Back in 2005 when the spammers were on their prime, Google introduced the rel=”nofollow” link attribute to help stop comment spam attacks on blogs, guestbooks and forums. The meaning of no follow means Do Not Follow the link for search engine spiders. When you put such link attribute in webpage, the link on those pages won’t pass any vote to the linking page. It was not created to stop crawling of search engines but to stop spamming over the webpage with unrelated links.
For paid or advertising links, Google suggests to put nofollow attribute on the webpage. Some other people suggest that it should be used in internal pages to manage page rank. Other thinks that nofollow should be rooted out from the internet.
Still there has been some confusion over this topic for last couple of years. The question arises are what is nofollow link? , Is it safe to use in my webpage? What benefit it will do or does it have any cons?
Let’s clear out things when to use nofollow and when not to:-
- You should not use nofollow attribute when you are linking to a legitimate or useful websites. Consider the website your webpage is linking as a recommendation and you are suggesting your visitors that the following website links might be useful.
- Paid links should include in nofollow attribute. Google have stated clearly ““In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters to use nofollow on such links.”
- Use of nofollow on unreliable content is wise decision. The main use of nofollow attribute is in blogs and forums where thousands and thousands members post in with man website links. Some members may be good members but there are many spammers who come to your website and spam the whole place with nasty links and unrelated links. In such case you should use nofollow to discourage those spammers.
There could be some sections of your website which you don’t want to be crawled by search engines spiders. Under such circumstance, using nofollow is the best idea.Always follow search engines rules and regulation. They are our friends to help our business and make money.
