krelnik
Graduate Poster
Back in September I posted a blog entry titled "Not just for spam anymore: NOFOLLOW for skepticism". The basic premise of the article is that when a skeptic links to a site that is pushing misinformation (presumably to "debunk" or counter it), the skeptic should be careful to link in such a way that the other site derives no benefit in Google from it. This is accomplished via a little known HTML enhancement invented by Google. All the gory details are there in the blog post, please read it if you are not familiar with NOFOLLOW and what it does.
The post did not attract much comment originally. Mostly I attributed that to the fact that few knew of my very special-purpose blog at the time. But I also assumed that the premise of this article was something with which most skeptic bloggers and webmasters would agree.
Almost exactly a month later, the topic happened to come up in the Skeptics Rock chatroom. In that discussion, several very high-profile skeptics somewhat vehemently disagreed with me. I was very surprised, to say the least.
The objections raised mostly fell into one of these categories:
Because of the objections that were raised, I do plan to write a follow up on this topic. But I thought it would be good to raise this in a thread so we can get some real substantive discussion going and then I can summarize in the post.
BUT FIRST...
I would like to address in part some of the objections I listed above, insofar as the technology behind this was not covered fully in the original article.
2. Is this a form of censorship? No.
This tag has one effect, and one effect only: it prevents Google from considering your link as part of the "ranking" of the other site. That's all it does.
It does not prevent the other site from being indexed or cached by any search engine. It does not prevent the other site from appearing in search engine results. It does not prevent your readers from visiting the other site via the link you provide (or any other link). It does not prevent them from viewing any or all of the content on the other site once they get there. It does not prevent their visit from being registered on the site "hit counter" or any other monitoring process. It does not affect the site's ranking in services like Alexa that keep statistics for the web as a whole.
3. Is this a misuse of what nofollow is for? No.
Matt Cutts is one of the Google employees who invented nofollow. He had this to say about it on his blog:
Google recently posted a search engine optimization starter guide on their webmaster blog. The document (an Adobe PDF file, for some reason), has this to say about nofollow on page 19:
Note that although this example mentions spam, it is only in the context of a blog post about the topic. Imagine the above quote with the words "comment spamming" replaced with "homeopathy" (and "recently comment spammed your blog" with "recently endorsed homeopathy"). I think it is a completely appropriate example.
4. It's not worth the trouble just for Google.
How much trouble this is depends alot on how comfortable you are with HTML and what tools you use to maintain your web site. That will naturally vary.
As for Google, I don't think its a big secret that Google has a huge lead in the search engine market. This article from August indicates that Google has 60% or more of the market, and the other players each have small percentages under 20% each. Further, Google's percentage seems to be rising at the expense of the other players. Clearly, Google is the force to be reckoned with in search, so I think it is worth special consideration. Most webmasters will tell you that a tremendous percentage of their visitors arrive via Google.
OK, enough background, please discuss.
Are there good reasons we should or should not be doing this? Are there aspects of this issue I have not covered here or in the blog post? Should I be shot for posting such a gigantic OP on such a trivial topic?
The post did not attract much comment originally. Mostly I attributed that to the fact that few knew of my very special-purpose blog at the time. But I also assumed that the premise of this article was something with which most skeptic bloggers and webmasters would agree.
Almost exactly a month later, the topic happened to come up in the Skeptics Rock chatroom. In that discussion, several very high-profile skeptics somewhat vehemently disagreed with me. I was very surprised, to say the least.
The objections raised mostly fell into one of these categories:
- It is wrong to deprive the other site of the benefit of a link, because my site benefits from having the topic of the other site to comment upon. This is the "social contract" of the web.
- This is a form of censorship, which all skeptics should oppose.
- This is a misuse of the "nofollow" feature, abusing its original intent.
- Doing this is more trouble than it is worth, since it only affects Google and not the other search engines.
Because of the objections that were raised, I do plan to write a follow up on this topic. But I thought it would be good to raise this in a thread so we can get some real substantive discussion going and then I can summarize in the post.
BUT FIRST...
I would like to address in part some of the objections I listed above, insofar as the technology behind this was not covered fully in the original article.
2. Is this a form of censorship? No.
This tag has one effect, and one effect only: it prevents Google from considering your link as part of the "ranking" of the other site. That's all it does.
It does not prevent the other site from being indexed or cached by any search engine. It does not prevent the other site from appearing in search engine results. It does not prevent your readers from visiting the other site via the link you provide (or any other link). It does not prevent them from viewing any or all of the content on the other site once they get there. It does not prevent their visit from being registered on the site "hit counter" or any other monitoring process. It does not affect the site's ranking in services like Alexa that keep statistics for the web as a whole.
3. Is this a misuse of what nofollow is for? No.
Matt Cutts is one of the Google employees who invented nofollow. He had this to say about it on his blog:
Google recently posted a search engine optimization starter guide on their webmaster blog. The document (an Adobe PDF file, for some reason), has this to say about nofollow on page 19:
Note that although this example mentions spam, it is only in the context of a blog post about the topic. Imagine the above quote with the words "comment spamming" replaced with "homeopathy" (and "recently comment spammed your blog" with "recently endorsed homeopathy"). I think it is a completely appropriate example.
4. It's not worth the trouble just for Google.
How much trouble this is depends alot on how comfortable you are with HTML and what tools you use to maintain your web site. That will naturally vary.
As for Google, I don't think its a big secret that Google has a huge lead in the search engine market. This article from August indicates that Google has 60% or more of the market, and the other players each have small percentages under 20% each. Further, Google's percentage seems to be rising at the expense of the other players. Clearly, Google is the force to be reckoned with in search, so I think it is worth special consideration. Most webmasters will tell you that a tremendous percentage of their visitors arrive via Google.
OK, enough background, please discuss.
Are there good reasons we should or should not be doing this? Are there aspects of this issue I have not covered here or in the blog post? Should I be shot for posting such a gigantic OP on such a trivial topic?
