A newcomer asks questions

Ok, It’s my second week and DaveN asks me to look into the No Follow tag. He initially asks me what it is ( he knows) I stumble, give a few rather low grade answers- quietly, so nobody else in the office can hear. DaveN looks over,smiles and asks why don’t you look into it Dan…

“no follow” is a relation tag (rel=”nofollow”) ie: Don’t follow this persons link, I wouldn’t trust him/her well I might do, well maybe, what do you think Google?

no follow initiative?  How come it’s an initiative? Oh I know …(Initially used as a mechanism to stop link spam on blogs)

An initiative “The power or right to introduce a new legislative measure”  Hmmmm. That will be the No follow tag then?

Six apart fully supported the tag  rel=”nofollow” back in 2005  link attribute to alert their search spider that a particular link shouldn’t be factored into their PageRank calculations.

The blog  comments on the announcement all supported the idea saying “great idea”, “we will be following” etc quite spammy you might think.

A tactic to protect the huge cogs of the search engine wheel? From a business point of view this tag could be really useful.

Meanwhile, spammers continue to add their own Google juice lubricating the wheel at will?

Oh, i’m new to this so I will play devil’s advocate.

What about legitimate non-spam linkers who will now have as much weight as an anorexic on slimfast ?  Wikipedia voted yes or no, took the tag off then put it back on.

I think the net should be a place to actively share information and valuable resources authority links should be rightly deserved. EBay had problems with its own feedback mechanism, leaving people unaware as to the credibility of the seller; it’s now addressed the problem with a more informative feedback system.

Is Google able to decide on when and how it should be used?

Its seems everyone wants a share of the great Google pie and grubby fingers are all over it at the moment.

Let’s boost the good resources and forget the rest ehh? Not  worry about  PR in Blogs. ( You may wish to start an adwords campaign to resolve this issue or get Google accredited at minimal cost….Google’s pockets are huge)

The tag doesn’t discourage spammers commenting on blogs.
What weight does Google give to the no follow in any case?

Come on open up- tell us.

So effectively, what happens if you’re buying or selling links on your website? Who decides who has the Elixir of youth and who has a tumbler of water?

I think I understand what the tag is about now, it has it’s merits but does it do what it set out to?

Google overlords we bow to you….

PS

Please leave comments here for comments sake and not for the motivation of getting a free link. ;0)

Dan Horton