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Nofollow Nofollow Nofollow
The nofollow debate is in it’s last stages and “paid posts” (this includes text-link-ads) will be of the same value as reciprocal links or worse in the near future.
Matt Cutts from Google says:
- Yet another “pay-for-blogging” (PFB) business launched, this time by Text Link Brokers. It should be clear from Google’s stance on paid text links, but if you are blogging and being paid by services like Pay Per Post, ReviewMe, or SponsoredReviews, links in those paid-for posts should be made in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. The rel=”nofollow” attribute is one way, but there are numerous other ways to do paid links that won’t affect search engines, e.g. doing an internal redirect through a url that is forbidden from crawling by robots.txt.
Doug Heil (who often pisses people off) comments:
I find it hilarious that text link brokers is now doing this. “Performancing” tried and failed. The main reason is that this pay for post stuff is mostly to do with Google and we all know it. The crying about Google saying to use nofollow on ALL paid links is not something new. Afterall; if you sell links on your website, are you not selling them for the targeted visitors your site will send to your advertisers? If not, why not? …… I know that answer.
Let’s review: Any link that affects search engines and is paid risks your ability to pass pagerank, so if you do not care about sharing PR go for it. I prefer to use my PR to help get my new sites crawled (the only known value of pagerank), so to insert paid links or write paid posts would be downright foolish.
My friend graywolf on the other hand openly writes paid posts and is a text-link-ads affiliate. Michael obviously does not care about using his PageRank to influence other sites and he still ranks pretty well for “SEO” related stuff in Google. Why? You currently only risk the loss of your ability to influence other sites with your PageRank but Google has been known to makes changes in it’s algorithm so beware.
As for agreeing or disagreeing with the nofollow rules set by Google (for ranking in it’s search engine) that you can take it up with Google.
Google also might want to update it’s rules because average humans do not have time to follow Matt Cutts around online (to get the latest news) which is a source of frustration.
The dabate over the nofollow tag is a tricky one and can cause loss of friendships and trust with other SEOs. It doesn’t have to be this way if we just admit that anything “paid” and discovered by the Google algorithm is weak SEO.
Similar Post:
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:16 am
must … resist … temptation … to … be baited … into … no follow … depate … must … resist
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:21 am
LOL…dude, you already made it known in the last debate we had so calm down. ;-o
As you know, I use my blog to point out the obvious that is often not so obvious to those who work for a living.
I’m fully dressed today are you? =P
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:52 pm
too late expect a full smackdown post later this week.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Haha!!! That’s the spirit, go for it and rip it up dude!
Here is something you might agree with.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Can I have a rant too?
When Yahoo implements nofollow on its 5 year old paid directory, or Google state they will be devaluing links from Yahoo, I think then Google might have some more moral ground to stand on.
If they then start discrediting links between sister sites owned by the same corporation, such as Shopping.com > epinions > ebay, then again, commercial links between smaller “partner” sites might be ethical to use “nofollow”
Forcing nofollow on commercial links of what ever variety is “evil”
Enough of a rant, I have a post to write about Google breaking FTC and WOMMA guidelines
February 5th, 2007 at 2:32 am
We agree that rel=nofollow has, hmmmm, at least its flaws. However, ranting will not change anything. Google will not dump rel=nofollow just because the SEO community dislikes its ongoing morphing. I guess it’s time to move this debate into a more forward thinking direction. What can be done to smoothly replace the current nofollow-functionality with a well thought out norm covering the current (mis)use of nofollow, and other needs like standardized section targeting as well?
August 6th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Nofollow = no trust? It also means = not relevant in the eyes of a search engine friendly, relevance seeking webmaster. Nofollow is a double-edged sword (until otherwise told differently by the G behind the curtain)
March 4th, 2008 at 4:19 am
I think that often webmasters simply use `nofollow` in order to strengthen their own site`s PR. Far better for them if they don`t have to `dilute` their backlinks by having outbound links.