forth from relevant websites.

The dilemma for me are my outbound affiliate links that are customized to land on movies, models or sections of the paysite which I’ve specified. Each url is unique. rel=“nofollow” has typically solved this for me, but now, at least the way I read it, Google’s going to penalize me for outbound links, even the ones that I don’t want them to follow.

Steve

#17

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Thats absolutly right, if I only have 5 outgoing links on my PR4 page each of those 5 links are worth far more than a link from another PR4 site with 50 outgoing links. Which is why link exchanges in bulk is not a good idea.

BUT

Outgoing links do not make you loose your PR, it does not disappear off your page no matter how many outgoing links you have. The only links that make your PR go down are internal pages. PR flows through your site and as it passes deeper down into your site the lower it gets. This is why less important (in theory) pages have low or no page rank at all while your front pages have the heighest Pagerank. This is what you can affect with page sculpting.

PR is in effect showing to Google’s robots / indexing how often and important a page is. The higher up in a structure the higher PR, the lower down a page, say very old archived comment to a blog post would or should have PR0… its not fresh and not important so Google won’t visit that page very often.

It’s very important to note that while you do not lose any PR from outgoing links, it does have 2 other effects:

  1. You want to only link to relevant sites and not bad neighbourhoods (spam, paid links, illegal sites). If you do your site will be likly to be classed as bad as the sites you link to.

  2. The more outgoing links, the less value your link exchanges have.

[quote=desslock;44655]You certainly do lose weight with outbound anchor links.

A PR4 site with 5 outbound links is going to much stronger then a similar site with 50 or 100. Just keep tabs on your outbound links, because they really do effect your overall appearance in search results.

Basically I have developed this as a system: For affiliate links — the fixed ones that just land on a paysite’s homepage — I push them through a special directory that I’ve specified in my robots.txt for the spiders to ignore.

When I trade links with other webmasters, such as gaydemon, that’s an anchor tag without a nofollow restriction because the whole point of our link exchanging is to send authority back and forth from relevant websites.

The dilemma for me are my outbound affiliate links that are customized to land on movies, models or sections of the paysite which I’ve specified. Each url is unique. rel=“nofollow” has typically solved this for me, but now, at least the way I read it, Google’s going to penalize me for outbound links, even the ones that I don’t want them to follow.

Steve[/quote]

#18

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Matt Cutts has chimed in with his views on nofollow and PageRank sculpting. It’s worth a read…

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

Basically it says use nofollow for it’s original purpose - when you can’t vouch for an outbound link - don’t use it on internal links (in most cases).

And BTW, he says the changes have been in effect for a year.

#19

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Sounds like a very sensible way of using it.

But why would anyone link to sites they can’t vouch for unless you have a larger link list?

The first comment to his post is very good though, my point exactly:

You say that Google encourages links to good sites, but the whole point of the nofollow tag is that you’re not vouching for the links, and not checking whether the links are to good sites or not.

#20

Re: Google Changes Handling of NoFollow

Two examples: 1) URLs in blog comments (the reason nofollow came about), and 2) linking to someone you don’t approve of in a discussion of a topic - like a link to NOM or World Net Daily when discussing gay marriage.