I've seen several websites using this format now when allowing other sites to post a link. What does it mean?
rel=“no follow”
2006-08-30 05:40:57 · 3 answers · asked by razsports 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Programming & Design
It's an order to robots (such as search engine spiders) not to follow the link that it's applied to. Usually it's used to stop any page rank, link trust or benefit being passed to the recipient of the link regarding search engine rankings.
2006-08-30 05:45:03 · answer #1 · answered by lookforadam 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
the perfect target for spammers to get inbound links to their site(s) without risking a penalty from the search engines, because it is almost impossible for the search engines to determine if a link at site was added because it is really relevant for the topic or just by a Spammer to increase his Page Rank. Blogs have the same Problem and Google developed a simple to implement mechanisms for the Blogger or Webmaster to eliminate the whole benefit of having an outbound link at those sites for the sole purpose of gaining Page Rank. The only purpose why a spammer is trying to place a link in the first place. Links can still be added and used by Human Visitors that are interested and click it. Search Engine Spiders on the other hand that visit the page will simply ignore the Link, it will not count as a vote for the target website.
How is that done? Very simple. Simply add the attribute rel="nofollow" to the HTML Link Tag
2006-08-30 12:44:46 · answer #2 · answered by god knows and sees else Yahoo 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
That tells search engine bots not to follow that link.
2006-08-30 12:58:35 · answer #3 · answered by Dan404 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋