Nofollow Will Be the Death of PageRank
Nofollow tag will be the death of PageRank
The nofollow tag has come a long way from its first inception. When the nofollow tag first was introduced it was somewhat sketchy as to its use. No one really knew
what it should do or how it was suppose to work, not even the creators Google. Many thought the use of the nofollow meant that it wouldn’t follow links, sounds right! However, it has manifested into a mechanism to reject the passing of link juice while links still can be found and followed — however nofollow links will have no influence on your page search ranking or Google PageRank. Link juice is simply a way a webpage can pass value onto another webpage, passing value is not possible with links that have the nofollow tag.
I understand and agree with the intent of the nofollow tag, by not allowing link
juice to be passed you are making the web a cleaner place. Link spammers have a
lot less control and cannot simply spam a website for the benefit of improving
rank, especially user content generated sites. However, the nofollow tag was
created to deflect the abuse of link building, but now the nofollow tag itself
is being abused.
You often find that every website uses the nofollow tag, even when they
shouldn’t, such as pointing to a relevant resource, pointing to a authority
site, or linking out to a website which the owner selected. You’ll even find
websites which include the nofollow tag on their own internal links, thus
denying the passing of value to their own internal pages. Many times this is
done unwittingly or automatically by the content management system (CMS) being
used, but still makes a horrid of messes for the site.
As the age of the nofollow tag continues to grow the use (and abuse) of the
nofollow tag will continue. Let’s imagine in the years to come as the nofollow
tag is overly used by every website, link juice will be minimal and almost
extinct — if you notice in this day and age PageRank on many websites are
dwindling down. Since Google PageRank relies on link juice and the passing of
value from one webpage to another the mere extinction of link juice will also
make Google PageRank obsolete.
Google is overdue with retiring their precious PageRank which has been at the
center of controversy for quite some time. It has also been the Mecca for many
link builders and site owners. I wonder if Google has thought out their plan for
the nofollow tag and the threat it has on PageRank or is Google in a space where
they’ve shot themselves in the foot. It will take some time for this to all play
out, but I’ll expect Google PageRank to either retire soon or Google PageRank to
be exterminated by the nofollow tag in years to come.
