University website outbound links issue

[McTaggart]

Hi - I'm working on a university website and have found a load of (1) outbound links to companies that have commercial tie ups to the university and, beyond that, loads of (2) outbound links to companies set up by alumni and (3) outbound links to commercial clients of the university.

Your opinions on whether I should nofollow these, or not, would be welcome. At the moment I'm tempted to nofollow (1) yet leave (2) and (3) - quite simply because the (1) backlinks may have been negotiated as part of a package (nobody can actually remember at the university!), yet (2) and (3) were freely given by the university.

Your thoughts would be welcome!

[MickEdwards]

Totally agree with Dirk.  If the links offer value to the visitor and if grouped are tightly and obviously associated with the theme of the page then they should always be left as is.  If there is a hint of paid for they should be no-follow, but in essence having no-follow means you don't trust the page/site so why have it there in the first place (unless there is some commercial interest in having it there).

[Alick300]

Hi,

In Ideal case we should avoid to give dofollow outbound backlinks but Rand Fishkin himself suggest we should give few outbound links to authority website but those few links should be dofollow & if you use nofollow that means you are telling Google you don't trust the sites!.

In case 2 & 3 you should use nofollow to prevent flowing link equity to other sites.

Thanks

[DirkC]

Hi Luke,

To me, it doesn't seem really abnormal that a university would have tons of links going to associated companies, alumni companies,.. etc. I think the basic question is - do these links look "natural" when you check them, or are they rather commercial. If they make sense on the page, or add value, I would leave them. If not, make them nofollow.

rgds,

Dirk