What Are Nofollow Links, And Do I Want Them?

Following on from yesterdays post about Google to release Ranking Checking Software? From the webmasters central YouTube channel. Another video that caught our eye was a question put to Matt Cutts regarding 'nofollow' links.

For people who do not know what a nofollow link is, its when specified the links get dropped from the Google link graph. This means Google will ignore this link and not give the page that it points to any link juice. See the example below of a nofollow in action.

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The nofollow link code came about as many people where using blog commenting to spam links back to their website. The hope of the nofollow was to stop blog and other forms of link spamming. However, judging by the amount of commenting spam the Cozy Digital gets (yes, you know who you are) this has had limited success.

The nofollow link relevance does have other benefits, for example if you cannot vouch for the website that you may be linking to or you do not want to pass on your link juice then you should use the nofollow attribute.

For more information check out the explanation of nofollow links on Google Webmaster Central.

Note: Here on the Cozy Digital we believe in giving something back and although initially we do put the nofollow attribute on our comments,  we believe in spreading the link love so after you have contributed 4 comments the nofollow will will be removed.Spread the love!

What’s your experience of the nofollow and link spam? Are you still seeing problems with spam?  We would like to know your thoughts below.

In this video Matt Cutts answers the question on should you receive nofollow links?

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About Graham Lyons

Graham is the SEO and Social Media Marketing Manager at Cozy Digital and the editor of the Cozy Digital Blog as well as contributing content for most of our social outlets like Facebook, Twitter and G+. Graham has been working in, and writing for the SEO / SMM industry since 2001 and is still as dedicated and passionate today as he was when he opened his first Website Design, Ecommerce and SEO company in 2004. You can connect with Graham and Cozy Digital via the social media links below:

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