What does nofollow attribute really mean to search engines?

Ok lets be clear in one thing.By using ‘nofollow’ attributes to certain links we tell the Search engines not to follow that link.

Right?

But does Search engines really follow your instructions?

Lets see what the four major search engines do hovering on a link:

nofollow

Now got and idea what a ‘nofollow’ attribute does?

Google announced that hyperlinks with rel=”nofollow” attribute would not influence the link target’s PageRank.

In fact Yahoo and MSN has also agreed on this point made by Google and respect this tag.

How the tag is interpreted varies from one search engine to another.Some search engines blindly follow the ‘nofollow’ instruction and keep away from the ‘linked to’ page while some others follow the link to get the new ‘linked to’ page indexed in their DB should it be not indexed before.

In the latter case the ‘nofollow’ tag just tells the searchbot to “not to credit the ‘linked to’ page” rather than ‘not to follow’.

Visitors who read this article also read:

1. Simple tables plugin for wordpressIt’s really a shame on the part of wordpress  having  so many fantastic features but not having a simple feature...
2. Google advanced search optionsYou might have experienced this, you search for something but you get bogged down by seeing millions of sites that...
3. Top 6 reasons for getting banned by GoogleWe see many posts on the web with headings like “top 10 ways to get indexed by Google”, “top 5...
4. Use image ALT and TITLE tags for better SEOIn the last post we’ve seen how to put the ads just below your post title.But why would you want...
5. Best Internet searching tips – To make your life easySearching for something on the Internet isn’t that easy. With thousands of budding starting every day, you only have more...
6. Google 2009 prank, ‘brain search’ using a mobile applicationGoogle has taken one more step ahead into the search world and now can even search your brain. Google brain...