Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?
-
I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/
Does anyone have any experience of this?
-
Impact of nofollow links from a technical perspective
Matt Cutts is a distinguished engineer at Google, and as per him; the simple answer is: No, too many nofollow links have no effect on your website’s PageRank. These links were created to ensure that generating direct traffic to a website could be used as much as needed without compromising the overall quality of the website’s SEO. Therefore, from a technical perspective, the PageRank algorithm will ignore any and all nofollow links. These links are automatically dropped from the link graph as the web crawlers index the web. However, there are exceptional cases where nofollow links will have an effect on the website ranking.
Special cases where too many nofollow links have an impact
It is possible to use nofollow links to spam websites on the internet trying to generate traffic for whatever product you are promoting. This tactic was once used on blogs where a spammer would post outrageous or absurd comments so as to attract attention and generate traffic. This is deception and manipulation, and where it is done on a large scale, Google will take notice. If many people report you for using nofollow links to spam, Google reserves the right to take action with intent of stopping you. In such cases, they will downgrade the PageRank the offending website gets.
-
I've done 2 link cleaning exercises and disavow requests so far but haven't removed those. I can see they are bad links but they're actually from decent, relevant sites in most instances which is why I haven't touched them yet.
What do you think is most damaging, run-of-site links or keyword link text?
-
Having checked your link profile it is very spammy. 25% of your backlinks are for the term "speed dating", 9% for "singles holidays", and thats just a start.
But that is not all. You have alot of domains sending many links back to your site for the same keyword. Sitewide links can cause penalties, and will need to be cleaned up.
I recommend using ahrefs \ majestic to find those links and dissavow \ get them to change to no follow etc.
A few examples of sites causing you problems are (but there are many others):
-
In the sense you're talking about, yes. Google won't count those nofollowed links against you.
-
Usually nofollow links don't hurt your website. But there are some extreme cases in which they could.
For more info check this video by Matt Cutts from Google -> Can nofollow links hurt my site's ranking?
-
You don't want to nofollow every outbound link from your site but even if 99% of them are nofollowed, it won't hurt your rankings and I wouldn't consider that to be holding back your recovery.
-
So if you can't have too many nofollow links to upset Google, does Google respect the nofollow 100%?
-
NoFollows on links in your blog that point off the site are not hurting you.
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
-
Can a .ly domain rank in the United States?
Hello members. I have a question that I am seeking to confirm whether or not I am on the right track. I am interested in purchasing a .ly domain which is the ccTLD for Libya. The purpose of the .ly domain would be for branding purposes however at the same time I do not want to kill the websites ability to rank in Google.com (United States searches) because of this domain. Google does not consider .ly to be one of those generic ccTLDs like. io, .cc, .co, etc. that can rank and Bitly has also moved away from the .ly extension to a .com extension. Back in 2011 when there was unrest in Lybia, a few well known sites that utilized the .ly extension had their domains confiscated such as Letter.ly, Advers.ly and I think Bitly may have been on that list too however with the unrest behind us it is possible to purchase a .ly so being able to obtain one is not an issue. From what I can tell, I should be able to specify in Google Search Console that the website utilizing the .ly extension is a US based website. I can also do this with Google My Business and I will keep the Whois info public so the whois data can been seen as a US based website. Based on everything I just said do any of you think I will be OK if I were to register and use the .ly domain extension and still be able to rank in Google.com (US Searches). Confirmation would help me sleep better. Thanks in advance everyone and have a great day!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joemaresca0 -
How can I find all broken links pointing to my site?
I help manage a large website with over 20M backlinks and I want to find all of the broken ones. What would be the most efficient way to go about this besides exporting and checking each backlink's reponse code? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StevenLevine3 -
Is there any ratio of dofollow and nofollow in back-links profile?
Hi, Is there any ratio between dofollow and nofollow back-links of a website? Do a website really need some nofollow back-links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Too many on page links
Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Moving blog to a subdomain, how can I help it rank?
Hi all, We recently moved our blog to a sub-domain where it is hosted on Wordpress. It was very recent and we're actively working on the SEO, but any pointers on getting the subdomain to rank higher than the old blog posts would be terrific. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DigitalMoz0 -
Disavowin a sitewide link that has Thousands of subdomains. What do we tell Google?
Hello, I have a hosting company that partnered up with a blogger template developer that allowed users to download blog templates and have my footer links placed sitewide on their website. Sitewides i know are frowned upon and that's why i went through the rigorous Link Audit months ago and emailed every webmaster who made "WEBSITENAME.Blogspot.com" 3 times each to remove the links. I'm at a point where i have 1000 sub users left that use the domain name of "blogspot.com". I used to have 3,000! Question: When i disavow these links in Webmaster tools for Google and Bing, should i upload all 1000 subdomains of "blogspot.com" individually and show Google proof that i emailed all of them individually, or is it wise to just include just 1 domain name (www.blogspot.com) so Google sees just ONE big mistake instead of 1000. This has been on my mind for a year now and I'm open to hearing your intelligent responses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?
So we are performing link removal for a client on his old website (A), which is being 301 redirected to his new website (B). We have identified toxic links on site A and are removing, once complete we will undo the current 301, confirm a new GWT account for website A, and then submit the disavow report. We would then like to reapply the 301 redirect to site B while we are waiting for Google to process the disavow report, the logic being we can retain some current rankings on site B while waiting for the disavow to process on site A. Has anyone had experience with this method? I foresee some potential issues here but am interested to here from others on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub1 -
Is this link follow or nofollow? Does it pass linkjuice?
I have been seeing conflicting opinions about how Google would treat links using 'onclick'. For the example provided below: Would Google follow this link and pass the appropriate linking metrics(it is internal and points to a deeper level in our visnav)? =-=-=-=-=-=-= <div id='<a class="attribute-value">navBoxContainer</a>' class="<a class="attribute-value">textClass</a>"> <div id="<a class="attribute-value">boxTitle</a>" onclick="<a class="attribute-value">location.href='bla</a>h.example.com"> <div class="<a class="attribute-value">boxTitleContent</a>" title="<a class="attribute-value">Text Here</a>"><a href<a class="attribute-value">Text Here</a>"><a ="blah.exam.cpleom">Text Herea>div> ``` =-=-=-=-=-=-= An simple yes/no would be alright, but any detail/explination you could provide would be helpful and very much appreciated. Thank you all for your time and responses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TLM0