It’s A Conspiracy Man! At least I think it is – not long ago, I saw an article, claiming to come from Google (possibly through Matt Cutts, I honestly can’t remember), stating that they were encouraging sites (especially blogs), to start implementing the “nofollow” tag in an effort to prevent the artificial inflation of link popularity.
Not long after I read this article, I noticed that blogs my team had been posting on, now had “nofollow” tags when we linked to a website. Shortly after this, the tag started to appear in places like Flickr, Del.icio.us, etc., and now I found it on my public profile page of Linkedin.
The funny thing about the “nofollow” tag on my public profile page in Linkedin is that the links to my website and my blog (this blog) have “nofollow” tags after the URL but the link to my profile on MySpace doesn’t? Why do you suppose that is?
I’ll tell you why – because it’s a conspiracy! I believe that Google has, hmmm, ah, “strongly suggested” that sites (ie. WordPress Blogs, Blogger.com Blogs, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Reddit, etc.) implement the “nofollow” tag or suffer the wrath of Google. Think about it – why else would companies implement a “nofollow” tag? They aren’t leaking that much PR by eliminating the “nofollow” tag, so why implement it unless there was repercussions for not? And why do some sites implement the tag for only certain sites, like I have found with Linkedin and MySpace? There appears to be an ‘inner circle’ that is exempt from the “nofollow” laws that almighty Google has set forth.
Personally, I think that the big boys (ie. MySpace, Linkedin, Facebook, Digg, etc.) are part of this inner circle of friends with Google and this allows them to ‘leave-out’ other members within their circle of friends but penalize the rest of us with the dreaded “nofollow” tag
One final thought on the “nofollow” tag. According to Google’s Official Blog, they encourage bloggers to use this tag to prevent comment spam. I know that comment spam can be a big thing but honestly, do you have to throw the baby out with the bath water? Can’t we as bloggers manage our own spam?
And, if this was originally a suggestion for bloggers, then why is Google also coming down hard on sites that sell paid links? Why buy a paid link if you can’t get any link popularity value?
This is just another attempt by Google to control the universe and frankly, I am getting sick of this crap!
It’s because of stupid stunts like this that companies turn to black-hat SEO’s for quick, better rankings and then the rest of us get burned when it all comes crashing down.
If anyone has noticed this with any other software, post a comment here – I want to see what else is out there and how else Google is controlling us and the world.
Trev
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Interesting. I’m not too conerned about the “nofollow” stuff anymore, although it is slightly annoying. However, I am concerned about Google’s ability to make or break businesses and it’s growing power.
Years ago, the credit bureaus had little oversight and were largely unregulated. At least until, several people lost their job, house and even their spouse after mistakes were made on their credit file and not corrected. Could Google find itself in a similar fate? That is, being forced to have oversight due to their power and ability to effect people’s lives?
Enjoyed the conspiracy perspective. I will keep this in mind as I do my nofollow research as it relates to driving traffic by using social networking sites. Trying to stay all white hat.
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