So we all know that links in SEO are important. Really important as Google uses them as a way to work out if your website is a respected part of the internet which people love to share.
However, most links that you tend to get tend to have the rel=nofollow attribute which in theory tells Google and other search engines that they shouldn’t follow it or use it in there search algorithms. A common place to find no-follow links is in Blog comments and on Forums.
Matt Cutts himself says that Google don’t follow them and they don’t count (but check is face).
Here’s my thoughts on why they do actually count.
1) All the big sites use no-follow. As mentioned in the video Wikipedia is no-follow as are a few other big sites like.
2) Blog commenting seems to have a postive effect on rankings. Again these links are usually no-follow.
3) No-follow allows webmaster to manipulate Google. And Google hates being manipulated.
What do you think. Would love to hear your comments?
Im not 100% sure myself, having experimented using both. I think that it mainly counts do follow for the juice but I also believe having a certain amount of no follow links alongside them make your site look natural. I believe google give you a bonus for the diversity of links overall.
The vast majority of links to a big corp are no follow from places like twitter, blogger, facebook and the like. It only makes perfect sense that google is taking a large weight from these due to the low spam factor. Propaganda pushes “we don’t follow these, so don’t spam them” thus making for the most natural link pool google has!