Do nofollow links help with rankings?

I know they don't help with pagerank - which is the whole point of nofollow.

But will they help in rankings (reputation via anchor text)...

Advertise

I`m on thin ice here, but I read just a couple of days ago that nofollow links are worthless when it comes to ranking. However, a nofollow link that are put some place where it gets clicked a lot can be worth a lot.. Getting targeted traffic, that is, but not from ranking..
On the other hand, if we`re talking for example blog spamming here, I really wouldn`t waste time posting on a site that`s nofollow.. Unless it can get you targeted traffic from the link itself, naturally, if you`ve just posted on a blog within the same niche as your own site..

__________________
This is my post. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I have a couple of sites ranked *very well* that have all their backlinks from Nofollow links in blog comments! So in a word - Yes - "Nofollow" links do help your SEO campaign! Nofollow IS useful.

Nofollow links do absolutely nothing to help your ranking on any of the major search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN do not even factor them and the whole nature of there design was to prevent spam commenting on things like blogs and such.

The only time there is even a remote chance that they could help is when they are posted on a site like digg where the content that the link is in has a chance to get picked up by a different ******** site. Other than that nofollow links are pretty much worthless!

__________________
--It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Correct.

I have had so many discussions about this here, and I am sure before too long, the same old characters will emerge from the shadows and give their "proof" that nofollow helps.

One of their main arguments is to suggest that google cannot tell the difference between nofollow and follow. This is not plausable considering they came up with the system in the first place.

Nofollow means "I do not vouch for this link". Google than says ok, we won't take it into account in our ranking calculations. If you rank well on just nofollow links, it will be due to other reasons.

Also, just because nofollow links sometimes get listed in webmaster tools, it does not mean that Google takes them into account during ranking calculations.

Nofollow links do not help.

no matter what gogle says from my testing there is good chance nofollow help

I've never championed the "use" of nofollow on this blog, and will not be one of the "same old characters" popping up on this forum to promote this, I just wanna do what works for me and my websites, and indeed I am not causing an argument here, we're all in this together. I really enjoy Micallef posts and contribution to this forum - great member and great posts! - However, I do have absolute proof that "nofollow" links do make *some* kind of difference to a search engines ranking.

I have a site that is purely linked to via nofollow links and it ranks for keywords in the SERPS that are not in the title tag on the page, they're not in the Heading tags, and not in the meta data the only instance of the keywords it ranks for is that they are a few times in the content on the page. If the fact it's not ranking due to the nofollows, which show up in Yahooo site explorer, then it has "0" follow backlinks. If this is the case why is it on page #1 position #3... for the Keyword? I cannot explain exactly why, and I have been monitoring lots of elements on the site!

The simple answer is "show us the blog" - I would love to share the blog but think I will create a separate blog to purely test this so I can show it in action on here, as the site in question I don't wanna put up as it's my personal blog.

I am certainly not saying "nofollow" is the same, no, but an algorithm has MANY elements, for Google to create something and totally void it from their complex algorithm makes no sense, it was created to stop spam links, and not take the link into account, Google recently announced that now "nofollow" creates a void of lost PageRank. So if it's on your page any "SEO Juice" for PageRank flowing to that nofollow link is lost, however, PageRank seems to be loosing value, and I still believe nofollow still has a small element in the ranking algorithm, okay, certainly not the PageRank element, but the SERPS ranking element, from my experience, it does help.

Aditionally to this - if "nofollow" links gave absolutely 0 benefit then this software, as sold on this forum, would be totally pointless, all be it, just for the refferal click, but this would be low on a spammy comment.

95% or more of all wordpress blogs are nofollow comments, so, how would this program benefit you if nofollow links made no difference. I have this program and gain nofollow links and SERP improvements weekly.

No follow links can have an effect on your ranking but wont necessarily boost yout pagerank.

Google follows them without a doubt.

They might not pass pagerank but im pretty sure google uses the anchor text info so theoretically it is possible to gain a boost.

You've been had, my friend.

Google follows them without a doubt?

People split the problem into pagerank, following, anchor passing, and eventual rank etc. In reality, all that matters for a marketer (unless you're domain flipping or creating a link-power hub) is effect on rank. All other factors are subservient to effect on rank. It doesn't matter what nofollow links pass or do not pass. The fact is that they do not raise your serps.

Google invented nofollow to stop spam, and if Google then went on to use nofollow to determine higher rankings, it would be stupidity on their part. I don't think Google are stupid.

Also, Google are trying to crack down extra hard on comment spam. It really spoils their picnic. They're gonna use nofollow to its full extent to disqualify questionable, user generated links. It's just common sense.

The power of wishful thinking is incredible. People who can't come up with more creative ways to get links than commenting on nofolllow wordpress blogs, I suppose, might try to convince themselves that nofollow works.

There are so many evidence points against nofollow improving your serps, and from having many discussions like this before, I have only ever seen one type of evidence point for nofollow working - namely, someone providing anecdotal evidence that nofollow "worked for them". However, Google is fickle and sometimes sites can rank with no links at-all. It's so easy to see a correlation when in fact, it was some other element that was responsible for the results reported.

Serps may improve naturally as Google simply decides your site is more relevant for a given query without the influence of links. These little stories that people come up with do not in any way prove that nofollow works in favour of your rankings.

Believe me, I wish nofollow helped in the SERPs. It just doesn't.

No no follow links does not give any rankings to a site.But if you give that link to a high traffic site and may be you can get a traffic for that link.

Well, I don't think the answer to this is quite that simple. In my opinion nofollow links do benefit your site, without having any impact whatsoever. Nonsense?

Not really. I believe Google wants to see nofollow links to you just to give your ****************s the weight they deserve. Or in other words - having nofollow links makes your site look legit in the eyes of Mr. G, because only **************** links make a site look pretty damn artificially linked.

I'm not so sure.

Nofollow links are meant to be applied to user-generated content, i.e. comments, wikis, web 2.0, social networking etc.

If you have a lot of nofollow links in your profile, you're showing google that your link profile is heavily dependent on links anyone can get. That's why nofollow was applied to them.

This said, I don't think having a lot of nofollow links is harmful - or useful. I believe a nofollow link is the same as no link.

(note: indexing may be another matter - I am aware that nofollows sometimes show up in webmaster tools, and they might possibly help sites get indexed. This says nothing about any ranking effect they may have).

But one important thing to remember is that nofollow links are indeed useful for driving traffic directly - though this quality is obviously not exclusive to nofollow.

just playing the other side here as an example: two sites both similar.

site A has 200 **************** backlinks, 0 nofollow
site B has 200 **************** backlinks, 100 nofollow

are we to assume that because nofollows add zero value that both sites would rank about the same provided equal link distribution, content, etc.

if i were a major search engine i would rank site B higher not only because it had more overall links but because it had more diversity. a site with a very high percentage of only **************** links would give the impression to me that they are trying to "game" the system.

any "natural" backlink profile should have a fair amount of nofollow links sprinkled in, if not a lot of them. i'm sure google, etc, can look at any specific niche - say for ex "poker tips" - and based on data from they have on the top 100 sites with the most non-spam/xrumer type of links, determine what a good ****************/nofollow ratio would be and then they discount those sites that don't match up (are heavily weighted to the wrong side).

i have no idea if google does this but it has merit.

so in my mind while nofollow links may not pass the juice they might add to the overall credibility of a site and that could help in the rankings or some other measure.