Google’s Lasnik Wishes "NoFollow Didn’t Exist"

I think everyone is echoing Adam’s sentiments and it is nice to know that people inside Google are feeling the same way. Hopefully they will take a hard look at this attribute and let it begin to die…

Interesting bit of info, thanks for posting it. Absolutely the big problem with nofollow is that there’s so many differing opinions on how to use it. To be sure, I think the foundation of that confusion is the mixed messages sent by people at Google, Matt Cutts of course. But of course, with SEOs trying to game the system that was bound to happen whatever Matt or any other search engine representative advocates.

Hi Andy,

When Adam said “Buyers, purchasing links from dozens of locations, could trigger Google to filter out the value of their inbound links”, is he saying just the inbound links in question will be devalued, or all inbound links to the site, even the legitimate ones?

I assume it would be just for the links in question because if it was all inbound links, one could sabotage a competing site simply by buying poor inbounds to it. If it is just the questionable inbounds that are devalued, there is not really a big penalty, just a swing and a miss on a link, they are only out the $ for the link and the site does not take a hit.

As far as no-follow goes, Google will probably continue to promote it’s use until links are playing less of a roll in ranking and user behavior a larger roll.

Thanks for the great post.

Hey Andy,

It was good finally getting to meet you in person and chat with you at the conference today. With that said, though, I do want to clarify what it is that I actually expressed… giving a bit more context for your readers .

My core point, which didn’t quite come across in your entry here, was that it’d be really nice if nofollow wasn’t necessary. As it stands, it’s an admittedly imperfect yet important indicator that helps maintain the quality of the Web for users.

It’d be nice if there was less confusion about what nofollow does and when it’s useful. It’d be great if we could return to a more innocent time when practically all links to other sites really WERE true votes, folks clearly vouching for a site on behalf of their users.

But we don’t live in perfect, innocent times, and at Google we’re dedicated to doing what it takes to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in search quality.

When we chatted, I expressed frustration about misperceptions, and — to an extent — the necessity of distinguishing amongst paid links, spammed links, trusted links, etc. using nofollow. I’m an idealist at heart, but a practical one

I personally like nofollow, as long as I’m the one using it, but its definitely not a long term solution. For it to work, a large percentage of people have to comply, and I just don’t see that happening. Plus its the people who don’t comply who are probably doing a large share of the selling and buying.

Considering Google’s Algorithm is largely based on external links, providing a filtering method to discount spam links seems necessary to ensure the quality of results.

However, so many sites that what were once great sources of identifying credible sites through linking are turning to the “no follow” attribute that it is reducing the value of sites that are actually credible. If Google continues down this same path, the rate at which sites are turning to “no follow” will largely diminish the capabilities of the Google Algorithm to actually determine credible sites thus creating exactly the opposite effect the “no follow” attribute was intended for.

Lets introduce a hard example

If a webmaster links through to an authority site with a highly relevant link, but receives monetary compensation for the link, should nofollow be applied?

For authority, lets just assume Wikipedia or Epinions were in some way compensating people for links.

I have to dissent on this topic. There is a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between a spam link and a quality relevant ad purchase.

Webmasters pay to build traffic, via salaries, PPC, and marketing costs. Why should they be penalized for being compensated for driving quality traffic?

Advertisers spent millions of dollars buying ads to drive relevant traffic. Why should they be penalized for promoting quality content?

Call me dumb, but where’s the problem here?

HI Andy

I was at the conference yesterday and heard Adam speaking about links and the no follow tag. I would like to ask – what is so wrong with buying links to increase ranking? I understand the whole a link is a vote thing but this leaves commercial websites (particularly e-commerce sites that sell low involvement products) severally disadvantaged. Natural links just don’t occur that easily for a website that only has a catalogue of products. Yes I know that they can develop informative review type content but not all organizations have the human resources to do this. To me a purchased link is similar to a celebrity endorsement. When a celebrity gets on TV and tells us all about their favourite kind of toothpaste we all know that he or she is being paid to say it but we also know they are putting their reputation on the line to do so. I would like to see Google reconsider how they handle paid links – No follow is clearly not the answer.

Just my opinion, but it might be worth updating your post based on Adam’s clarification. My first thought after reading it was: wonder if he was saying he think NoFollow should go away or just that he wishes that there weren’t so much manipulative intent out there which makes it necessary.

Also just my opinion… I think we need more NoFollow-style controls, not less.

It’s nice to see Google making the rounds to clear up confusion. My main problem with nofollow has been applications like WordPress that enable it by default without any simple way to disable it unless you look for a plugin. It’s the implementation by third-parties that makes it potentially harmful.

Excellent post Andy, and thanks to Adam for the clarifying comments.

What is so wrong with people buying links? (Frank Grasso) – I think that Google, and the internet as a whole, are trying to maintain a ‘fairness’ whereby people with good ideas have an equal chance of having them found because they are good ideas – rather than being hand fed with ideas that are commercially driven (ie through increasing page rank through bought links etc).

Yes it is frustrating sometimes building traffic 0 but believe me, I know from experience, traffic turns from a trickle to a torrent very quickly if you have interesting things to say or products – purely because people like linking to them.

I’ve written a bit about my thoughts on nofollow recently (I hope these links are nofollowed as it’s not my intention to comment spam but – here is one http://www.utheguru.com/relnofollow-steals-from-the-good-do-follow-is- robin-hood ).

I’ve also found a person with great ideas about the implementation of nofollow – JLH, a regular on the google webmaster tools forum talks about his policy here – http://www.jlh-design.com/nofollow-policy/

I agree with just about everything he says there other than no-following links from developers (for example, the ‘powered by wordpress’ at the bottom of wordpress blogs), as I believe the fact that someone uses an open source product should be a clear ‘vote’ for the designers of that product.

Cheers and great topic mate! Wish I was able to make it there – sounds like it was an interesting conference.

Cheers,

Dockarl (Matthew James, Brisbane)

Andy asked (in comment #25) “Jamey – why would I change the post?” I see that you’ve now added an update with a link to Adam’s additional comments. That covers what I was suggesting. Also, it’s interesting to hear your take that his original intent clearly was that “He wished it didn’t exist” (and may now be engaging in some damage control spin).

As you probably have already realized I do not use or believe in nofollow! So I make sure I link to clean Websites! I use to think same as Dockarl, about respecting the developers and leaving their link on the bottom of their work.

Until I did a neighborhood link check on phpBB. I found out they link to many sub industry Websites…
I do not want to put those word on this board.

So because I was linked to phpBB my forum was infested with sub industry Spam.

phpBB disclaimer states you can remove the copyright but please leave the link or you may not be able to get product support.

Well I never got product support from them and I have removed their bad neighborhood link.
I want to follow Google Webmaster Guideliness of not linking to bad Websites.

I have written many mods to fix the phpBB plague that has infected my forum. All of this I am doing with an intent to provide the same service to other forum and blog users via project PHSDL that I have started.

So let’s all stand up and support not using nofollow.

Thank you,
Igor

I sure wish it didn’t exist, it seems the Internet is getting strangled with these unnecessary restraints.

As you mention, there’s a world of difference between comment spam and paid links. But, there has to be some way for the search engines to not let whomever can afford the most links to dominate the rankings.

David
Seo service

I think google is right as it clearly mentioned in their policy that if you are placing any ad in your site/blog it should not be dofollow. Google dont like passing PR to some site and taking money. google will not object if you are passing the traffic anyways.

Oh, and Chris… by far, the more common penalty applied in the case of linking schemes is for the link seller to have their ability to pass PageRank stripped away. We’re aware of and very strongly tuned against facilitating the “Googlebowling” you’ve expressed concerns about… and, in fact, I’ve never seen an example of that in the wild.

Thanks you gülüm