Should I add no-follow tags to my widget links?

[Maximuxxx]

Matt Cutts recommended in a video in 2013 to add rel="nofollow" on widget links that link back to your website.

Some background of my company: We're a software company for website chat. There's a 'powered by' link in our widgets that links back from our users' websites to our website. Currently these are all follow links.

I checked out the links of our competitors, and it seems none of them have no follow on their widget backlinks. This, together with the fact that the video is quite old and information on this issue rather scarce, makes me doubt whether we should change our widget backlinks to no follow.

Does anyone have thoughts on this?

[Everett]

Hello Pascal,

Like Hillary Clinton, I have a public opinion and a private opinion when it comes to stuff like this. The public opinion is also Google's, and that is to use a rel="nofollow" attribute on widget links. They are considered links that webmasters use to manipulate the search engine rankings. Yes, that video is old, but the rule still stands as far as Google is concerned.

My private opinion is that widgets are a form of branding, and it is not a webmaster's responsibility to do anything other than get their brand discovered far and wide. You created a widget that, if people are using it, probably provides some value to them. Why should you get any less credit for this than you would get from someone linking to the widget on your site?

If you are going to keep the links followable, my advice is to keep the anchor text branded and the href pointing to your home page. This is the least likely to seem like link-graph manipulation. Avoid deep-links, unless they go to the widget download page, and avoid optimized anchor text. Use "YourDomain.com" or "Your Brand" instead.

I'll leave the question open for more input since this isn't a question that necessarily has a single "right" or "wrong" answer.

[TimHolmes]

Hmmmm, Google will likely deem your widget as an advertising tool and in their world this is potentially deemed negative, as such you have to make the call, do you want to stay on Google side and follow what they say or continue and then fall foul to some kind of penalty.

I personally would add rel="nofollow" to be on the safe side. Hopefully this won't dramatically affect your rankings.

Could you potentially trial the nofollow on a segment of the plugins to see how it impacts your rankings. Scary I know, but possibly the only way you can see how it could affect you.