Anyone plugged into the Web these days has heard about how Google has supposedly changed the way it deals with nofollow attributes. According to a number of speculative reports, Google will no longer apply unused nofollow PageRank to other links on the page. So, let’s say that you have some sites that have been PageRank “sculpted” by way of strategically applied nofollow tags. For example, you may have nofollowed all of your comment, footer, or sidebar links. Ever since Google pushed nofollow down our throats back in 2005, their policy has been such that:
- Nofollowed links are not followed
- PageRank does not flow through nofollowed links
- Incoming PageRank is allocated to all remaining dofollow links
With this policy, if your page has 100 links, and 50 of them are nofollow, all of the PageRank pouring into that page will go to the 50 dofollow links (i.e., links that are not nofollowed). Many PR-sculpted sites use this technique to funnel Rank to key pages, money pages, single posts, and so on. Instead of “wasting” link juice on unimportant pages, nofollow once enabled you to serve all of that tasty juice to your targeted links instead [1]. But not any more.
Now, with Google’s new nofollow policy, those 50 targeted dofollow links on your page will no longer get the extra juice leftover from the 50 nofollow links. Instead of re-allocating PageRank from nofollow links to dofollow links, your leftover juice just disappears! As far as I understand it at this time (at which Google has yet to clarify or explain their “new” nofollow policy), any juice saved from nofollow links is not re-applied to your money links, and it doesn’t stay with the page that contains the links either. It just vanishes.
So, if you have been using nofollow to retain some of your incoming rank juice and keep it on your money pages, forget about it. Google is changing the game. Got a post with tons of nofollow comment links? Goodbye PageRank. Got a sidebar full of superfluous internal links? Goodbye PageRank. You might as well make them all dofollow, because they are sucking the juice just the same and effectively pouring it right down the drain. I mean, this sucks, right?
Dealing with it.
For some of us with heavily sculpted sites, this is extremely bad news. Think your SEO clients will notice when their PageRank falls through the floor? What about when their money pages begin to choke? Fortunately, there are several ways to deal with Google’s new nofollow policy, although I’ll be the first to admit that most of them are pretty undesirable, especially where usability and accessibility are concerned. Nonetheless, if Google insists on changing the game halfway through, we should at least be knowledgeable of our alternatives. Let’s have a look..
External JavaScript
Currently, Google can read JavaScript that is included on the page, but it can’t touch JavaScript included via external files. By placing your link content in an external JavaScript file, you can rest assured that all of your PageRank will be delivered to the intended targets. This method may be a bit “dark-hat,” but we’re here to provide information, not judge. Here is a tutorial on how to dynamically insert links via external JavaScript.
iframes
I know, I know, “iframes” is a dirty word in most circles, but they can be very effective at preventing Google from seeing an entire sidebar full of inconsequential links or a few hundred comments for your single post pages. All of your bipedal, standards-compliant friends will mock you for using them, but for some, desperate times call for desperate measures.
WordPress comments
Another frequently overlooked mechanism of hoarding PageRank from your comment area is to use WordPress’ built-in paged-comments functionality. Maybe show a few comments on the post page, and then meta-noindex/nofollow the rest of them on their own dedicated comment pages. Oh, and you may want to check out this plugin to help with any unintended duplicate content issues.
Keep in mind that these methods are designed to help with on-page link sculpting when nofollow attributes cease to operate as originally intended (thanks Google). There are of course many other ways to optimize your pages and control the flow of PageRank throughout your site (e.g., robots.txt, meta directives, strategic linking and so on), but the focus of this article is aimed specifically at nofollow and how to deal with Google’s new policy. Hopefully you have a better idea of how things might be changing and some good ideas for dealing with it.
[1] For a good explanation of how this works, see Mr. Fishkin’s excellent description.
About the Author
Jeff Starr creates websites and graphics through his small design company, Monzilla Media. He loves Web Design and is obsessive about Web Standards, Accessibility, and Security. You can read more from Jeff at Perishable Press, where he writes high-quality, in-depth articles on web design and development, WordPress, social media, blogging, and much more.
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- 13 Comments
- Tags: Google, javascript, nofollow, PageRank, SEO
Thanks for the solid writeup. I think the whole deal is a load of BS. I’ve got a heavily page rank sculpted page that has like 10k pages index. I haven’t seen a single bump. Love how the industry blows up based on one man’s words.
cheers’ next time please sign off with your name
@Nick: Yes, and that “one man” (Matt Cutts) just posted an entire article on the subject where he finally admits that “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.” Amazing but true.
@Best CSS Gallery: Sure, happy to help. Ditto what Donace said
@Donace: So you must be back from vacation, eh?
hey Jeff no i’m still Dubai till 27th! was just checking in having a few issues with he sites
thanks again for the great post!
It just disappears. Like into a black hole.
None of the alternatives seem like great solutions. And then when will google change their mind again?
It’s funny that we complained so loudly back in 2005 when Google was first trying to push this on us, and now after everyone realizes how extremely useful nofollow turned out to be, we are screaming even more loudly because they have taken it away.
You are right that the alternatives leave something to be desired, but the WP comment-paging feature seems like a good alternative for dealing with the comments scenario. There are other, even less-attractive solutions that I chose to omit, for example, obfuscated JavaScript, encoded characters, and even various Flash solutions.
[...] there so firstly I would like to thank Jeff from Perishable Press for his great Guest post on the new no-follow drama that hit the SEO world (implications also considered at semoz) and would urge you to read up his [...]
I didn’t knew about this google’s new nofollow policy. This is not at all good. I have nofollow in my comments and also nofollowed the blogroll and top commentators for non-home pages.
Jeff, what do i do now? shall i use dofollow plugin and change to dofollow for blogroll and topcommentators in sidebar?
That is the million-dollar question now, Nihar. The thing to keep in mind as you make your decision is that Google implemented these changes around a year ago and nobody noticed. Chances are, whatever was working for you will continue to do so.
That is, until Google locks it down even more.
Wish google would make their minds up this whole link thing is spam anyway to many companies spend thousands on link building its not a genuine way of seeing if a sites popular it just means they employ seo people
Yes, i need more dofollow links for my PR, because nofollow links is not useful
This post is pretty interesting, but I don’t think I would use iframes at all. There is a post on another site, that suggests that you use this code instead of iframe.
if (getAttribute($link, ‘rel’) matches ‘*nofollow*’ &&
$userAgent matches ‘*Googlebot*’) {
print ‘‘ + getAnchorText($link) + ‘‘;
}
else {
print $link;
}
Here is the URL for that article. http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/dear-google-please-vaporize-yourself-and-dont-bother-us-webmasters/
I still think that PageRank is important, but targeted traffic is much better. My blog is a PR2 and ranks very good in Google for most of its search terms. About 35% of my articles rank very well in Google as well.
I spend most of my time writing articles which are usually 95% unique of better, at the time of posting. Seems to work very well for me, so far.
The thing about PageRank, is that is comes and goes. It just isn’t that stable to count on solely, so one must have other options. However, on my directories, Pagerank really plays a large role to submissions.
Many people chase blog comments, but from what I have seen lately, many blogs are just filled with spam comments and most of those comments which are so far off the topic. I would rather not have any comments if that is what I had to approve to get comments. Comments also depreciate your keyword density as well.
Luckily for me I have never bothered with ’sculpting’ my sites as that would take too much effort as well as take all the fun out of blogging.
Besides whats the point of worrying about what Google is going to do when as soon as you’ve worked it out Google has moved the goal posts.