Nofollow is a giant failure.
Remember the silver bullet, rel=”nofollow”? Remember how Google convinced all the gullible Web publishers and CMS makers to specially craft their HTML so that Google’s PageRank would still work? Remember that? What a joke.
In yet another one of Google’s massive (and yet massively underreported) failures, nofollow has done absolutely nothing. NOTHING. If you’re a blogger, tell me, please tell me, that the volume of comment spam (and trackback spam, and referrer spam) changed one iota after rel=”nofollow” was introduced. Tell me you aren’t using an anti-spam plugin. Tell me you aren’t moderating comments. Because I am perfectly willing to stand up and applaud. Until then, I’ll sit down and bitch.
Oh, and I predicted this.
A lie all around
What’s the biggest problem with nofollow? Even its name is a lie! You think that little “rel” attribute means that Google doesn’t index nofollow links? WRONG. Google still indexes nofollow links but doesn’t give them any PR.
Yes, I’m telling you that Google follows nofollow links. Here’s the bit from their blog (and btw, I put nofollow on that link — eat it, biatches):
From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.
Well that’s intriguing. No mention of not following nofollow links. Guess I’ll just have to read between the lines of the super-secret search engine behemoth.
You know, kinda makes you think that maybe it was a PR (”public relations”) move to call it “nofollow” rather than “nopr,” eh? Unfortunately, people are only just beginning to figure this out. Too bad SearchEngineWatch never did [see clarification].
Drop it
Dylan Tweney calls it Google’s embarrassing mistake. But that’s a bad title. Google shouldn’t be embarrassed; they successfully bamboozled an entire class of CMS makers to adopt this laughable “solution.” And Google has benefited! Not us, but the search engines. They couldn’t figure out how to keep the blogosphere from beating their super-secret algorithms, so they went right to the source and tricked us.
It’s time to abandon nofollow. Check out nonofollow.net. And for more info on this giant failure, see Nofollow revisited.
Updates
I found a great experiment by Valentin Agachi with hard data on this issue. It suggests that “nofollow” truly is a joke, and that Googlebot is absolutely following these links.
Update #2: Ever notice how you’ll hear an old, forgotten song on a radio station, then hear it again and again—as if it’s had new life breathed into it? Seems the same has happened with discussion of nofollow in the past week or so. I wasn’t even aware of it when I wrote this post, but Nick Wilson (of Performancing) and Jeremy Zawodny (of Yahoo) have both recently blogged about the failure of nofollow. Wilson writes to say “I told you so” (similar to my sentiments), while Zawodny pleads forgiveness for a mistake he didn’t foresee.
I, for one, agree with Nick that Zawodny’s/Yahoo’s failure to anticipate the failure is, well, less than believable.
June 5th, 2006 at 5:55 am
Actually, it’s more like too bad you didn’t actually read the article from Search Engine Watch where you accused us of not figuring out nofollow was a failure. We did, as the article explained:
“The new attribute won’t stop link spamming. Many people may still spam simply because they hope human beings will see the links, click through and perhaps convert. As with email spam, maybe only an incredibly tiny number will do so. But since there’s no heavy cost to the spamming, that might still be enough.”
And the follow-up article I wrote very soon after it lauched had similar comments, including as exactly as you write, it wasn’t going to be any type of magic/silver “bullet” solution:
“What is clear is that nofollow will NOT stop blog comment spam. Not at all. Don’t believe it? Then right now, all bloggers can stop making use of blacklists, registration schemes and other tactics used before nofollow emerged. Sit back and see if the spam goes away. It won’t. Nofollow is a nice new tool that we can use, one that as I’ve said many times before is welcomed for giving us choice and more options, but it’s not a magic bullet. Well, it’s a magic bullet for one thing. It now lets the search engines say to bloggers, we gave you want you wanted, stop blaming us for the problem!”
June 5th, 2006 at 10:22 am
I thought nofollow was proposed by people elsewhere - possibly from within the blogosphere, and then Google and Technorati and others decided to implement the concept. (I remember Technorati being referenced, but I can’t think of why now.)
I do agree that it is next to useless as far as I am concerned. I’ve had to take strong action to ensure comment and trackback spam doesn’t infect my site.
June 5th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Yes I agree with you, the nofollow feature does not stop any spam.
I guess the nofollow is just good for Google and dudes.
June 5th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Danny, thanks for the comment and you’re right: the jab I took at SEW was unjustified … and actually totally mischaracterized what you wrote. This is what the article had (bolded sections are my emphasis):
I read #1 and assumed you were following the Google party line. But your explanation further down shows you’re not.
What I would like to clarify is that Yahoo and MSN do absolutely follow “nofollow” links (see randfish comment), and Google does too (see this comment and this data). What I don’t understand is why more people aren’t baffled by the fact that search engines, being the architects of this new “standard,” aren’t following the standard. They simply want to improve their index and filter out blog noise, not add a useful attribute for Web publishers.
I say: leave ‘em to figure out this indexing crap on their own. That’s why they’re a business.
June 5th, 2006 at 10:52 am
BTW, I decided it was time I eat my own dog food. I took out the automatic adding of rel=”nofollow” to commenters’ links.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Hi Tom
I posted about the same thing last night after seeing a post at Zawodny’s blog. I also had the sense that Google et al did it to try and lower the blogosphere’s influence in the search rankings.
I posted some comments about it here: http://seog.net/12
The major thing is that it seems unfair to those commenting — if someone comes to a person’s blog and adds an insightful comment that the blog owner agrees adds to the conversion, they should receive some sort of credit and benefit. The keywords and value they add to the blog boosts that blog’s traffic and value to the readership, so it seems only fair for them to also receive a boost for actively participating.
Comment spam has to be fought in other ways, a simple tag will not stop spammers even if every blog had it.
Michael @ SEOG
April 11th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Want to tell everyone that you’ve turned off the nofollow in your comments? Check out my new “ifollow†logos- grab one for your sidebar!
http://randaclay.com/archives/the-i-follow-movement