Time for Google to change the emphasis?
-
Why doesn't Google recommend that links are nofollow as standard, via HTML5, etc., with follow being added if the link is on a quality site (defined by PR, or whatever.) and adds value. Wouldn't this save alot of time? Then they could whack all the sites with coding that doesn't comply, couldn't they?
Also, instead of enabling negative SEO, why doesn't Google simply focus on wiping out the sites developed simply to pass on PR. I'm sure we could all send them a few thousand suggestions!
-
Hi Luke,
You raise some interesting points.
I imagine the main problem here is that the web is meant to be open and shared. In almost all circumstances you should only be linking out where somebody else's website provides good value to your users. Nofollow then becomes useful when you're linking out in things like comments, where you as the site's editor can't actually endorse the quality of the linked site.
By swapping that paradigm around it's assumed that every site is "bad until proven worthy" - but because the web is already built up of billions of links that don't have nofollow it's kind of too late for that mentality to work.
Google does take and act on spam reports which you can do so at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en if you believe sites are designed to spam.
- Andrew
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does Implemented SEO Changes Using Google Tag Manager are not supported any more?
Hello all! On May i read the article https://moz.com/blog/seo-changes-using-google-tag-manager and I implemented it in order to de-index some pages. I was really happy cause it worked but now the same problem appeared. Does anybody know if Google stopped taking into consideration SEO changes through Tag Manager? Hin6E Hin6E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeorgeGia0 -
Does Google see this as duplicate content?
I'm working on a site that has too many pages in Google's index as shown in a simple count via a site search (example): site:http://www.mozquestionexample.com I ended up getting a full list of these pages and it shows pages that have been supposedly excluded from the index via GWT url parameters and/or canonicalization For instance, the list of indexed pages shows: 1. http://www.mozquestionexample.com/cool-stuff 2. http://www.mozquestionexample.com/cool-stuff?page=2 3. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?page=3 4. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?mq_source=q-and-a 5. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?type=productss&sort=1date Example #1 above is the one true page for search and the one that all the canonicals reference. Examples #2 and #3 shouldn't be in the index because the canonical points to url #1. Example #4 shouldn't be in the index, because it's just a source code that, again doesn't change the page and the canonical points to #1. Example #5 shouldn't be in the index because it's excluded in parameters as not affecting page content and the canonical is in place. Should I worry about these multiple urls for the same page and if so, what should I do about it? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Website No Longer Ranking In Google:
My website was on first page google couple of months ago, now nothing. Shows up in Bing page one. Some queries/pages still showing OK, but some not at all. Example "residential elevators illinois" found nowhere. http://www.accesselevator.net is the website. Have found 900 poor quality links and used disavow tool. Any further suggestions? Their Page Rank also went from a 3 to a 2. Implemented nofollow on all outgoing links. Need advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trailblazerzz90 -
Google Places
If you rank on google places, I have noticed that you do not rank on the front page as well. I have a site that ranks on front page for it's keywords; however, because they are (1) on google places, they don't show up when someone is localized to that area. They show up on google places but not on front page. If you turn of localization, they are first in serps. How can I get around this? Two separate sites? One for Google+ (Places) and one for SERPS?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Google alerts for products and categories?
I get daily Google alerts for our site and a competitor's site. I have noticed that I am getting multiple alerts a day from Google about products and product categories on the competitor's site. Every now and then there's an actual alert for a linking blog post or something else. How is Google noticing new product on this site but has never done the same for ours? Is there some kind of strategy involved here that I don't know about? The site is http://bit.ly/Q0o2ob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0 -
Has anyone seen a spammy competitors website hit by the Google changes?
I wonder, after all the talk of Penguins and Pandas if anyone has seen evidence of a competitor who you know has 1000's of spammy links removed from their page one position in Google. I have a trade competitor who appeared from nowhere about 12 months ago with 11,000+ back-links most of which were totally unrelated to our trade and appear to be link-farm links for the most part. After reading about Google's changes I thought the site might be hit but it remains up there in the first 2 or 3 results on page one. I wonder if anyone has seen similar sites penalised? Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0 -
How to make Google forget my pages ?
Hello all ! I've decided to delete many pages from my website wich had poor content. I've made a php 301 redirect from all these old pages to a unique page (not the home page, a deep page). My problem is that this modification has been made a week ago and my position in the SERPs have crashed down... What can I do ? I believe that I'll get up again when Google will see that these pages don't exist anymore but it could take a long time 😞 (these page are in the Google cache with a date older than my modification's date) I've read somewhere that I should put a link to the destination page (where old pages are 301 redirected) but I don't understand how it could help... Can someone help me ? Tell me what I've done wrong... These pages were very poor and I've deleted them in order to boost the global quality of my site... It should help me in the SERPs, not penalize me...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | B-CITY0 -
Is this Domain Change Worthwhile?
Hi- I have a client who has setup a new criminal law firm in the last few months. The URL is like: www.somenamelawyers.com ['somename' is the same # characters as their company name] I have run a successful AdWords a/c for them and many of the big traffic and conversion keywords include 'criminal lawyers'. From a SEO perspective, the long goal is to get traffic for 'criminal lawyers' and keywords that phrase match that. So I am considering migrating them to www.somenamecriminallawyers.com. I have researched this issue and understand the technicalities involved in moving. My question here is 'is this change worthwhile'. I think it is worthwhile because it really is in a sense rebranding them to be more clearly in a specific business domain, ie. criminal law. Also, they are a new outfit so they don't have a lot of backlinks yet. And mainly, they will get a SEO boost to their core keywords 'criminal lawyers'. Thanks in advance for your thoughts- Jules
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Juller0