[SEO Guy]

I have put this question to a few respected SEO experts and as yet I have not received a comprehensive answer

As we are all aware the no-follow attribute is used to prevent spamming and enhancing a site page ranking. However what is the correlation between no-follow links and SERPS?

Google still index certain links that are marked no-follow, is it simply a case that no-follow links give no page rank benefit, but do assist with a sites ranking.

I know one person that did an experiment on 2 websites one had 20 do-follow links and one that had 20 no-follow links, his prognosis was that the no follow links did not affect the sites ranking.

What are your thoughts?

[Alvin]

Interesting question.I am not sure that Google always obeys the no-follow tag.?

Noticed quite a sharp rise in the SERP's when Wikipedia put 3 links to one of my sites although they have no-follow.

I wonder if google makes a note of your URL even though it may not follow through to it.?

so I am as puzzeled as you.

Alvin

[UKSBD]

Originally Posted by Alvin

Interesting question.I am not sure that Google always obeys the no-follow tag.?

Not iced quite a sharp rise in the SERP's when Wikipedia put 3 links to one of my sites although they have no-follow.

That could be due to the sites that scrape wikipedia and remove the no-follow from the links.

[teotrad]

Hi SEO guy,

No follow for link is basically telling search engine robot not to follow or other words NOT to index the following pages. Therefore not really favourable for the following pages in terms of their PR or site ranking. So I won't be surprise it won't affect your site ranking.

Am I understand your question right? Sorry if I misunderstood.

[SEO Guy]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&r...&start=60&sa=N

Ref link Introduce yourself (round 3)

<a name="msg_4e70bc686e525ff3"></a>Hi my name is Pete and I am the owner of <a target="_blank" rel=nofollow href="http://www.businessservicesuk.com">w...vicesuk.com</a>.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&r...&start=80&sa=N

The most impostant wordpress plugin

http://www.stephanspencer.com/search...plugin-for-seo


<a href="http://www.stephanspencer.com/search...or-seo#c500991" title="Permanent link to this comment" rel="nofollow">Comment</a> by Pete [Visitor] <a href="http://www.stephanspencer.com/?disp=...b%3D1%26pb%3D1" title="Send email to comment author"><img src="http://www.stephanspencer.com/rsc/icons/envelope.gif" border="0" align="top" width="13" height="10" class="middle" title="Send email to comment author" alt="Email"/></a> &middot; <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.businessservicesuk.com">h...vicesuk.com</a>

I could go on and on but its late

So now we can see Google does index links with the no-follow attribute

[SEO Guy]

What we are led to believe is no follow links will not benefit a site page ranking

Yet Google still index's them

So the question still stands do no follow links benefit SERPS, I am leaning towards yes, but how the hell could you ever be 100% sure hey...lol

The beauty of optimisation.

[Alvin]

well maybe even though it may not follow through to your site.


It may make a note that it found your URL on an important site and give you a bit of juice for that.?

Alvin

[SEO Guy]

Yeah maybe, its all guesswork

Whatever the case Google wont say anything as they have spamming under wraps at present simply because people find PR the most important aspect for their sites.

[OldWelshGuy]

Google have said something definitive about this it was matt Cutts who stated that google do not use nofollow links, 'not even for url discovery' was his direct words.. I am now going to have to try and fid if it was online or offline

I am not sure what your examples were showing Pete, was it that the code carrying the nofollow link had been added to the index? if yes, then i guess that is to be expected as google index the whole page.

I have not seen anything to indicate otherwise. Hope that help muddy the waters further LOL

[SEO Guy]

OWG it was a copy of the code,

I have looked at my backlinks and around 5% of them are no-follows.

Its maybe as you state, the whole page is indexed, saying that why are Google attributing these links to me?