Should you use the 'nofollow' through attribute for external links
There's been a lot of discussion lately about the use of 'nofollow' for external linking. The most recent is from the social networking website Digg. 2 days ago they announced in their blog that they have made: 'Recent Changes to NOFOLLOW on External Links'.
Their reason for it?
To reduce the incentive to post spammy content (or link spam) to Digg, while still flowing ’search engine juice’ freely to quality content.
It may also be their hope, that in reducing the amount of spammy links going out, they will effectively increase their search engine placements. It is well documented that linking out to spammy websites has a negative impact on your websites search engine listings. Google explains this in their Quality Guidelines.
How does this effect Digg members?
If you use Digg for Search Engine Optimization purposes ie. to gain a better pagerank, then it's no longer going to be effective.
Or in otherwords, it's not going to gain a vote as far as Google PageRank is concerned. And as we all know by now, every link back to your website from a related site, scores points for the recommendation. Google's view, is that the more websites linking back to you, the more important your site is, and should be listed in their search accordingly. You can read more about this at: http://www.google.com/dirhelp.html#pagerank
Does using the 'nofollow' attribute effect your own website?
Not if you implement them only for external links. Take Wikipedia for example. Wikipedia have always implemented 'nofollow' for all external links and it doesn't seem to effect their Google rankings in the least.
Is 'nofollow' recommended for all external links, just like Wikipedia have implemented?
Certainly not!
In my personal opinion, if webmasters choose their links intelligently, they shouldn't need to use the nofollow attribute. In other words, only link to websites that you honestly recommend to your visitors.
Of course there will be times where you don't necessarily control the links that are posted on your website. For example, blog comments, message forums, community content sites etc. As Matt Cutts (Head of Google Webspam team) explains in the video below, there are times when it should and shouldn't be implemented.
It is Matt's view that:
the new move by Digg is a positive change, because Digg decreases the benefit for spammy stories but Digg still helps normal and high-quality stories in the search engines.
My Question is, if the head of Google Webspam team says it's a good idea for Digg, then maybe we should all be making the same changes?
Written by Tanya Puntti (aka Hypergurl)
