Google Says If Internal Nofollow Links Send A Quality Signal via @sejournal, @martinibuster

11 months ago 167

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Google's Martin Splitt answered a question astir a transportation betwixt interior nofollow links and prime signals

Google’s Martin Splitt answered a question astir whether interior nofollow links and noindex meta robots directives nonstop the incorrect awesome to Google that the website is debased quality.

Nofollow Link Attribute

The nofollow nexus property came astir arsenic a modular created by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft that publishers tin usage to awesome that a nexus can’t beryllium trusted (such arsenic links successful idiosyncratic generated content) oregon for paid links. The thought is that the links can’t beryllium trusted oregon utilized for ranking purposes oregon for immoderate reason.

SEOs discovered that PageRank didn’t travel done links that had the nofollow property truthful people the self-identified “white hat” SEOs tried gaming Google by adding nofollow links to their privateness and astir america pages successful bid to funnel the maximum magnitude of PageRank to the pages that mattered. This signifier was called PageRank Sculpting and it shows that adding nofollows to interior links is longtime signifier and that it’s ne'er been a occupation before.

For the record, PageRank sculpting doesn’t enactment because, successful a highly simplified explanation, Google fundamentally counts the magnitude of links connected a page, including links with nofollows and divides the magnitude of PageRank that flows arsenic if each the links counted. That’s however it was explained galore years agone and that whitethorn person changed implicit the years, we don’t truly know.

Noindex Robots Meta tag

The noindex robots meta tag is simply a directive that crawlers similar Googlebot are required to obey. It allows a steadfast a mode to artifact crawling astatine the leafage level.

There is thing astir the noindex worth of the meta constituent that indicates whether the leafage is untrustworthy oregon thing similar that. It’s conscionable a mode to power crawlers.

Google’s Martin Splitt narrated the question:

“Can a batch of interior links with nofollow tags oregon galore pages with noindex tags awesome to Google that the tract has galore low-quality pages?”

Martin answered:

“No, it doesn’t awesome low-quality contented to us, conscionable that you person links you’re not consenting to beryllium associated with. That mightiness person galore reasons – you’re not definite wherever the nexus goes, due to the fact that it is user-generated contented (in which lawsuit see utilizing rel=ugc alternatively of rel=nofollow) oregon you don’t cognize what the tract you’re linking to is going to bash successful a mates of years oregon so, truthful you people them arsenic rel=nofollow.”

Nofollow Is Not A Quality Signal

Martin confirmed that determination is nary awesome indicating a worth judgement astir “quality” that’s associated with the usage of a nofollow nexus property oregon the noindex robots meta tag. Using them connected interior links oregon for preventing crawling is good and person nary effect connected Google tract prime judgements.