There’s some buzz today around the web regarding a comment made by Google poster-boy Matt Cutts. SELand was quick to report:
So today at SMX Advanced, sculpting was being discussed, and then Matt Cutts dropped a bomb shell that it no longer works to help flow more PageRank to the unblocked pages. Again — and being really simplistic here — if you have $10 in authority to spend on those ten links, and you block 5 of them, the other 5 aren’t going to get $2 each. They’re still getting $1. It’s just that the other $5 you thought you were saving is now going to waste.
If you’ve been steering the flow of Google PageRank across your site (which I just talked about this here: Small Changes Can Improve PageRank), it might not be working the way we all thought.
Based on Matt’s comment, if you now put nofollow on links that you don’t want getting any authority, that authority is not going to increase the value of the other links you are passing PageRank to. Basically you’re not getting any extra credit by ‘nofollowing’ links.
Just a heads up to all the PageRank sculptors out there! There’s more good coverage here.
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It may not be what we want to hear but it makes sense. There really shouldn’t be “tricks” to improve pagerank. Either your site makes it based on quality or it doesn’t.
agreed – i think the big concern is that the ‘tricks’ were encouraged by Google before, and now the effects have been removed.
Lol it seems like we gotta discover new way to work around page ranks huh?
That’s very interesting and VERY good to know. Definitely goes against what most people think. I don’t usually try to make my authority flow to certain pages but I have done it before so now I at least know a little more facts about it. Thanks!
Very interesting stuff. Now luckily I haven’t paid much attention to the sculpting aspects (well I’ve been following the discussion but never acted on it) so if what Matt is saying is true then I’m glad that I didn’t spend that time
/Mikael
I can’t really care less about these so mostly my posts have dofollow links on them
Despite of people say, I can still be on the first Google SERP even without a good PageRank
Michael Aulias last blog post..May 2009 Traffic & Income Statistics
Yes I heard about Matt’s comment recently too. I was in the habit of using nofollow for links to unimportant pages like my privacy policy. It does make sense that Google would change how page rank gets sent from one page to another. Blogs would be one of the major driving forces behind this. Many of these blogs are well trusted, but they have 100+ links on every page. With the old page rank format, each of those links wouldn’t carry much weight. Now I guess each link sends a consistent amount of PR based on how strong that page is.
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Oh… now that explains.. Been struggling between whether to make my blog nofollow or dofollow.
It really doesn’t bother me, personally I used the nofollow attribute to keep duplicate content from being indexed on my website. But after reading that article, I hope Google gets more tough on Paid Links, because I for one have always rejected when people asked to purchase links for my website, as I have followed Google’s rule of no paid links… but it makes me sad to still see some websites blatantly advertise a paid links section, and even paid reviews, while still having a good PR, for a long time!
I’ve heard about his subject too. I think this is not about tricks. Whats the purpose of nofollow links now if they will “steal” link juice as a normal link?
Well the good thing that comes out of this is now I won’t have to worry about it sculpting via page ranking, and I will just use the nofollow on pages that I don’t want indexed
But at the same time… I do wonder if there is now a new technique out there as a result of the change by Google.
Till then,
Jean
The no-follow attribute blocks PageRank being trasferred to the page where the link is pointing at, but is still is a link, and even if the search engine spiders think less of it, humans don’t discern between do-follow and no-follow, and what traffic are you really more concerned about?
Jacques for most people doing internet marketing, they are more concerned with search engine rankings. The traffic from a good ranking is usually far more than what comes from referral links. So we have to try to get some links that the search engines like. Google leads us to believe that dofollow links help more. Then a lot of marketers stop concentrating on nofollow links which essentially leave nofollow links as the more trusted link. Google may not pass pagerank with nofollow links, but they may still help rankings.
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I agre with you on the point that most search marketers efforts are going towards garnering better rankings in the returned search engine results for their keywords.
PageRank gets transferred from the page where your link is pointing from if the link is do-follow, but not if it is no-follow. The link still counts as a vote toewards your perceived popularity though, which helps for your search rankings.
What is the difference between follow and nofollow
from
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Glen and Jen
Jenns last blog post..1
follow – means you want google to examine the link and give that site credit (+ PageRank)
nofollow – google will just pass over the link and NOT give the link any credit (no change in PageRank)
PageRank plays a factor in how well you rank, the more “Follow” links you get, the better off you are.
1 million “NoFollow” links won’t help you at all!
Does that explain?
Totally!
It is a fair summary, I dare say! The “vote” the link represents doesn’t get counted towards the PageRank of that page.
WhyDoWork – you forgot to mention that your page has to be ranking already to be able to give someone some of your PR juice.
If you put a dofollow link and you have no PR but use an anchor text then that page gets power to the keyword for that page
Evess last blog post..1
You can use PHP conditional statements within your Wp theme to make links disappear at a PHP level. It is even possible to do it for individual post in wordpress. That way some navigational elements will will appear only where you want them like categories and tags. By the way since you know code is there a way that you can use php conditional statements to act upon user agents like bots. This would be useful when it comes to hiding contact forms and other stuff.
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I’ve heard about his subject too. I think this is not about tricks. Whats the purpose of nofollow links now if they will “steal” link juice as a normal link?
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That’s very interesting and VERY good to know. Hah, its funny finding articles like this…
Thanks,
makingcolor staff
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No-follow is important to Google, but Yahoo will still follow the link regardless, so it’s better to have a no-follow link than no link at all.
Hi,
Google sometimes makes the things better, and this better change is making a buzz.
I agree with you WHW that Google earlier made us used to these tricks. And this is really surprising to see that google manipulated the past policies.
But like always we will be accustomed to this.
The ONLY reason you should nofollow outbound links is to tell the search engines that you are not willing to vouch for the site you’re linking to… so if a spammer drops a comment on your blog pointing to a site that is violating Google’s webmaster guidelines, that YOUR site doesn’t ALSO get penalized for promoting a “bad” site should that site get reported for violating Google’s webmaster guidelines.
if anyone has info about these or any other info about vmk in WDW its greatly appreciated!!