What is the difference between "Do Follow" and "No Follow"...?

[frankiespars]

I really don't know exactly what is "Do Follow" thingy and the "No Follow".......

Can somebody explain these to me.

Thanks.....

 

[killer2021]

Simple.

Do follow helps your search engine results.

No follow doesn't give you any boost.

The no follow attribute was designed by google to give webmsaters a way to combat web link spam. Since there is no link value in a no follow link, there is no reason to spam the site. Unless you want direct traffic from people clicking on the link.

Bottom line: you only want do follow links.

 

[Autumn]

That's not really true. There's considerable evidence that n0follows do help your results but they seem to be dampened compared to a proper d0follow. You can rank for a shitty long tail keyphrase using only n0follows.

All things considered, I'd rather have a d0follow than a n0follow, but I'll take a n0follow if that's all that's going.

 

[mindmaster]

How is google reacting to backlinks only with do-follow?

Anyone doing only do-follow backlinks on theyr sites?

 

[madoctopus]

Technical aspects

All links are d0f0llow unless marked as n0f0llow. The markup (source code) for a regular link (d0f0llow) looks like this:

<a href="http://www.somesite.com/" title="link title that appears as tooltip">anchor text here, you see this underlined usually</a>

There are 2 ways to make a link n0f0llow:
1. Make all links on the page n0f0llow using the meta robots in the HEAD section:

<meta name="robots" content="n0follow" /> - page gets indexed but links are n0f0llow
or
<meta name="robots" content="n0f0llow,noindex" /> - page does not get indexed and links are n0f0llow

2. Make individual links n0f0llow:

<a [B]rel="n0f0llow"[/B] href="http://www.somesite.com/" title="link title that  appears as tooltip">anchor text here, you see this underlined  usually</a>

SEO aspects
N0f0llow links were introduced by Google to cut down the spam from user generated content like comments and allow site owners to link to other sites without giving those their "vote". A link is seen by search engines as a vote, the higher the PageRank, relevance and SEO factors of the source page, the more powerful the "vote" is.

It seems that n0f0llow links still pass some juice, but very very little. If I'd have to estimate I would say that all things equal, roughly 1000 n0f0llow links equal 1 d0f0llow one. I pulled the number out of my ass as there is no way to figure this out correctly, but in my personal opinion there is quite a huge difference in value between the two types of links.

You will find many people that swear n0f0llow links are still great and that they are ranking high with mostly n0f0llow links. That is not true. Most people that say that are in 3 categories:

1. People that indeed have sites that rank high with mostly n0f0llow links, but they rank for low competition keywords. If they would try the same for a high competition keyword they'd have no chance.
2. People that sell link spam software or affiliates for link spam software. They have an interest to sell their shit, so they will say whatever sells their shit.
3. People that don't know much about SEO, they hear this and that and just transmit it further. Since pretty much everywhere people say things like "a link is a link, regardles of type", "n0f0llow works too", etc. that's what the newbies get to learn. However, it is incorrect.

What am I basing my statements on?

1. I rank #1 for my main keyword and rank on 1st page for ALL keywords that I am targeting with my site, and even some I am not targeting. I have 3000-5000 links. About 80-90% of them are d0f0llow. I rank that well despite the fact my competitors are or seem to be much better linked because:
   1. I have more relevant links
   2. I have mostly d0f0llow links
   3. I have some links from strong sites (about 10 links)
2. My competitors are:
   1. cNet.com - Strongest competitor, obviously. They rank 1st for most keywords, except my main keyword family. I usually rank right below them or somewhere on 1st page.
   2. Old sites (7-10 years old) with 50,000 links (strong links, the kind you can't easily get now).
   3. New sites (like mine) with 50,000-100,000 links, many of them from comment spam, forum spam, etc. Most links are n0f0llow. They all rank below me for ALL keywords that both of us are targeting.

 

[frankiespars]

Thank you for all the answers you've posted here. I know somehow understand what are the difference between the two.

Thank you.... Thank you.... Thank you.....

 

[donArmando]

Nofollow can help to rank higher it's not true that this links are with no value. But they won't help you to increase your page rank just your SERP.
******** helps you increase PR and the SERPS in the same time.

 

[catwithhat]

Technical aspects

I pulled the number out of my ass as there is no way to figure this out correctly, but in my personal opinion there is quite a huge difference in value between the two types of links.

I wish I could pull out good rankings out of my ass...
Just thought, nothing personal

 

[Nookie Monster]

@madoctopus

Excellent post ! Is there anyway to easily tell if a site is follow or not ?

 

[madoctopus]

Nofollow can help to rank higher it's not true that this links are with no value. But they won't help you to increase your page rank just your SERP.
******** helps you increase PR and the SERPS in the same time.

I got a d0f0llow link from a PR4 site (homepage) when my site was relatively new and my rankings jumped up. Last year I got a link from a PR5 internal page of a PR8 domain and the rankings jumped up.

Before the PR5 link, I got a link from a PR6 wikipedia page (obviously n0f0llow) and rankings stayed the same. Exactly the same. The link had the keyword for a specific internal page. I was #3 for that keyword and nothing happened. Then, I got about 20 shitty links from forums and some low quality sites (all d0f0llow) and over a couple of months I got to #1 for that keyword.

However, I don't think it was the links that did that but maybe Google gave me a better authority score because I started to rank higher for many keywords and had no new quality links. Just a few shitty ones.

 

[qualo]

I think of a nofollow link as something which tells google that your site is relevant for a KW. Like adding meta tags or on site seo.
Whereas doofollow will do that but also give you serious link juice (i.e. let google know that another site recommends you and wants to pass some page rank on).

 

[madoctopus]

@madoctopus

Excellent post ! Is there anyway to easily tell if a site is follow or not ?

Firefox plugin "SearchStatus":
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/searchstatus/

After u install it, right click on the "q" icon on bottom right of the Firefox window, check "Highlight nofollow links".

 

[greentitanium]

to add to this topic, WHY is the word D0*follow not allowed in this forum???
this blackhat forum??
ive been curious as hell about that

 

[NapsteR]

to add to this topic, WHY is the word D0*follow not allowed in this forum???
this blackhat forum??
ive been curious as hell about that

I have the same question too.

 

[hatcheck]

Matt Cutts of Google on rel="nofollow", June 15, 2009:

"So what happens when you have a page with 'ten PageRank points' and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let's leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn't count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each."

I'm still in newbie status, so I can't post the link to the blog entry where he said that, but search on a quoted string from that paragraph and you'll find it.

 

[jenyasimon]

Thanks for asking the question it may be in the mind of many nubs out here. I used to be one of them before I came over the BHW

 

[madycl]

Thanks for the share, i was so confused in this do follow no follow stuff, i work as an seo and getting so much benifits from this forum. Thanks

 

[vulzala]

Thanks and rep given for that awesome post. I have serached on this forum for that info before and was not able to find it. Any chance this could be stickied or something?

 

[homenet]

Matt Cutts of Google on rel="nofollow", June 15, 2009:

"So what happens when you have a page with 'ten PageRank points' and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let's leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn't count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each."

I'm still in newbie status, so I can't post the link to the blog entry where he said that, but search on a quoted string from that paragraph and you'll find it.

No offence, but this is 2 years out of date. SEO changes fast and I'm pretty sure Google have changed their stance on nofollow since then.

Also, Cutts is full of shit.

 

[kate12]

******** Link is a hyperlink that is able to tell all search engines to pass along it's page rank influence to an outbound link. When you use links that get do follow, search engines will count your link in the eyes of Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. So you can have some positive value for your site ranking.
Nofollow Link is exactly the opposite. It is a hyperlink that removes the ability to pass on it's page rank status to other sites. Nofollow are for not crawling a link by search engine that influence the ranking of a particular website or blog in search engines.