14th August 2007

More nofollow B.S.

posted in Google, Matt Cutts |

google-webmaster-help-google-groups.pngGoogle doesn’t even trust its own sites anymore and feels they need to nofollow the links to them. Why…

  1. Are they bad neighborhoods?
  2. Are they paid links?
  3. Are they spam pages?
  4. Are they unmoderated user comments?

The screen shot above is from the Google Webmaster Help Group* home page. (Be careful following that link it contains a lot of questionable links on it to some possibly bad pages that Google cannot vouch for.)

The proliferation of the misuse of Nofollow has been called a plague before but I am starting to consider it an epidemic, which needs some severe attention NOW.

Come on Matt Cutts, send a company wide email explaining the proper use of Nofollow. While you are at it, how about a blog post so the rest of the world understands it as well.

* If they can’t trust their linking partners, either can I.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 4:10 am and is filed under Google, Matt Cutts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. All comments are subject to my NoFollow policy. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 6 responses to “More nofollow B.S.”

Why not let me know what you think by adding your own comment! All the cool kids are doing it.

  1. 1 MyAvatars 0.2 On August 14th, 2007, JohnMu said:

    I think a part of that comes from Google eating it’s own dog-food, using the same tools that it provides for the average user (which seem to be more locked down with regards to linkage than probably necessary, extra on the safe side). I’m glad that they are “forced” to use their own tools — that way they can evolve to get better and better for the average user as well.

  2. 2 MyAvatars 0.2 On August 14th, 2007, JohnMu said:

    I love your Google-colorizer, btw. :)

  3. 3 MyAvatars 0.2 On August 14th, 2007, John Honeck "JLH" said:
    You can colorize your Google with the plugin.

    http://www.anwaelte-in-vulkane-werfen.de/376/wordpress-plugin-senselesssuperbunt-google-anmalen/

    And maybe even translate the site for me!

  4. 4 MyAvatars 0.2 On August 14th, 2007, John Honeck "JLH" said:
    I guess if they are universally saying that they cannot trust the links provided by groups owners (even it is Google itself) , then perhaps the content as well as the links should be blocked from the crawlers. If the whole lot is not good enough to be vouched for it surely must not be good enough to index, but I bet its high enough quality to serve ads on.

    Then again wiki doesn’t trust its own members to link out responsibly and Google loves that site, so just the same song, different verse.

  5. 5 MyAvatars 0.2 On August 15th, 2007, Sebastian said:

    I totally understand how this happens John, but even telling the nofollow crap is thrown on all groups doesn’t explain *) why they castrate the links to the pages in the introduction but not on the sidebar, and it doesn’t explain why on other groups the pages aren’t nofollowed although they’re user supplied, where group owner equals user. Ok, the links on pages are condomized too but why point the crawler to condomized contents anyway? I know the rel-nofollow semantics don’t say that each and every bit of user generated content is crap one must nofollow, Google stated often that selective and sensible use of nofollow is preferred, for example Adam asked the Wiki to make sane use of the link condom, but Google teams like blogger and groups throw it like confetti (this phrase is trademarked!). When Google is not able to implement rel-nofollow in a reasonable way, how can one blame Twitter Pownce and all the other nofollow victims when they switch of their brains while throwing nofollow confetti? I’d say Google’s secret master plan contains a head note like “Google’s mission is to comdomize the world’s information and make it universally uncrawlable and useless” WRT safer indexing. Doh! Don’t get me started again on nofollow rants …

    *) Technically it’s explainable

  6. 6 MyAvatars 0.2 On September 26th, 2007, jerbroo said:

    Assuming that Google is being forthright about what they actually do with nofollow, as its use proliferates and we have nofollow confetti then it’ll become as useful as meta description tag. Which means another update to disaffect nofollow. But, what if it’s not actually a simple way to not pass on link juice or “credit” or whatever. What if it’s another metric for Google to profile webmasters and sites. Perhaps it’s used as a damping factor in an evolved PR algo. I question whether they’d offer up nofollow, given it’s expressed and understood intend, and expect it to actually weed out spamy links. After all, who’s going to use it? ..webmasters, SEO’s, etc. oooo? ..Or maybe you’re right, Matt et al just need to explain it better.

    -Jerbroo

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