Adding NOFOLLOW to all external links, is this a good idea?

[VoxxiVoxxi]

In the setting of a news site, with articles that often link to one or more outside sources, is it a good idea to rel="nofollow" all external links?  Would this hurt link-building prospects?

Of course, internal links would keep on passing link juice back and forth, but is there real harm in following external links?

These would be links our writers and editors created themselves to reputable sources, blogs, etc.

[johnmartelli]

Hello,

you said: "From Google's perspective a nofollow link means.... "They paid us!".

I understand this perfectly, but you are not saying that it's against google policy to get paid for banner ads on our website, right?

As long as I have a space dedicated to advertising and I use NOFOLLOW attribute I can sell spaces on my website, right?

Thanks a lot!

[EGOL]

We have a blog that links out to six to ten external sites every day.   All of those links are followed.

Our philosophy for linking out is to only give links to sites that are better than ours or sites that have superior content than ours for a specific subject.  So we are not linking out to second class sites.

From Google's perspective a nofollow link means.... "They paid us!"..... or...... "We don't trust this!"..... and neither of those are the case. So why should we use nofollow?

From a pagerank perspective a nofollow has the same impact on internal pagerank flow as a followed link, so it saves you nothing to apply a nofollow.  (Google originally blocked pagerank flow through nofollows but then they made it evaporate (a pagerank loss) and didn't tell webmasters.  Then Matt Cutts told webmasters that pagerank is lost through nofollow just as it is through a followed link.)  So, you don't know how google is treating this because they could have changed their mind again  and not told anyone.

Finally, I think of it like this.... The web  is the web because it is full of links from one site to another.  If you believe that google rewards pages that link out to other great pages then you should be giving followed links.  Why? Because if you use nofollow then maybe Google does not give you that reward.  I don't know if that is true.  Only google knows.  But that is where I am placing my bets.