Nofollow attribute - Nofollow is an attribute (frequently termed or
misnamed a "tag")
added to a link that tells the Google spider
and those of some other search engines not to follow a link and therefore not to count it
in the
Google PageRank
of the target page.
It looks like this in the code:
rel = "nofollow
For example:
<a rel = "nofollow" href="http://spammer.com">My
spam site</a>.
The attribute was added by Google to allow owners of interactive sites such as Web logs and forums to frustrate
comment spammers who leave comments with links
to their Web sites, only for the purpose of increasing the popularity of the
site or page. Use of the attribute in a link
will cause search engines to discount that link
in calculations of
PageRank
or authority and in positioning of the page in Search Engine results.
The Nofollow attribute is patented but freely licensed by Google
and it is respected by
Yahoo and MSN
Livesearch. Yahoo site explorer shows that at sites such as
Wikipedia and
Yahoogroups, "nofollow" attributes are attached to all links. This seems to be an
abuse of the original intent of the attribute.
The result is that if Wikipedia uses information at your Web site, they get the
content but you do not get the credit, and the same is true of articles and
links posted at Yahoogroups.
Using "nofollow"
A good
forum or Web log or CMS program will allow the option of automatically
adding "nofollow" attributes via a script for comments and other places where
nofollow could be abused.
You may also use nofollow attributes if you don't want to give pagerank credit
to hate web sites or to sites that do not reciprocate your links. Presumably,
the value of each link according to the
PageRank
calculation is inversely proportional to the number of links on the page that do
not have the "nofollow" attribute, so using the nofollow attribute increases the
value of the remaining links,
When not to use nofollow
On the evidently mistaken recommendation of Search Engine Optimization
"experts,"
website designers are using the nofollow attribute to "sculpt"
PageRank.
They believe there is some advantage to ensuring that the main page of your Web
site or another page has a higher pagerank than say, the "about" page or the
"terms of service" page. Why is this probably a mistake?
1- In a well designed Web site, every page links to the main page
and to most important pages, and so do external links. It is
unlikely that the copyright page of a Web site for example will have
a higher rank than the main page. or an article.
2- The "copyright," "about," and other such pages all count as
part of your Web site and they link back to the main page. If they
have higher page rank, this is reflected in the main page page rank
as well.
3- The basic assumption of
Search Engine Optimization
is that visitors got to your page and site by searching for a
product or item of information. If someone searches for a product,
it is not likely that the "about" page of the Web site appear at the
top of the search engine results. If someone searches for a brand
name, a well designed home page with the proper keywords and proper
choice of domain name can ensure that the home page will be
displayed first, and not the "about" page.
