Comments on: No Follow or No Bloody Clue? http://jeffbentley.ca/no-follow-or-no-bloody-clue/ Jeff Bentley, the hero of our story, blogs here the odd time. Fri, 14 May 2010 14:14:44 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Gregory Kohs http://jeffbentley.ca/no-follow-or-no-bloody-clue/comment-page-1/#comment-43 Gregory Kohs Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:52:57 +0000 http://jeffbentley.ca/?p=201#comment-43 It's late for me now, so I don't have the energy to look up the evidence. But, no doubt, when Jimmy Wales ordered that "nofollow" be implemented on Wikipedia, it was clear that it was his directive. Then, he shortly thereafter said something to the effect of, "No, I didn't order it. I merely made it clear to the lead developer that I no longer objected to his adding "nofollow"." A couple of days later, the developer (I think it was Brion Vibber?) commented something to the effect of, "Sorry, Jimbo, but that's not how it went. You ordered me to implement "nofollow", so I did." That exchange was sort of lost in the sands of time, I believe because it took place in the days before most of us came to realize that a good portion of what Jimmy Wales ever utters as "fact" actually differs significantly from the known reality. http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=23657&view=findpost&p=165348 It’s late for me now, so I don’t have the energy to look up the evidence. But, no doubt, when Jimmy Wales ordered that “nofollow” be implemented on Wikipedia, it was clear that it was his directive. Then, he shortly thereafter said something to the effect of, “No, I didn’t order it. I merely made it clear to the lead developer that I no longer objected to his adding “nofollow”.”

A couple of days later, the developer (I think it was Brion Vibber?) commented something to the effect of, “Sorry, Jimbo, but that’s not how it went. You ordered me to implement “nofollow”, so I did.”

That exchange was sort of lost in the sands of time, I believe because it took place in the days before most of us came to realize that a good portion of what Jimmy Wales ever utters as “fact” actually differs significantly from the known reality.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=23657&view=findpost&p=165348

]]> By: admin http://jeffbentley.ca/no-follow-or-no-bloody-clue/comment-page-1/#comment-42 admin Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:21:10 +0000 http://jeffbentley.ca/?p=201#comment-42 Thanks for stopping by, Dianna. I too tend to nofollow links to pages that serve no ranking value (ie. terms and conditions, help, login, etc), but that's about the extent of my intentional nofollow use. Don't take this wrong way, but if you are using nofollow in a preemptive effort to signal to Google that you aren't selling links then they have indeed won the PR war. And by PR I mean Public Relations, not PageRank. :P Thanks for stopping by, Dianna. I too tend to nofollow links to pages that serve no ranking value (ie. terms and conditions, help, login, etc), but that’s about the extent of my intentional nofollow use. Don’t take this wrong way, but if you are using nofollow in a preemptive effort to signal to Google that you aren’t selling links then they have indeed won the PR war. And by PR I mean Public Relations, not PageRank. :P

]]> By: Dianna Kersey http://jeffbentley.ca/no-follow-or-no-bloody-clue/comment-page-1/#comment-41 Dianna Kersey Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:25:56 +0000 http://jeffbentley.ca/?p=201#comment-41 There are two reasons why a rel="nofollow" should be used and carefully crafted. 1. To prevent search engines penalties from making your webpage appear that it is selling links to fraudulently to inflate page rank. The algorithms had to dish out penalties to sites in constant violation of link farming. By implementing a nofollow on an external link from a page, you prevent the "appearance" of selling links. The best way to GIVE an external link credit is to hyperlink from the keyword phrase that best describes the page you are linking. Use an editorial style of text linking - three words before and after the keyword phrase - and you will give a strong authoritative link that Google desires and is trusted. 2. The rel="nofollow" is an excellent tool in preventing precious Google Juice flow flowing to pages that do not need to rank in your site, but can't be disallowed from the robots.txt file. Utilizing smart siloing in the SEF architecture link building by using this tool properly will help contain th linkflow funneled into the pages that need to rank. Hope this helps clarify what a positive use of hte nofollow can truly do :) There are two reasons why a rel=”nofollow” should be used and carefully crafted.

1. To prevent search engines penalties from making your webpage appear that it is selling links to fraudulently to inflate page rank. The algorithms had to dish out penalties to sites in constant violation of link farming. By implementing a nofollow on an external link from a page, you prevent the “appearance” of selling links.

The best way to GIVE an external link credit is to hyperlink from the keyword phrase that best describes the page you are linking. Use an editorial style of text linking – three words before and after the keyword phrase – and you will give a strong authoritative link that Google desires and is trusted.

2. The rel=”nofollow” is an excellent tool in preventing precious Google Juice flow flowing to pages that do not need to rank in your site, but can’t be disallowed from the robots.txt file. Utilizing smart siloing in the SEF architecture link building by using this tool properly will help contain th linkflow funneled into the pages that need to rank.

Hope this helps clarify what a positive use of hte nofollow can truly do :)

]]>