What is the rel=nofollow attribute?

The nofollow link attribute has been introduced by Google in 2005. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of link spamming in blogs and online forums. A link with the rel=nofollow attribute looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.example.com” rel=”nofollow”>Example</a>

The official claim is that links with the rel=nofollow attribute do not influence the search engine rankings of the target page. In addition to Google, Yahoo and MSN also support the rel=nofollow attribute.

Links with the nofollow attribute don’t count. Or do they?

This month, the webmaster of a gaming site did a little test. He wrote an article about the SpiderMan 3 game in one of his blogs and then he added comments in other blogs.

The comments in the other blogs contained links to his SpiderMan 3 article. The special thing about these links was that they contained the text “piderman 3″ and a nofollow attribute.

After a few days, his site ranked on the first result page on Google for “piderman 3″.

Does this mean that that Google counts nofollow links?

Some webmasters think that the experiment might prove that Google counts nofollow links. However, a few factors can also influence the ranking of the article page:

• The search term “piderman 3” appears on the page as part of “SpiderMan 3“. That means that the page can also rank because of the words on the page. As the article was posted on a blog page, the word also appears in the website navigation links on the site.
• Google does not only search for the direct keyword occurrences on the page and in link texts. Google also searches for misspelled versions of the words and related keywords.

  If you search for “piderman 3” on Google then Google will ask you “Did you mean Spiderman 3?” so they know the correct term that you were looking for.

Unfortunately, this little experiment cannot prove whether Google counts nofollow links or not. The data is not good enough.

1. Just ask

Send the webmaster of the web page in question a polite email and ask for removal of the negative comments. Be friendly and don’t threaten the other person. Many webmasters will cooperate if you explain the issue.

2. Give web pages with positive comments a boost

Find web sites that contain positive comments about your site. Link to these pages from your own website to increase the link popularity of these pages. The web pages with the positive comments might get more inbound links and higher rankings then.

You could also suggest web pages with positive remarks about your website on social network sites such as Digg.

3. Use Wikis if appropriate

Websites like AboutUs.org allow you to create an article about your company. If your company is important enough, you might even create an entry in Wikipedia. These Wiki pages might also get listed when someone searches for your company name.

It’s very important that you don’t spam Wikis. Only add information about your company if it is appropriate. Spamming Wikis will backfire on you.

4. Ask for testimonials

If you receive positive feedback from customers, ask them to write a review on ConsumerReview.com, Epinions.com or similar sites.