Impact of nofollow links
-
Does anyone know what the impact of a nofollowed link is on the ranking value any given page has to distribute? For example, if I have 2 links on a page, both followed, I know those links each distribute nearly 50% of the total ranking value the current page has to offer. However, if one of those links is nofollowed, does that automatically mean the other link gets the ranking value cast off by the nofollowed link? In other words, the single followed link now distributes nearly 100% of the ranking value the page has to offer?
It seems to me I remember hearing this was not the case and that the ranking value a nofollowed link would have if it were followed just evaporates. This would mean the single followed link still only passes on around 50%...not 100%.
Is the effect different if the links are internal vs. external?
If any citations are available to justify knowledge here, that would be great. I know a lot of people have opinions about this subject, but I'm not sure anyone knows Google's position.
Thanks!
-
Marcus, Great! That confirms everything I was thinking. We certainly aren't wasting our time page rank sculpting. Rather, I just wanted a confirmation (and appropriate citation) before requesting some changes. Thanks! Ryan
-
Hey Ryan,
If you nofollow a link the pagerank is still split evenly amongst the links on the page and the page rank that would have flowed through this one link is lost.
Google's position is pretty clear on this and is has been clarified by Matt Cutts and in the Google Webmaster Guidelines which provide some examples of the correct usage of the nofollow tag.
Back in the day, you could control the flow of page rank throughout your site like this but that ship sailed a long, long time ago (and crashed against the rocks).
The nofollow tag should be used for a few legitimate reasons.
- Untrusted links like those from blog comments
- To prevent a crawler following a link where it can not gain access like a forum profile or login page
- And to prevent the selling of page rank via paid links
There are likely some other legitimate uses but this covers off the basics.
If you are looking to use this to in a way sculpt the page rank and create more powerful links on pages within your site, don't bother, it won't work and is not the recommended way to interlink documents within your own site. If you want specific pages to not be indexed then use the noindex, follow tag on them or block them in robots.txt.
A few references:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569
http://searchengineland.com/friends-dont-let-friends-use-nofollow-77922
Hope it helps!
Marcus
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
-
Dynamic links & duplicate content
Hi there, I am putting a proposal together for a client whose website has been optimised to include many dynamic links and so there are many pages with duplicate content: only the page title, h1 and URL is different. My client thinks this isn't an issue. What is the current consensus on this? Many thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | lorraine.mcconechy0 -
Exclude sorting options using nofollow to reduce duplicate content
I'm getting reports of duplicate content for pages that have different sorting options applied, e.g: /trips/dest/africa-and-middle-east/
On-Page Optimization | | benbrowning
/trips/dest/africa-and-middle-east/?sort=title&direction=asc&page=1
/trips/dest/africa-and-middle-east/?sort=title&direction=des&page=1 I have the added complication of having pagination combined with these sorting options. I also don't have the option of a view all page. I'm considering adding rel="nofollow" to the sorting controls so they are just taken out of the equation, then using rel="next" and rel="prev" to handle the pagination as per Google recommendations(using the default sorting options). Has anyone tried this approach, or have an opinion on whether it would work?0 -
Do a bunch of footer internal links help or hurt?
We are an ecommerce site... In days gone by, having a bunch of footer links with your top products / categories was a good idea - as it created a ton of internal links to these products. Now, I am hearing that those links "dilute" the value of our other links on a page - and essentially, there is more harm than good from these. Does anyone know what I am talking about (the olds days) and should we still be doing this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Ted_Cullen0 -
Too Many On-Page Links error
Hello, I am new to this. The crawl of y website reveals that "Too Many On-Page Links" were found on many pages of the website. However, when I check those pages, not more than 5 links are found- I have not included links outside of the post (sidebar/comments/related posts - are these counted in the crawl report ?). I do use SEO SmartLinks Plugin where in some keywords point to Wordpress Categories but am not sure whether that could be the problem at all. Can someone guide what the issue could be and how to debug ?
On-Page Optimization | | sradhey0 -
Lists of Product Links: What is good, what is bad?
I am a web designer but a bit of an SEO noob (trying to get better at both). I am working with one particular client on a site I inherited with existing structure. This client has about 10 products on 2 pages. On every page there is a product list that is basically the same list sorted in 2 ways: 1st by product, 2nd by usage. These all link to internal anchors so this might be an example on www.site.com Cleaner X1 - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x1
On-Page Optimization | | mparry9
Cleaner X2 - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x2
Cleaner X3 - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x3
...
Cleaner For Brick - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x1
Cleaner For Marble - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x2
Cleaner For Stone - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x3 Obviously this adds about 20 links on every page on the site (including the actual pages these products are on). What are your thoughts on this? Good idea or bad to have on the site? Should I remove the redundant links on the actual page that product falls on...or is this bad and should be removed altogether?0 -
Internal linking structure
howdy SEO moz people, I had a quick question about internal linking. I am using the WP platform for my website and on one of the widgets I have a category widget that shows all the pages, (on every page). I wanted to know that when if i make a new post or page does it matter if the internal anchor texts are on the content itself or is it suffice to have it on the side bar within the widget? Basically what im asking is does it matter if i have anchor text links on the content itself or is it ok to have it anywhere on the page. and if it does matter to have it on the content, please help out on any suggestions on where to place them. thanks
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters?
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters? Especially if they are pointing to internal page?
On-Page Optimization | | AppleCapitalGroup1 -
PageRank: Links on menu and footer to the same page, does it get counted twice?
Hello all. If I have 10 links on a menu linking to 10 different pages, and 10 links on the footer linking to the same pages, does PageRank get divided by 10 or 20?
On-Page Optimization | | MiamiWebCompany0