Is no-follow dying?

[djbaxter]

Nofollow is Dying: The Impact of Micro-Blogging and Nofollow on SEO
by willcritchlow
Mon (2/23/09)

Google lists the three main intended uses of nofollow as:

1. Linking to untrusted content
2. Paid links
3. Crawl prioritization (typically linking to yourself with nofollow)

... there is a very real trend of powerful sites nofollowing all (or nearly all) outbound links even though they are the very definition of editorial links. ..... I believe that just as the search engines have acknowledged the limits of webmaster declaration of untrusted or paid content and often downgrade links they believe should have been nofollow, I believe they have to acknowledge the limits in the other direction as well. In other words some nofollow links should be followed. In the interests of finding the best content for their searchers, search engines are increasingly going to have to use their own (algorithmic) judgement to disregard some nofollows and include those links in their link graph... we have also seen the first signs that this is actually happening

...more

 

[jcorkern]

Great find. I also agree with this perspective. If google did not have some measure in the algo to weight factors of nofollow, then the nofollow craze would destroy the whole concept of link popularity.

Platforms like wordpress use nofollow by default, which is crazy in itself since the whole net is based on links.

Most just do not realize that links are the basic infrastructure of the internet as a whole. So making the majority of links online a nofollow with no value at all would make all links of none effect, and we all know that the meta search engines were easy to maniplulate.

It is sad that most developers/designers started abusing nofollow just as others abused the dofollow.

I am wondering when people will wake up and just accept the fact that anything in life will have trouble, and if you chose to play in any given field that you will have issues to deal with, from the fireman to the web.

Anything that there is an outcry in just gives lawmakesr a reason to come in and regulate more, therefore taking more of our rights and freedoms, online and otherwise.

 

[DJMC]

Search engines are increasingly going to have to use their own (algorithmic) judgement to disregard some nofollows and include those links in their link graph... we have also seen the first signs that this is actually happening

I agree with this completely. Why else would Google include no-follow links in the External Links displayed prominently by Google Webmaster Tools?


"What the Google Bot Sees": Google bots still look at the Anchor Text of no-followed links and compare them to the site's content, for relevancy purposes. These links are counted in GWT link count, and the anchor text is listed in the KW comparison chart.