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Server Fault had an interesting experiment. They dropped the "nofollow" on links from users that they considered trusted (based on age and other criteria). Then
by keltex 14y ago
Server Fault had an interesting experiment. They dropped the "nofollow" on links from users that they considered trusted (based on age and other criteria). Then they found their rankings were dropping because those links were considered "spammy" by google.
Here's a post related to that by Jeff Atwood:
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/51136/remove-nofollow-on-links-at-a-certain-age#51156 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/51136/remove-nofollo...
- ZoFreX 14y ago6 months later they fixed the problem: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/111279/remove-nofollow-on-links-deemed-reputable http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/111279/remove-nofoll...
- curiouscats 14y agoThanks for the link. It seems to me that Google should be better able to deem links reputable than most sites. It seems a weak decision by Google to threaten sites into the safe action of just telling Google not to value any of their links (using nofollow) rather than Google determining value. I realize lots of people try to trick Google. But I really think Google should be able to produce value by accessing links themselves. I can figure out lots of nofollow links that have value and really can't believe Google doesn't realize it is providing less useful search results because of a policy decision they made years ago to make their lives easier (telling sites they had to use nofollow and Google then wouldn't value the links). I realize battling "search spam" is difficult. I think the nofollow strategy isn't a very good one. But I don't expect Google to improve until a competitor uses this weakness to gain significant market share (or maybe if google is thinking ahead and monitors search result value and notices a competitor is ahead - even before the users do they will react before market share declines). But no competitor has done so, so Google continues to punish sites and Google users with the Google nofollow policy.