SEO: What Exactly Is "No Follow"?

Mar 16, 2009

One of the ways that SEOs stop page rank bleed from one page to another is by using the “no follow” tag in URLs.

For example, on your home page, it does you no good whatsoever to have search engine spiders follow links to your terms of service or privacy policy pages. Do you really want those ranked in Google? No. So, rather than allow your home page to distribute some of its page rank to those pages, you add a “no follow” tag to the URLs, like this:

<a href=”http://yourdomain.com” rel=”nofollow”>Privacy Policy</a>

This way, the spider sees the nofollow and stops right there and your home page PR is more concentrated. That means that important links to other pages in your site get greater benefit.

No follow is also used on websites to prevent spiders from following the links to other websites. For example, if you look at Wikipedia, all of the outbound links from there are “no follow” links. They pass no PR goodness on, and so, it prevents spammers from bothering with the site. Good idea, right?

Yes and no.

“No follow” also prevents comments on your blog. If you use the standard WordPress configuration, it makes every comment link no follow by default. You need a plugin like “Do Follow” to change that. I have “Do Follow” because I think that anyone who comments should get the benefit of that comment, and have good spam checkers in place so that I don’t get spammed too radically.

So, it’s up to you. My advice is to definitely use no follow tags for any pages on your home page that you don’t want indexed in the search engines, and to leave all others alone. Unless you get as big as Wikipedia, anyway. :-)

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Posted by Pat Marcello | Categories: SEO Information | Tagged: , |
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  • canny
    This article provide me with some really useful info.
    Before implementing this my terms of conditions was one of my sites highest ranked pages on google.
  • Well, I too can't understand why many of them still stick to no follow, as there is no reason to do so except to stop spam, which can be done by many other means. Do follow not only spreads a link juice but also it encourages the commentators to comment on the blog.
  • jen
    I am a newbie to blogging. This term has always confused me. Just as you mentioned, bloggers should have do follow comments on their blogs. On the other hand, Google likes no follow links. Have you had any problems with page rank as a result of your do follow links?

    Also, I like your post. Thank you for providing the actual code for a no follow link. As I said earlier, I am a newbie. My linking experience is limited if the hyperlink icon is unavailable. lol
  • Hi Jen,

    I don't think that Google likes or dislikes nofollow. It's just a way to keep their spiders from following the links through, and a way to keep spam off your blog.

    You can't be penalized for using nofollow.

    - Pat
  • newbee
    Thanks for sharing this information. i never knew about this nofollow concept. It was very useful and guided properly.
  • Lisa
    I come across references to a follow versus no follow links all the time. I never qite understood what it all meant until I read your post. You explained the idea well.
    I write for a website that doesn't seem to have a lot of "PR goodness." To prevent leaks, writers were asked to nix exernal links in favor of internal links to other articles - one every 100 words.

    Another website that I write for says to limit internal links to 1, possibly 2.

    Why the difference in linking requirements? Is it a preference thing? Or is there a certain number of links a page can have before the links have
    a negative effect on rank?
  • Hi Lisa,

    Yes. There is a negative effect if there are too many links. They dilute the page rank going out from the page. So, for example, if you use 10 links on a page, each gets 10% of the page rank flowing out to the pages they link to. If you use 5 links, each page gets 20% of the page rank flowing out. Sending links to internal pages is a good tactic, and the fewer links on a ranking page, the more oomph the internal page your link to it provides.

    Google doesn't rank sites; it ranks pages. So, each one has its own link reputation and page rank.

    Hope that makes sense.

    Pat
  • Another option is to use the Robots.txt file, as this allows you to disallow selected pages for each user agent.
    Granted, it’s a bit more complicated, but offers central management, and greater control.

    Maybe you could write a post about it sometime or even compare the two methods.
  • Hi Carl,

    I certainly can. Thanks for your comment!

    -- Pat
  • asvd
    This is a great tip I have never tried that. But I wonder how well it will block bots. Is there any loophole in it?
  • Hi Asvd,

    Nope.... Stops 'em cold. The search engines came up with the tag, so it works very well.

    -- Pat
  • That's nice suggestions, and that might be the reason for the bot indexing your pages.
    Just a question - is it sure that if the spider/bot stops at the nofollow tag, will it give more ranking to home page - is that true? The bot may leave the site after indexing the pages, instead of focusing onto a particular page.
    Anyway, nice article.
  • Hi Manish,

    Not that you get MORE rank from stopping out going links. It just gives the links that you're sending out more powerful.

    If you have 10 links on your page, they each get 1/10 of the PR goodness flowing to them. If you have 5, they 1/20. This is important to know in getting interior pages to rank or your other websites.

    Make sense?

    Pat
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