Google and other search engines understand the nofollow tag to indicate that publishers do not endorse certain links to other pages. The Nofollow attribute is important for search engine optimization, as search engines can see that it is not being used to sell influence or to engage in SEO practices deemed to be unacceptable.
Search engines will ignore your link if you add the nofollow tag. Nofollow links will not affect the page ranking of your website. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and major blogging websites introduced nofollow tags in HTML in 2005 in order to prevent spam comments on blogs. By making spammers’ lives more difficult, they hoped to ensure that when spammers posted unwanted links in comments (typical spam tactics), they would not negatively affect the ranking of a website.
The use of nofollow was essential for preventing robots from following each individual link on a page. “The nofollow tag allows a site to add links that are not considered an editorial vote,” Matt Cutts, former head of the webspam team at Google, said at the time. When you buy links, you can use nofollow, because it tells a search engine that it shouldn’t count a link as a vote.
Nofollow instructions: when to use them
Nofollow tags are recommended for user-generated content, such as blog comment sections and external links. According to the Google Webmaster Guidelines, nofollow should be used on this type of content. In essence, websites that don’t want Google to consider their links as votes of trust should apply nofollow tags to their links.
Nofollow tags are debatable in terms of their impact on Google ranking. Neither Google nor any other search engine counts nofollow links, and nofollow links are discarded from search results. Despite this, many SEOs believe that nofollowed links can have some value in certain cases.
On advertising banners or outright promotions, it is a good idea to always include nofollow instructions. If you would like further advice, you can consult your account manager.
Nofollow instructions: how to use them
HTML elements are assigned nofollow tags using the rel attribute (short for relevance). Rel attributes provide search engines with more information concerning a link, they are a way of defining the relationship between your site and the link.
In HTML, a nofollow link is different from a default link:
Default link: <a href=”link”>text</a>
No followed link: <a href=”link” rel=”nofollow”>text</a>
