Spam Flags: Follow vs. No follow

[AHC_SEO]

In OSE, I have two spam flags, Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Domains and Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Subdomains.

I currently have a ratio of about 3:2 followed to nofollowed. Is this spammy? Also, what is the difference between subdomains and domains in this regard?

[AHC_SEO]

There we go. Thanks for the reminder.

[MattRoney]

Hi Trevor! If Dmitrii answered your question, please mark his response as a "Good Answer." He'll get some bonus MozPoints, and the thread will update to "Answered."

[AHC_SEO]

Thanks Dmitrii. I never reject nofollow links, but I don't actively seek them. Perhaps it is something I should start doing. Thanks.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Yes, I would consider 3:2 spammy. The reason is: let's say your website is so awesome that everybody, who you reach out to, links to you, making sure (which is very unlikely) that those links are follow. This would make your website very popular, meaning that more and more people would be linking to you without you asking for a link. By default links are usually nofollow (unless websites' owners/webmasters don't care about who they link to, what makes them kinda spammers already).That would lead to appearance of nofollow links. Since most of not spammy websites would care about follow/nofollow, by default you gonna have many more nofollow links per each of follow. And, considering that we live in imperfect world, many-many people would not be making sure that they are linking to you with a follow link. Therefore, 3:2 ratio means that you are purposely getting only follow links, rejecting nofollow links, and that, my friend, is cheating.

About domains/subdomains - that's pretty much the same. The reason they are split, is that you can have domains, which are mainly nofollow, but those domains can have 1 subdomain, which is purely follow, which means that it's most likely spammy.

Hope all this makes sense.