PageRank and rel=nofollow @ Google June 17, 2009
For over a year, Google has been using a new method of distributing PageRank throughout sites. Hints have been given within the past year suggesting that this change had taken place, but few people took notice. Matt Cutts has now come forward to openly announce the change with rel=nofollow, and the SEO community is scrambling to figure out how this will affect their work.
Matt Cutts (head of the anti-spam team over at Google) is one of the most well-known faces of the company. He frequently speaks at web industry conferences/seminars and his blog is filled with useful SEO tidbits and tech developments from Google.
Although his site’s disclaimer points out that everything he posts = his opinion alone, he’s nonetheless seen as a mouthpiece for the almighty GOOG.
Yesterday, Cutts made a significant announcement regarding changes in the way that PageRank is being calculated at Google. Simply put, the significance of the rel=”nofollow” attribute has been nerfed.
Despite the changes being implemented over a year ago, there has been a flurry of discussion within the SEO community (including some heated criticism of Google). I have a few thoughts of my own, of course…
*ahem*
The use of rel=”nofollow”
Google (and every other search engine) wants to make it easier for users to find the content that they are looking for, so a primary goal is to index as much content as possible.
As such, “hiding” pages from Google should only be done when the page is useless and provides little to no value for users or the search engines. The purpose of hiding this content should be to hide the content and keep it from being indexed, however, and not to redistribute the “value” of links to give a boost to other pages within your site.
Google ultimately sees itself as the decider in weighing content relevance. Google doesn’t care about what you think is important on your site. Their system determines the correlation between what the user is looking for (their search query) and what your site has to offer.
Remember: Google is in the business of collecting and organizing data. As SEO’s, we’re making their job easier by making sites more visible to their crawlers and bots. We shouldn’t be nudging Google in one direction or another.
If you want to get around the importance of content within organic listings, that’s when you start looking at PPC campaigns and paid listings.
Don’t lose power to variables you can’t control.
It doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint to put so much control in the hands of another company, either. In the case of Google, when so much time (and time=money) is put into “sculpting PageRank” – only for it to be rendered useless – I can’t help but question the long-term feasibility of the practice.
Wouldn’t this time/money be better spent on improving your website, addressing content issues, and converting visits into sales (or whatever your goal is)?
Yes, some may complain that developing content takes too much time and that generating organic inbound links is a hassle. But I would argue that the time is better spent developing content (making your site kick ass) rather than trying to find loopholes in the system – you’re less likely to get burned when those loopholes are suddenly removed, or when the indexing system is changed entirely.
The Bottom Line
This blog comment from Yoast sums it up well:
I still don’t like using NOFOLLOW on internal links – I simply don’t trust how Google will use this over time.
In the end, we don’t know what Google is going to do in the future. PageRank is their system and they have absolute control over it. They also reserve the right to knock you out of the SERP’s if you start doing anything fishy.
Google is the judge, jury and executioner. They make the rules, they decide if you’re following the rules, and they can deliver the final blow by removing you from the index completely.
Some Other Opinions
Here are some other discussions about this development:
- Rel=Nofollow Wastes PageRank (from SEO Book)
- You Can Sculpt PageRank, but Not with NoFollow (from SEO Moz)
- PageRank Sculpting (from Matt Cutts)
- Webmaster World Discussion – Matt Cutts on PageRank Changes
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