searchenginejournal.com— Google, Yahoo and Ask.com sound off on their treatment of the No Follow attribute and clear webmaster confusion that links from sites such as Wikipedia using this attribute have no value.
Apr 27, 2007View in Crawl 4
if you 3 are done with your inane bickering...we can get back to the actual article...The article basically boils down to Google not following the link if its nofollow, Yahoo indexes the link if it didn't know of the site previously- regardless of whether it has nofollow (but it doesn't give it credit, Ask does not support no follow so it indexes it regardless.
It makes sense to me that Google would not follow the no follow (didn't they create it?). If they wanted a way to follow links but not rank them, I assume they would have "no follow" and "no rank", or something to that effect.
The no follow attribute is used because of spammers putting links on sites wherever they can. Even if a moderator removes a spammer link within a few hours, chances are that many crawlers have picked it up. No follow means what it says, and the fact that other search engines do follow is bad because the spammers still have incentive to spam the hell out of wikipedia, or blogs, forums, etc... regardless of whether or not the no follow attribute is used. Trusted links from trusted users probably shouldn't have the attribute, but until there is a framework in place for that in wikipedia and other applications, an absolute approach like that which is currently in place is for now the best solution.
vanbaconApr 28, 2007
And the opposite would be ignorant Homogay conservative loser.Yah that fits you qute nicely.
rammsteinedApr 28, 2007
Wow, what an insightful conversation! I really feel like I learned something about the universe, thanks!
str3amaApr 28, 2007
if you 3 are done with your inane bickering...we can get back to the actual article...The article basically boils down to Google not following the link if its nofollow, Yahoo indexes the link if it didn't know of the site previously- regardless of whether it has nofollow (but it doesn't give it credit, Ask does not support no follow so it indexes it regardless.
ff0000Apr 28, 2007
It makes sense to me that Google would not follow the no follow (didn't they create it?). If they wanted a way to follow links but not rank them, I assume they would have "no follow" and "no rank", or something to that effect.
Closed AccountApr 28, 2007
Website owners should be cautious about scamming link exchanges. Sometimes, they put the no follow tag beside the link to your website.
lnxaddctApr 28, 2007
The no follow attribute is used because of spammers putting links on sites wherever they can. Even if a moderator removes a spammer link within a few hours, chances are that many crawlers have picked it up. No follow means what it says, and the fact that other search engines do follow is bad because the spammers still have incentive to spam the hell out of wikipedia, or blogs, forums, etc... regardless of whether or not the no follow attribute is used. Trusted links from trusted users probably shouldn't have the attribute, but until there is a framework in place for that in wikipedia and other applications, an absolute approach like that which is currently in place is for now the best solution.