13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck

[seorender]

Source:-
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=4410

Search Engine Journal gives 13 reasons why NoFollow is a failure. Take a look and judge for yourself. I would love to hear more from the SEOguru's.

1. NoFollow = NoWorky. Using NoFollow in blog comments, the original intent of the tag, does nothing to discourage comment spammers. Using other anti-spamming tools such as question, math and plugins such as Akismet and SpamKarma for Wordpress is much more effective.

2. If a blogger moderates comments, there is no need for a NoFollow attribute. “Everyone who passes a human inspection should get the link love.”

3. Since the use of NoFollow in comments on Wordpress blogs is default, many bloggers do not even realize they are using NoFollow.

4. NoFollow=NoValue. Why use NoFollow on sites, text ads, and blogs if there is no value in terms of search engine indexing? What if they made the Yahoo! directory nofollow? Would anyone continue to purchase listings? Obviously the value of that directory would be zero of nofollow tags were applied to the listings.

5. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves.

6. No Follow sucks because the search engines (particularly Google) can’t make up their mind about when and how it should be used, thus causing confusion among inexperienced webmasters who do STUPID things like No Follow ALL outgoing links from their website to “protect the site from page rank leakage” and other silly ideas.

7. No-follow is a poor search engine’s solution to conceal its own failure to rank websites appropriately. What’s next, No-linking?

Search engines should be able to develop a method of identifying and devaluing links to spam sites which were placed in blog comments. Why should everyone who posts in blog comments suffer from the actions of a greedy few spammers.

8. Commenting on a blog post is the same as adding more relevant to that blog post. A thought provoking one sentence post can lead to pages of comments. If someone takes the time to help build your site’s content via posting comments, it is professional courtesy to give them some link love.

9. Putting NoFollow on Wikipedia is like putting Grey Poupon on a Spam sandwich.(Or like putting perfume on a pig.)

Taking Wikipedia to task over nofollow is fun but ultimately you need to take them to task for why they implemented nofollow in the first place - that is, to prevent spam. Which in turn means that the way Wikipedia was setup was flawed because it opened itself up to easy spamming.

Therefore, instead of just letting Wikipedia take the easy way out (because ultimately it’s an important resource for many people and replacing it would be tough), they should look at ways into changing their systems so they are not as open to spamming any more.

10. Text link advertisements which use a NoFollow make no sense. If you want to spread your Google juice, why use a link-condom?

11. Even Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg says NoFollow was a failure; “In theory this should work perfectly, but in practice although all major blogging tools did this two years ago and comment and trackback spam is still 100 times worse now. In hindsight, I don’t think nofollow had much of an effect, though I’m still glad we tried it.”

12. Search Engines follow NoFollow. Yahoo has been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer. So, if you’re goal in comment spamming to to build backlinks, which builds your site’s value in terms of selling advertising (TLA, ReviewMe, SEOmoz’s PageStrength and other metrics programs use Yahoo Backlinks as valued criteria), NoFollow is useless.

13. NoFollow Sucks. Check It!

What are your thoughts on NoFollow? Do you support the use of NoFollow in Wikipedia or as a way to identify paid links?

[Bestmiler]

I know it doesn't help your PR but you get a link from it.

[QwkSand]

Yes. You'd still have more exposure and might generate more traffic.

[Sadu]

Share the link love.

My attitude is simple - if the comment adds something to the discussion, then they get the link love.

It's simple really, most bloggers want people to post interesting comments, and the link love is the payment for this.
Because most people approve comments manually anyway, the links have editorial integrity.

[KenMendonca]

Like most "quick fixes" no follow links are not, nor will they ever be a cure-all. There is no such thing on the internet. They are a tool and can be used in certain situations.

If the blog is properly moderated then it rarely becomes as issue.

[maldives]

Nofollow = useless unless the link is therefore traffic purpose!

[solidghost]

Nofollow tag is used to prevent abuse, but looks like it has gone overboard now.

I think Wiki is going to use it as well.

[mhmdkhamis]

i am not using NoFollow

[Janna122003]

Yes, even the site has nofollow it can also be your source of traffic.

[Johan007]

It is not a tag and I think this attribute is excellent and has reduced blog spam considerably making it harder for spammers. Not even condoms are 100% effective (they can split) but I would hardly call them a failure. I have over 20 links on Wiki more than most here but I am not complaining. I do not want to pointing any fingers but only spammers complain!

[Sadu]

I disagree. Adding nofollow to my blog software made no difference at all to spam. Adding a CAPTCHA stopped the spam overnight.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good tool to have in the toolbox - such as when a Viagra merchant posts an actually useful comment on your blog (where you want to keep the comment but not live link to the site).

But I don't think it has reduced spam - the spam bots still hit any unprotected site or forum as hard as they can, and nofollow does not discourage them.

[Johan007]

Originally Posted by Sadu

But I don't think it has reduced spam.

I have seen a reduction. Not all spammers are educated about this tag yet as it is still new. At least G will not count these links for ranking for now and spammers may eventually give up. Give it a few years.

[John Scott]

has reduced blog spam considerably making it harder for spammers.

I haven't seen any change whatsoever in the amount of blog comment spamming.

[QwkSand]

Blog comment spamming aren't a problem as long as the blog is moderated and updated regularly. I really don't think people should use not using no follow tags as an excuse that they get spams.

Besides, some spams' objective is not the link but rather the traffic so they might still comment on blogs even with the no follow tags on.

[sitetutor]

Originally Posted by Sadu

Share the link love.

My attitude is simple - if the comment adds something to the discussion, then they get the link love.

It's simple really, most bloggers want people to post interesting comments, and the link love is the payment for this.
Because most people approve comments manually anyway, the links have editorial integrity.

I´m in total agreement, Google says that we should act as if search engines do not exist when building a site. So why would we then add no follow. It´s the search engines´job to figure out what is good and what isn´t. Just keep your blog as quality as you possibly can, and the rest should all fall into place.



Mike

[MadEvan]

IMHO why should you be getting PR, link love, just because you made a comment. The owner has built the site and the PR. They are not obligated to let anyone piggyback off their work. If you are truly committed to building conversation then keep commenting and build a relationship with the owner. I have yet to see a blogger who refused to reference other bloggers that they had a relationship with, in their post.

Plus isn't there a WP plugin that gives you the ability to mod comments and give link live to the ones you choose?

My blog isn't popular or high in rank. But when it gets there a don't plan on letting just any suffer making comments build off my hard work.

[bluemoon]

I support the removal of "nofollow" tag from the comment.

[zibblu]

I still see a lot of "nofollow" links showing up in my backlinks... I do use nofollow a lot myself when linking out to affiliate products - because... well they aren't paying me to give them links, i get paid for making sales. so i feel no obligation to give them my PR - but i never nofollow a link to other people/blogs or to helpful resources.

I do agree that the use of "nofollow" is getting ridiculous. For example I was posting a lot of articles on a site called Associated Content - they now "nofollow" their RESOURCES on their articles. To me that's just ridiculous. These are human reviewed articles... I mean, that's just completely against the spirit of the internet, to "nofollow" resources. And yes that's what Wikipedia is doing now too. It's some serious BS.

[theseokit]

13? I can give you one and its the only one needed. They suck because they are nofollow!

Nuff Said

[zagu060807]

Nofollow tags for me is very useless, it lessens the traffic, yet search engines could not identify that link.