Do Follow No Longer Important?

[Exciter]

Someone mentioned that Google plans to crawl links on blogs and websites even if the current web page being crawled is do follow or not? If so, what was Google's reasoning behind this decision?

 

[handsonhosting]

Can you post a link to where you heard that information?

 

[sherwood]

I also get this information in a newsletter I subscribe to. I think it's just a rumor, and the only party can confirm this is Google. But I did find some links I left on no follow blogs listed on Google Webmastertools. I don't know if the links are significant or not.

 

[AbbieRose]

It sounds rather implausible to be honest. A webmaster has a right to make those decisions themselves, and anything else just opens them up to spam. I don't want my stuff being spammed for free back links.

 

[SenseiSteve]

I have to agree with AbbieRose - this sounds very implausible.

 

[Anneke]

Yeah, what kind of sense would this make? Spam is bad enough without Google encouraging it. It would be a very bad business decision, especially on the heels of Buzz.

 

[HostMajors.com]

They might crawl but give no benefit for link, so who cares.

 

[HostMantis]

I've seen links indexed in Google that were in fact "no follow" on the site they were indexed for a little while now. So I really don't think this is a recent decision.

 

[bermuda]

If you try to forget about PR which is the main reason why a lot of links are no followed on the net, your site still would enjoy getting a lot of links. Google counts links but the no followed ones would not pass the PageRank juice to the recipients. No followed links are valuable if you regard them from link building and SEO perspectives. For example, a CNN homepage no followed link, do you believe is with no values?

 

[hans123]

I don't think it's true; can you please give us a link from where u got this news?

 

[tonytradz06]

If that's true, it would be easier for us. We don't need to worry so much whether the site we work on is dofollow or not.

 

[EpicTech]

I would also like a link From what I've been able to research, since 2005 Google claims to respect no-follow sites....

 

[Fizzadar]

I'm pretty sure all links are followed unless they contain the nofollow attribute. Dofollow doesn't change anything I don't believe.

 

[sherwood]

If you try to forget about PR which is the main reason why a lot of links are no followed on the net, your site still would enjoy getting a lot of links. Google counts links but the no followed ones would not pass the PageRank juice to the recipients. No followed links are valuable if you regard them from link building and SEO perspectives. For example, a CNN homepage no followed link, do you believe is with no values?

I agree with you to some extent. A link is a link no matter it is do follow or no follow. The more links to your website you have, the more exposure your website gets.

 

[AbbieRose]

For example, a CNN homepage no followed link, do you believe is with no values?

Yes this is a good point. Ultimately a link there would bring a great deal of exposure and so have high value in and of itself, even when all page rank and other benefits are disregarded.

 

[cahyaning]

what should we do?

 

[Zagor]

They might crawl but give no benefit for link, so who cares.

Exactly my point! Other search engines like Yahoo and MSN perform very poor job when it comes to respecting the nofollow attribute to the fullest. For example, Yahoo follows the link but gives it no credit.