When to use the nofollow Tag

When to use the SearchEngine Wide "nofollow" Tag.
When to use the nofollow Tag
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The "nofollow" Tag exists since the 18th January 2005 and was invented by Google, MSN and Yahoo.

If you add a nofollow attribute to one of your links, that's what happens:
  • The Link will be followed by a Search Engine Spider but the linked content won't be added to the Index
  • The linked Site doesn't get any PageRank forwarded
  • SearchEngines don't care about its Alt or Link Text
The main purpose of the nofollow Tag is to prevent Spam. Best example would be Comments in Blogs or News Systems - they should be marked with a nofollow attribute.

However, if you use it too often your site might become a PageRank Hoarding type of site which might be treated as over-optimizing. That would result in a PR Penality.

Check out my blog for more SEO News, Andreas Kraus

By Andreas Kraus
Published: 4/15/2006
 
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