How Does Google Really Treat Nofollow Links?

There are nofollow links showing in Google Webmaster Tools for my site. Some of them have always been nofollow ( a comment to this site would be an example, I’m guessing ) while others seem like they’re grandfathered in. Wikipedia has articles on different photographic lenses, and a fan of my pictues listed my site under a lens as “sample imagery.” ( It’s an honor that someone out there thinks my photos represent the full potential in an expensive landscape lens. ) Several months later this became a nofollow link. I don’t know if that’s treated differently from a link that’s always been nofollow?

I haven’t done any experimenting with these types of links; I really don’t do any link building. When I shoot a good photo I show it off to everyone who’ll look, and some of the articles seem “viral.” I’m finally starting to reach the point where photography is all I really need to do to keep traffic flowing to my site. These are just the observations I’ve had a chance to make.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Google follows ( but doesn’t pass on “link juice” from ) nofollow links. It would be in their best interest to at least evaluate the content on the web. Nofollow isn’t about keeping URLs in the dark, it’s about blocking the one reason too many people make them.

“When I check links in Webmaster Tools I can tell you that they show backlinks”

Steven, in his post “Google provides backlinks for site owners”, Matt Cutts specifically states:

“Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. I’m going to say that again: Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. Sometime in the next year, someone will say “But I saw an insert-link-fad-here backlink show up in Google’s backlink tool, so it must count. Right?” And then I’ll point them back here, where I say do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. :)”

Forrest I would imagine if a link later gets the nofollow added then once Google discovers the nofollow they start treating it as they would had it been there from the beginning. Just a guess on my part, but it seems reasonable.

Thanks Halfdeck. I remember seeing Matt say that and I agree just because you see a backlink doesn’t mean it’s useful in any way. But according to what they told Loren Baker they don’t even follow the link and I wonder how they could know the link is a backlink if they didn’t at least follow it.

What you said in your comment on Neil’s post is what my gut is telling me is most likely right. That they do follow the link in spite of what they say and that perhaps a little bit of that anchor text does get carried over to the page.

I have said earlier that I have put a site at 50 for ‘yuri’ just by commenting on blogs (around 400). That being said, the WP blog did have Yuri as post author, but the positions were shifting with time, which leads to my more or less incorrect conclusion that it was due to the amount of nofollowed links with ‘Yuri’ as anchor text.

If you use google’s sitemaps/webmaster control panel then you’re probably getting indexed because of that, and not because of links. Spammers don’t use google’s webmaster control panel, most of them code their own tracking system using a log analyzer combined with javascript.

True about using Google sitemaps. If they know about a page that way it should get indexed. It’s no guarantee of ranking, though I doubt Google gives much beyond a small weight (if any) to nofollow links in spite of what they say. Just a hunch and for the moment I can’t offer proof of any kind.

Probably not the best idea for a spammer to use Google’s Webmaster Tools. Good point.