Attribute ‘rel=nofollow’
rel=”nofollow”, is said to be the next biggest thing to be used by shady webmasters engaging in reciprocal link exchanges. This attribute was introduced by Google as a means to prevent the problem of comment spamming in weblogs, also called “Blogs”, and it looks to be adopted by all other major search engines such as Yahoo! and MSN.
“rel” is an attribute, not a tag
rel=”nofollow” has been inaccurately called a HTML tag. It is in fact an attribute that can be added to HTML tags, similar to adding the attribute “width” to HTML tags such as <IMG> or <TABLE>. The attribute rel=”nofollow” is used on individual anchor tags <A> for links.
Purpose of rel=”nofollow”
Any link with this attribute will indicate to search engine robots that the landing page may not be approved by the web site listing this link and therefore the link will not contribute to the link popularity or ranking of the landing page.
Example link using rel=”nofollow”
An example of the use of this attribute in a link is displayed below. The resulting link, while still visible to visitors, will not contribute to Google’s link popularity, PageRank or search engine ranking (not that they really need any).
HTML code: <a href="http://www.google.com" rel="nofollow">Google Search</a>
Resulting link: Google Search
Impact on link exchanges
While this attribute is clearly beneficial, especially for preventing spammers from abusing Blogs, guestbooks and other public areas where comments can be submitted, one of the concerning consequences is shady webmasters using it for the links on their links pages and directories. A link using the attribute rel=”nofollow” is not completely worthless, visitors can still come to your web site through this link, however you will be losing out when it comes to link popularity and search engine rankings.
Another possible abuse of rel=nofollow is the use of this attribute applied to the link pointing to the links page or directory. By applying rel=nofollow in this way, the outgoing links on the links page appears valid, however, because the links page is not “approved” by the page linking to it, the links page will not receive PageRank or link popularity. Hence a link on such a page would not pass on any benefits in terms of link popularity and search engine rankings.
More information
Looking for the source of this article? Read Google’s Blog on Preventing Comment Spam. You may also be interested in what MSN and Yahoo! has to say about this new attribute.
Learn how to detect rel=”nofollow” for Safari on Mac OS X using a javascript bookmark. You can also detect rel=”nofollow” on Firefox for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
It feels as if this attribute is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Certainly, as a blog owner, I have no desire to have my blog filled with comments from spammers.
Comment by john becks amazing profits — November 14, 2006
My main concern is that you can’t guarantee every page of your website will be included in the SERPs. Considering I’m constantly adding new products to my company’s website, I need to be sure that customers can find them as soon as possible.http://www.seoptimizerz.com
Comment by SEO — July 27, 2007
It is still a debate whether NOFOLLOW links are useless. Some people still believe that they are beneficial for Link Popularity but do not pass any PR.
Comment by villas — February 19, 2008
if all search engines are supporting the rel=nofollow why is that yahoo still considers nofollow links as inbound links?
tried using site explorer and tried looking to our competitors inbound links and in my shock found thousands of inbound links from blogs, and what irks me is all of their comments are spam!
Comment by thanatos10 — April 9, 2008
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Pingback by Jenn’s Other Blog » Blog Archive » Using (and Abusing?) rel=”nofollow” to Preserve Page Rank — May 17, 2008
[…] Compare Google Juice [1] [2] [3] or The nofollow attribute [1] [2] […]
Pingback by Standard Mischief » Lexicon: Google-fu — June 6, 2008
I agree about the nofollow. I did not realise this and did some blog lins and before I knew it, the page was showing at position 64 in google (I know that’s not great but it was a difficult phrase.
Comment by Available Domain Names — July 5, 2008
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Pingback by Using (and Abusing?) rel=”nofollow” to Preserve Page Rank | Ft. Hard Knox — January 7, 2009
Can someone tell me how the nofollow is added to a link, and not anchor text? Say I am linking to a page, and want certain links to be nofollow and not all on the page. How do I add the full code when creating anchor text?
Many thanks
Sean
Comment by Affiliates Earn Money — January 12, 2009
[…] Use the rel=nofollow tag. This tag will tell Google that the page you are linking to has no value. The search engines may index the page you are linking to, but will not pass any PageRankĀ® or page reputation. You will want to use this on a page that has no importance i.e. contact us page, SERPs, about us page etc these are pages that probably dont make you money, so why have them rank. Find out more at: Trackback Lies and Link Tutorials […]
Pingback by SEO-Explained-By-Google — February 1, 2009
[…] Use the rel=nofollow tag. This tag will tell Google that the page you are linking to has no value. The search engines may index the page you are linking to, but will not pass any PageRank® or page reputation. You will want to use this on a page that has no importance i.e. contact us page, SERPs, about us page etc these are pages that probably dont make you money, so why have them rank. Find out more at: Trackback Lies and Link Tutorials […]
Pingback by Google now tells you how to rank? — February 1, 2009
I viewed the source page and it shows, rel-nofollow.
Comment by kamjah — March 19, 2009
PR does not come from backlinks. Not all of it anyway.
I have many sites that are Pr4, yet have 2 backlinks.
I also have many sites in the number one spot, out ranking high PR sites and yet are pr1’s.
In the end social media wins. Enjoy your rank while you can, as it will show differetn results for each person geographically.
Comment by Kortia — March 31, 2009
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Pingback by Using (and Abusing?) rel=nofollow to Preserve Page Rank | Serradinho — April 17, 2009
[…] Instead, just check if the website as a whole has a high PR. If it does, you can get link juice from placing a link on the inner page. But remember, the link must be DoFollow. A lot of websites are now shifting towards the NoFollow attribute, because of all the widespread spam out there. […]
Pingback by Common Link Building Myth Dispelled! » Quality SEO Services & Link Building Services - — July 11, 2009
Useful for me because i have added this rel=”nofollow” attribute to those sites link in my website who deleted my link from their site. If they again decide to include me i just have to remove the rel attribute or make its value “follow”.
Comment by Pamela Scout — August 4, 2009
I learned about rel attribute and its value “follow” and “nofollow” but i don’t know the meaning of its value ‘index’ and ‘noindex’. Are they similar to ‘follow’ and ‘nofollow’ ?
Comment by Sara — August 4, 2009
Thanks, that was really and insightful information
Comment by Jawad — August 30, 2009
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Pingback by SEO for Beginners — January 24, 2010
Good article!!
Thank you so much!! 
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Comment by Nokia Mobile — September 24, 2010
Nofollow is being used more and more as a default method.
If every webmaster use nofollow on every out going link, where would that leave google.
Google might hurt themselves by having no links to follow.
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Comment by Penis Enlargement — October 27, 2010
Although most webmaster believe no-follow links are useless, there has been several research around, and if I remember right, some folks from SeoBook have done a test by building a few thousands of sites with a common typo word that was not present in the target page and neither relevant.
It seems that no-follow links still pass some juice or at least help ranks with some keywords. I personally judge the whole concept of PR obsolete anyways, has I have encountered several domains that were fairly aged and some with literally hundreds of thousands of NATURAL backlinks amongst them enormous quantities of PR5= links to have pretty low PR.
The links still have a high value for rankings, but the PR concept is totally obsolete, and as far as I have personally studied, Google is now shifting to a concept of categories, not shown to the common eye, where it weights the PR by the type of links. I have several examples to back my assumptions.
Comment by SEO Marketing Montreal — October 28, 2010
I agree! most websites even if they use nofollow LINK they do give page popularity to the linked page.
However, Google is the main search engine for all the webmasters and I am sure everyone would like to see their site coming on top!
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Comment by Addictive Media — November 19, 2010
No follow Attribute has to be used only to avoid no related content.
Comment by Arenal Hotel — November 21, 2010
The “rel=nofollow” is an attribute to “a” tag. It is very useful if you want to keep away spammers from your site or blog. But I think, making your site a “dofollow” site and inviting spammers to your site will produce traffic for your site.
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Comment by CPA Network — January 29, 2011
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Comment by Affiliate Network — March 29, 2011
I see multiple versions of rel=”nofollow” showing up on websites. Quotes, no quotes, additional words added, etc. Are all the following valid ?:
rel=nofollow
rel=”me nofollow”
I thought the only valid way to write this was:
rel=”nofollow”
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Comment by Northwest Austin Homes For Sale — June 14, 2011
Without a doubt that the rel=ā€¯nofollowā€¯ attribute at this moment is adopted by all of the big search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.
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Comment by Healthy Pet Food — November 10, 2011
Although I can understand the relation and purpose of the attribute rel=”no follow”, it also noted that their is no guarantee that this method will help protect a blogger who produces all his own content. I am still in the middle on a decision to utilize, but will continue researching considering content like yours. Thanx great info.
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