No Follows and Google

Another “dictated by Google” topic. Nofollow was originally designed to keep search engines from indexing links that you did not want them to index.

It seems though, that search engines pay attention to it when they want, and ignore it otherwise. So as a protection, which it was originally intended as, it is practically useless. Google has thought of another use though.

They say you should use it on all links going off your site that are irrelevant (though they can’t tell you just what that means), or which were paid for (even though they don’t know what THAT means either), or which they feel are not otherwise suitable (good luck getting them to define what that is).

Now, the problem here, in my judgement, is that Google has dictated that people must DO something that is not intuitive, in order to not be punished for not having done it. The average person has no clue what a “nofollow” tag is, or how to use it. And there are a lot of average people out there building websites.

Google didn’t used to punish people for not knowing the rules. They just rewarded them if they DID know them. A person of integrity, with no intent to deceive, would not be caught in a trap of SEO rules they knew nothing about and accidentally violated. That has flipped though. Now, everything is fair game in the world of Google roulette.

Nofollow tags are just another in a long line of fussy, inconsistent, and illogical recommendations that Google has released. It has become worse and worse in the last year. Not only do you have to act against human nature, according to a set of very fussy rules, it appears that Google expects people to be gamblers or mind readers. There are those who will disagree with me, but some of those who would have disagreed last year have found themselves on the receiving end of the Google stick, and no longer think that it only takes intelligence and integrity to succeed in the SEO world.

There are still things we do to pages to make them better. And we still keep the people first rule in mind. But I can no longer say with any confidence that if you just try to see that your pages are accurately indexed that you won’t be caught out. Google has left logic behind, and has crossed the line into unreasonable dictation and autocracy. Their rules, which once made sense, no longer do.