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Backlash Against Large Sites Using NoFollow Begining?

View Comments June 26, 2007 | Everton

Even though it’s rare that I add new plugins these days, I still subscribe to the feed from WordPress Plugins DB. One plugin caught my eye yesterday, which appears to have been designed to counter big sites like Wikipedia not giving link love.

The WordPress Blog SEO plugin automatically adds the ‘nofollow’ tag to any links it spots to sites that have benefited immensely from blogs linking to them, but add ‘nofollow’ to their own external links i.e. they don’t share the link love. I think the plugin author is hoping that enough blogs install the plugin, the big sites will sit up and take notice.

Sites included on the list are:

addthis.com,
blinklist.com, blogger.com,
del.icio.us,
facebook.com,
google.com,
linkter.hu,
ma.gnolia.com,
netvouz.com,
segnalo.alice.it, simply.com, shadows.com, startaid.com, stumbleupon.com,
thisnext.com,
wikipedia.org,
yahoo.com, youtube.com

I share the author’s frustrations about big sites using ‘nofollow’ and not sharing the link love, particularly as many of them have got to where they have because of blogs, but I don’t reckon much to his chances of getting them to change their policy.

A more meaningful campaign for bloggers I feel is the ‘U Comment I Follow’ campaign. Since I joined the number of comments left on this site has nearly doubled. Although some of the comments haven’t had the quality of previous comments, hopefully getting more comments will lead to more lurkers getting involved with this blog.

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About Everton: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day. View posts.

  • It's amazing how many webmasters don't even know about "nofollow." They believe that every link to their site give them a higher page rank, so they go on every possible forum, social networking site, blog, etc., assuming that they will boost their page rank from all those posts they do. Still, it's not a bad idea to use this strategy, at the very least for some old-fashioned public relations. Even if the links don't boost page rank, their name is getting out there with each link added.
  • Google almost definitely does not ignore nofollow. I really think captchas would solve the spam problem much more effectively, especially if combined with moderation (and maybe a ranking system like the ones on slashdot or digg). Nofollow does little besides discouraging discussion.
  • Well, I can see where nofollows come from. According to google, whatever links are on your site, this counts as an 'endorsement' from you. If you do not put the links there, you cannot vouch for them. Outbound links to spam pages can hurt your own page ranking, etc.

    Now, that being said, in a perfect world, users would not be running spam pages, and all readers of your blog would just be linking back to their own blog, where they may have even given you some link love by continuing the topic of the conversation on their own page.

    Wikipedia though... nofollows leave a bad taste in my mouth. It would be like if you the blogger wrote about some topic from another article, and nofollowed *that* link. Wikipedia is copying (in many cases, merely just rewording, like a 4th grade book report) valuable information found online, and then BAM, now wikipedia ranks higher than you do in all searches, even though they just took your in depth research and claimed it as their own. And what do you have to show for it? It used to give you a boost in rank, but now.. it really just hurts you. It's pretty disgusting. Especially when so many spammers of wikipedia are caught and policed for adding their own links, I do not see how nofollows add anything to the table.
  • I think everton when google annouced paid links exclusion and giving high rank to editorial links the sites or bloggers are going to change their policy rather then selling links they will charge for editorial links.

    But for me nofollow tag create flag in the eyes of google as if you are not trusting your own sites why would google trust urs. just my 2 cents.
  • ...'I think search engines are more and more IGNORING the nofollow tags'...

    Google DOES NOT IGNORE nofollow. I am 100% sure about this as I was doing experiments on my main web-site which has several solid PR4 pages and only 2 dozen inlinks from other solid sites (in other words - situation can be approximated with a controlled experiment). When I put nofollow's on most internal (and external) links, many pages went into supplemental index. In addition, one that was 1st (first = top = the very top) out of million+ results for a 3 word phrase for MONTHS, now is not showing anywhere in the main index results.
  • There has been lot of discussion on this nofollow. Obviously large sites can't give link love. But most of the blogs have started the U follow, I follow campaign.
  • Anon

    nice idea, i don't think it'd ever work though

  • I'd love to see more information on the idea that search engines are ignoring nofollow. That's a compelling thought.

    As for this little plugin: I think all things begin small. We have no idea how much of an impact it will make until some time passes and things happen, or don't happen. In the meantime, I think it's worth my time to blog about it tomorrow.

    I Floow, but I don't care for those massive dofollow lists. I see it kind of like karma. What I give will come back to me in good ways in the end,
  • The idea of nofollow is fundamentally flawed so lets just hope the search engines fix their software and remove the need for it then it can be ignored by them
  • haha.. it's really funny idea i think.
    banning bigger site? well.. i don't think they'll even care about it :)
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