Nofollow - Observations Suggests Google DOES Follow

I recent acquired an expired domain www.greenpapaya.org [originally an artwork project] that I picked up for Herbs and Herbal Remedies.

In reviewing the backlinks shown in Google's Webmaster Console I came across:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ljvFkHZoJ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU5H06ehOsg

[and others]

which are all rel="nofollow" for the links that are only found in the noscript desciption for the associated video.

Now just because I can see the links in the Webmaster Console doesn't mean that suggests those link 'count' for any link juice... but it certainly does suggests that Google "follows" the link to report it... regardless of what it does with that information to affect [or not] ordered ranks.

Yeah, Google shows even nofollowed links in the Webmaster Tools console and as per Matt:



Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-provides-backlink-tool-for-site-owners/

I have a few Wiki links which even shows up in the Webmaster Console Links section, but I don't think that they pass any value.

ya... but that doesn't have anything to do with "rel="nofollow" where Google's "official stance is"... google doesn't follow...

..."reporting it" IMHO is following... isn't it?

...why would any tool show you what it doesn't do?

Although, another plausible occurence could be that YouTube just started using "nofollow" and I'm seeing old data.

I guess Google's stance is rather...It won't credit links with nofollow and will not associate nofollow links with the linking page.

For youtube, even if it used nofollow prior to the links to your site, it would have still shown it in the webmaster tools, coz nofollow links do appear in WMT.

Links posted in Wikipedia and other blogs that are frequently crawled but use nofollow, shows up in the WMT within a few days.

So I think that Google will follow [take into account] nofollow links, but won't pass any LJ or PR value, nor will use those links for ordering ranks and neither will index the page linked with the nofollow attribute....of course other non-nofollow links might get that page indexed.

nofollow does index the page on the other end of the link unless that's noindexed as well, but it doesn't pass PR to the page.

however we think that nofollowed links do also still also pass anchor text relevance to the linked page, even if not the PR and its still better than not having the link at all.

if youre running Joost de Valks FF extension you can see the PR and anchor text of the links in WMT, and we have seen pages with mainly nofollowed links ranking when we think it unlikely they would have been if not for those nofollowed links

Yeah, the links, to my knowledge, have always been followed for indexing purposes. I don't remember Google ever claiming that's what the rel="nofollow" attribute was for.

From the Google blog in 2005 "From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists."

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005...mment-spam.html

Notice "won't get any credit when we rank"

If you do a linkdomain: search in Yahoo! you'd see those links there too.

haha yes I know that's what they say

<~~ a neutral face

Google sees these links and reports them in webmaster tools. I see nofollow links on some of my sites. Perhaps seeing them and following them is two different things.

A couple of months ago I added the nofollow attribute to a few pages on my website that had normal links for over a year. The last PR update those pages lost all green on the toolbar and I don't find them in the google index any longer.

I don't think this is true. Google always claims that nofollow links will not be indexed BUT if any other links point to the same page, then it can be indexed.

However, if there are still doubts, then we can try this out in the SEOchat Test and Experimentation forums.

All we need is a non-indexed domain which we will add to anybody sig links here [not the 1st sig link coz thats followed] and see what happens.

Condition: The domain should not have a single link pointing to it.

We may even try this out with a new blog...what say guys??

all i know when it comes to a no follow link spiders ignore it where it is directing to...

Hi

Please can any tell me Yahoo or any other search engine accepts no follow links in back links

Please advice and please i apologise if i breaked the rule for asking abt Yahoo here

Regards
Bossy

I cant see your logic here. Google goes round collecting links on pages, just because it reports what it finds doesnt mean it followed the link.

The no follow experiment has been done already in this forum...
http://forums.seochat.com/seo-test-and-experimentation-81/nofollow-test-are-they-really-not-followed-144772.html

Google follows them but doesnt pass the juice was the findings

worth a pop. i cant find it now but am sure I remember reading on a blog somewhere, someone was questioning MC about this with regards to his own site and Matt saying that on occasion they could be followed and indexed, and a lot of people have been saying it since.

however as I now cant find the source again I'll retract and wait for the results of the test

Oops didnt mean to post this twice (cant delete)

wpw are also discussing it here at the moment, it appears some of their testing points towards you being correct in this.