Do nofollow links help?
Just in case you don’t know what nofollow is you can find more information here. To cut the story short its an attribute rel=”nofollow” that was introduced in attempt to tackle the spam. Links containing this attribute do not have any effect on page rank.
I was never really a big fan of nofollow since it was introduced. I mean… 3 years later and did it reduce any spam? Do you see a reduction in comment spam? Not really… Not only the whole concept failed in terms of spam reduction, we are now told to stick nofollow on any link that we don’t quite trust. In the worst case you will get done for selling links and Google will take your precious page rank away. Whats really ironic is that in most cases your SERPs will continue to improve even though you clearly received a slap from Google for being naughty and your ever so green bar would now show blank. Yet, it’s not like PR matter anyway but that’s a different topic.
A while back i was fiddling with Google webmaster tools when i noticed that Google would still display nofollow backlinks. (Webmaster tools display most backlinks Google is aware off unlike link: queerie) So Google is definitely aware of these backlinks. We know they will not effect PR (According to Google) but do they have any effect of SERPs? Just a few weeks ago i would have said yes, they do help you slightly, simply making an educated guess. However something popped up recently that i found quite interesting. There was a little spammer application developed designed to spam nothing but a certain script. Whats strange is that even though every single backlink you would get from that script is nofollow, spammers were still able to achieve high SERP rank thanks to thousands of nofollow links. I don’t know how long their position will last but you can clearly see the benefits in the short run. I guess nofollow backlinks are not that bad after all. So the next time you get an opportunity to get a quality nofollow backlink… don’t just walk past it thinking that link is useless.
PS: Here is a good firefox addon that saves me a bit of time and can highlight nofollow links on the page you are visiting. Clicky
March 1st, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Assuming said site is getting traffic from all of those nofollow links, real links from that traffic should naturally follow. Since most social networking sites are all about the flavor of the day those links will probably fade into oblivion anyway a few days down the road, never to be seen again.
July 30th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Hi Ilia. Its been long since I have been on your blog. Hope all is well. Have you run any tests on your domains and checked if your page rank increases with only nofollow links.
August 1st, 2009 at 7:26 am
Hey!
I have not really tried that. PR has no use to me what so ever so I had no need to experiment.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:50 am
Thanks for the speedy responses as always.
Why, do you think that PR has nothing to do with the Google Algorithm anymore.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:52 am
I did not really say that. PR is an indicator. Just inaccurate and months out of date. If you had a thermometer that showed the temperature 3-5 months out of date, would that be any use to you?
At the end of the day what I want is search engine traffic. This has nothing to do with the green bar. As long as I rank for the keywords that I need to rank for, PR can be whatever it wants to be.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:58 am
I am hearing this alot now on the internet. I think its true, nofollow will help you, not much as Dofollow, but still it helps you.
August 13th, 2010 at 3:06 am
It is good to have a no follow links, to prevent the website from different kind of spammers. Especially for those blogger and forum site.
November 3rd, 2010 at 7:55 am
Do I or don’t I? Seems like each day I have a different opinion. I did include an add-on that highlights no-follow links…so lately, if I see a page with no-follows, I quickly move on. Your article here has me rethinking that…thanks, good stuff.
January 14th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
I did a little test a while ago – I created a blog, made few posts and one of them had unique phrases I was going to search for later. Then linked to another page (hidden from front page), that linked to yet another – all had random alphanumeric phrases. Then I posted (nofollow) comments on a few PR1 and up pages.
It was around November, and this blog is not even indexed yet so I’m not sure what to think…
April 10th, 2011 at 6:41 am
4Fnli0 I’m out of league here. Too much brain power on display!