I’ve been reading up on the history of the “nofollow” tag as well as countless blogs preaching both the pros and cons, trying to decide when best to use it, and if I should use it at all. I won’t bore you with the background of the nofollow attribute; if you really want to read about it check out Wikipedia’s entry (for the record, I added the nofollow tag to the previous link - take that Wikipedia!). In a nutshell, the nofollow tag is designed to instruct search engine (SE) robots/spiders to not follow a link that includes the tag, and to not allow the linked-to page to receive a boost in page rank because of the link. Essentially, you’re telling the SEs that while you are linking to a site, you don’t want that site’s ranking to be influenced by your link.

The nofollow tag was originally intended to reduce certain types of SE spam. Though a non-standard HTML attribute, all four major SE (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask) support it, but interpret it differently. Again, if you want more details, click on the aforementioned link to Wikipedia.

So, should I use nofollow tags? Well, here’s what I’ve decided to do with my sites: I plan to use the nofollow tag for internal links to non-relevant (to my intended audience) pages such as the “terms of use” page, the “site map” page and the in some cases, the “about us” page. This use is encouraged by Google’s Matt Cutts, who is the co-creator of the nofollow tag. And, well, if Google says jump, we all say how high … uh, not so much. But, in this case, I agree.

I have no problem allowing the SE’s to count my link in the linked-to page’s ranking. I kind of thought that was the point of linking? You link to a page because it is relevant to the topic on which you are writing, so why would you want the SEs to ignore the relationship? For example, I write for a couple of Virginia Tech sports-related blogs because I’m a big Hokie fan (class of ‘97 baby!), so if I’m writing for the football site and I add a link to the box score found on another Web site, I wouldn’t want to use the nofollow tag on that link because the information on that linked-to page is relevant to my topic and I want the SEs to know it.

Now, I could see an example, though rare, in which you would want to add a nofollow to a site, that while relevant to your discussion or article, may contain content you find objectionable, or that you do not agree with. This is an extreme example, but say you are a new reporter, or you blog about race relations in the U.S., and you are writing about a hate site that posted a particularly offensive article - well, you may want your readers to see for themselves what you are objecting to, but you definitely don’t want the Web site’s ranking to be positively influenced by your link, so in that example (rare as it may be), I would certainly add a nofollow tag.

Please keep in mind, I’m not talking about the comments people leave on your blog or site. For example, SEOMoz.org automatically adds nofollow tags to all comments left on their site and I completely support that decision because it makes sense. You don’t want some SEO celebrity wannabe spamming your comments with links to his/her blog or Web site trying to build up their ranking from a credible and legit site like SEOMoz. The nofollow tag was intended to prevent this type of abuse, though the argument has been made by many SEOs that it isn’t working because Google misinterpreted the intent of spammers in that they don’t necessarily care as much about their site’s ranking as much as they care about blasting as many people as they can with their crap in the hopes that a few clueless individuals will actually click on their links.

OK - I’ve given my thoughts, what about yours? Am I way off? Am I missing something? Help me out here - it’s the only way we get better!

I read a great blog comment-turned-blog post on SEOmoz.com. It was actually written by a colleague of mine who goes by the handle “Crash” over at SEOmoz. I have actually begun implementing her strategy for my company since I am an in-house SEO who is still learning the ropes. Thanks to Melanie for this writeup and congrats on getting the upgrade to an SEOmoz Blog post! Linkity link!