Chart Music

nofollow is it actually any good?

I've been reading some comments that say it's use might not be a good idea, specifically
this:


I know iwebtool.com uses nofollow extensively over the forum, so I'm wondering is it any good?

__________________
Eco Tours | SWC | Abundance and Prosperity

See a good post?
<--Give thanks by clicking left of post.

stOx

Is it anygood for what? If nofollow links mean you don't endorse the link then i guess it's good, It does what it's meant to do.

It should only be used on user submited links though, Like in blog replies, If you use them on links you have posted on your own site then you shouldn't be linking to the site in the first place.

__________________

jumpenjuhosaphat

Not true. The reason the nofollow attribute was introduced in the first place is so that user submitted links in blogs would be safe gaurded agains spammers. Google is the one that conceived of the idea as a means of protecting site authors from being victimized and penalized because of random acts of spam. In blogs, forums, guest books, etc., the sites author sometimes cannot maintain control of what links are posted, therefore, search engines created a way to protect these types of sites from spammers. That protection is the nofollow attribute.

The nofollow attribute(nfa) does not mean that the link will not be followed by the search engine spiders, it only means that you cannot endorse that link as a trusted page, and therefore are not recommending that link to any search engine. That does not mean that the link page won't be indexed if the link is found on your page, it merely means that you don't give your vote(endorsement) for that page.

__________________
Storage Sheds
Lost Forum

Chart Music

I'm thinking in terms of it's use here at iwebtool. For example any attempt to go to a users profile has 'nofollow' set. This I believe to increase the voting importance to iwebtools main pages and those ads paid for by customers.

Take a look at this, although will take a long long time to load
http://www.iwebtool.com/visual/?doma...&no fw=1&ex=1

You can see that even new posts at the end of a thread has a nofollow set.
http://www.iwebtool.com/talk/thread5253-new-post.html

__________________
Eco Tours | SWC | Abundance and Prosperity

See a good post?
<--Give thanks by clicking left of post.

jumpenjuhosaphat

Well, again, the nofollow comes to our rescue. The members profiles aren't really a place that we would want iwebtools endorsement to go to. I'd rather have it go to your's and my links in our signature bars. I understand the reasoning behind the nofollow for profiles, they are a feature put in place for the benefit of current members.

__________________
Storage Sheds
Lost Forum

Bagi Zoltán

I have no problem with nofollow incoming links They are also LINKS!!! (that counts)

__________________
█ Time may come when you will need an excellent eCommerce shopping cart software
█ free seo related web directory precíziós mérleg Free shopping cart

stOx

Doesn't bother me either. If i have to use forum profiles to get backlinks there would be something seriously wrong with the way i am approching my SEO efforts.

I much rather get my backlinks from slashdot and related trusted blogs.

__________________

myl

i dont think yahoo or msn interpret nofollow. Its merely a google thing.

keep that in mind.

jumpenjuhosaphat

I don't really know, but from what I have read, Yahoo! and MSN both use the nofollow attribute as well.

__________________
Storage Sheds
Lost Forum

primeryder

I think forums that use 'no follow' get hurt by it. For instance DP does not use 'no follow' and is a pr7...webmasters feel their posts have value for them so they post like crazy, which is more fresh content & more original pages for DP, which is the real determinate of PR....whereas Iwebtool (and others as well) uses no follow and is a pr3. Not to degrade iwebtool, but I recently threw up a blog, posted a few dozen times to it and it was a pr3 on the next update. No promotion or paid links whatsoever.

__________________
Pet Home Business Goji Juice

stOx

The use of nollow has no effect at all on the success of a site.
Ozzu uses nofollow on all user links, it's PR7, has 23784 members and 43684 threads.

People should join a forum to help people and learn something, Not get backinks.
If people post with the intention of getting backlinks they will post useless spammy posts.

__________________

jumpenjuhosaphat

Actually, iwebtool is a PR(6) on it's front page. The nofollow until 50 posts helps to eliminate giving away any value until a member has shown a commitment. In fact, in just a few more posts, you'll be there too. The nofollow placed as a restriction is this sites way of saying "I don't really know this person that well, so I cannot endorse his/her links". When a user has made 50 posts, it is safe to say that iwebtool can trust you, if as of yet you haven't done anything to prove iwebtool otherwise. That is why there is a nfa placed on new members.

Digital point is a website that has been around since April of 1999, and they are a very big site. Their home page is actually a PR(8). IWT hasn't been around nearly that long, it's domain was first registered on February 23, 2005. So needless to say, yes, DP has better PR than does IWT.

But the thing that you have to keep in mind is that most of the forum pages on both IWT and DP are a PR0, so as far as PR boosts go, they rank about the same.

__________________
Storage Sheds
Lost Forum

Chart Music

jumpenjuhosaphat,
I think maybe I didn't explain to good.
Here at iWebTool the nofollow is used to prevent PR voting going to any minor pages
http://www.iwebtool.com/visual/?doma...ml&nofw=1&ex=1
Take a real look at this thread. Every link that isn't the content, the reply buttons, each post, « Previous Thread, Next Thread », switching modes and many more all have nofollow set.

While on one hand it's not voting for those minor things and thus voting for the main iWebTool pages increasing there PR.
My question is, is that a good thing? Because Google could look at this page, and say hold on a minute, there are all these untrusted links, this place looks link a spammy place and therefore does Google downgrade the page?

__________________
Eco Tours | SWC | Abundance and Prosperity

See a good post?
<--Give thanks by clicking left of post.

stOx

Using nofollow has no detrimental effect on the site using them or the links they are used on. I can't find the article now, But im sure matt cutt cleared this up a while back.

__________________

Chart Music

Hoping that you can find that from Matt.

Here is a more bleak outlook. http://developedtraffic.com/2005/03/...e-on-nofollow/

__________________
Eco Tours | SWC | Abundance and Prosperity

See a good post?
<--Give thanks by clicking left of post.