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rel nofollow
Published: August 18, 2006
I was on a SEO forum and discussing the hyperlink attribute rel="nofollow" when I received an email from a non-member asking me why I didn't have this attribute on my blog and that I was surely asking for spam.
Broadcast:
This site doesn't use rel="nofollow"
Here's why:
rel="nofollow" doesn't work
Almost all website owners who employ rel="nofollow" say that it doesn't stop comment spam from being posted to their blogs.
rel="nofollow" doesn't work
Search engines do follow the link so rel="nofollow" doesn't work. All it does it remove the weight of rank the published page could offer to the destination.
rel="nofollow" doesn't work
rel="nofollow" would work if I decided to publish spam. Why would I do that?
rel="nofollow" doesn't work
Instead of devaluing the published spam that I don't publish, everyone else then suffers for it. Why should informative websites such as blogs be penalised? Raising the rank on informative sites is a more effective way of beating spam than trying to devalue information that never gets listed.
rel="nofollow" doesn't work
It isn't semantic. rel="nofollow" suggests to me that nothing should follow the link but that's not the case.
rel="nofollow" doesn't work
It's a search engines problem. Pay me and I'll think about using it.
rel="nofollow" doesn't work
Could it damage the internet? What if user agents of the future chose not to render links with rel="nofollow"? What if it lowered the destinations rank? Think of the abuse.
rel="nofollow" doesn't work
I think I've said enough on the subject. If you're reading this Khalid then you get my point. By all means add it to your site and good luck. If I publish a link on my site it's because it has a value to the readers here and if I can rub some of this sites value onto theirs then that's a good thing.
Finally
Regarding email spam I think the ISP's should shoulder the majority of the responsibility here. As for Web spam, back to you 'search engines'. Deal with it!
Useful?
Assistance?
Comments
Sam says:
Standard Warfare says:
It's true, people are only bothered about whats in it for me and aren't going to post unless they get there link back.
Kevin says:
I agree...we should look to ways to promote sites with good and relevant content. Let's encourage good behaviour and use carrots not sticks.
Jens Meiert says:
Nice. May I repeat? rel="nofollow" doesn't work.
(Blatant manual "semi-trackback": nofollow still considered harmful.)
Raymond says:
This is more of a personal message to you and not a post. I totally agree with Kevin: "I agree...we should look to ways to promote sites with good and relevant content. Let's encourage good behaviour and use carrots not sticks." I've started a project to promote proper metadata etiquette. Maybe I'll include a post on this issue and how it relates to the semantic web. I've enjoyed your post.
Kerry says:
Now, here I got a little confused. You say that "Search engines do follow the link so rel="nofollow" doesn't work." when I thought that they really don't follow the link. At least as far as we talk about Google (from what I know Yahoo and MSN just ignore it).
I have read different opinions about that so which one is really true? Do SEs follow the link with nofollow only removing the weight of rank or they don't follow it at all?
Aside from that, I agree with you - rel="nofollow" doesn't work. It decreases the spam in some cases but certainly doesn't stop it.
ireadnews says:
I don't agree with the argument that we should help boost the page ranking of "good" sites. What's good as an ext link in our article will often differ from what's good for a Google searcher. For example, we might well have no reason to link to a good general (encyclopedic) summary of a subject (we'd just cannibalize the information), but we'd link to a fringe site that gives detail on some minor aspect or expounds an unorthodox theory. Also, I'm less worried about spambots than about human users' normal disputes concerning links. Those disputes could be even harder to resolve, because, in addition to wanting to shape the article, editors want to game the Google rankings.
Do you have any better ideas then?