I am wondering is PR is finite? Websites that do not do link building and obtain backlinks in a natural organic way often have very few incoming links which means lower pagerank.
I have a few blogs in the renewable energy area where I find, review and write about companies, people and technology I believe will encourage the growth of alternative energy.
I am generous and link out to others but sinse the site is new and relatively unknown I am not yet getting many links to bring in more pagerank. In other words I am giving more PR out than I am getting.
The question:
I recently started using the nofollow tag on external links with the belief that pagerank is finite and I only have so much to share. Am I shooting myself or those that I link to in the foot? Is this an incorrect assessment of how to pass PR?
I believe this to be a highly relevant question and example of why nofollow tag needs even further explanation.
Thank you if you feel comfortable with answering this Adam Lasnik or others...
Aaron, you shoot yourself in both feet. PageRank hoarding is a sin. PR is a sexy fay you should not pass, that's way to rough. Let her flood your site, let her come and go as she decides, don't even think of her when you deploy links. And please remove the f** nofollow values in your rel attributes, that's unethical and counter productive. Really :) Here is more info: http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=155&page=100 Sebastian
> I am wondering is PR is finite? Websites that do not do link building > and obtain backlinks in a natural organic way often have very few > incoming links which means lower pagerank.
> I have a few blogs in the renewable energy area where I find, review > and write about companies, people and technology I believe will > encourage the growth of alternative energy.
> I am generous and link out to others but sinse the site is new and > relatively unknown I am not yet getting many links to bring in more > pagerank. In other words I am giving more PR out than I am getting.
> The question:
> I recently started using the nofollow tag on external links with the > belief that pagerank is finite and I only have so much to share. Am I > shooting myself or those that I link to in the foot? Is this an > incorrect assessment of how to pass PR?
> I believe this to be a highly relevant question and example of why > nofollow tag needs even further explanation.
> Thank you if you feel comfortable with answering this Adam Lasnik or > others...
So if I have a new blog with pretty much no PR is makes sense to link out to all my friends? I don't know Sebastian, in an ideal search engine world that would be great but I am not so sure pagerank in infinite. I have also been thinking the way you do for a long time but now I am not so sure man.
The way I have been using the nofollow is if I write about a grat subject on another site but that site is filled with paid links I use the nofollow because I do not want to pass PR to a bunch of spam sites selling links BUT this recent idea is driving me nuts. ;-(
> Aaron, you shoot yourself in both feet. PageRank hoarding is a sin. PR > is a sexy fay you should not pass, that's way to rough. Let her flood > your site, let her come and go as she decides, don't even think of her > when you deploy links. And please remove the f** nofollow values in > your rel attributes, that's unethical and counter productive. > Really :) > Here is more info:http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=155&page=100 > Sebastian
> On Feb 15, 4:02 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > I am wondering is PR is finite? Websites that do not do link building > > and obtain backlinks in a natural organic way often have very few > > incoming links which means lower pagerank.
> > I have a few blogs in the renewable energy area where I find, review > > and write about companies, people and technology I believe will > > encourage the growth of alternative energy.
> > I am generous and link out to others but sinse the site is new and > > relatively unknown I am not yet getting many links to bring in more > > pagerank. In other words I am giving more PR out than I am getting.
> > The question:
> > I recently started using the nofollow tag on external links with the > > belief that pagerank is finite and I only have so much to share. Am I > > shooting myself or those that I link to in the foot? Is this an > > incorrect assessment of how to pass PR?
> > I believe this to be a highly relevant question and example of why > > nofollow tag needs even further explanation.
> > Thank you if you feel comfortable with answering this Adam Lasnik or > > others...
Yo Google, please enable an edit feature for when we spell stuff wrong we can go back and fix it. Just allow people to edit within a given time period... like 5 minutes? Also how about a spell checker for us dumb arses? Thanks! =P
> So if I have a new blog with pretty much no PR is makes sense to link > out to all my friends? I don't know Sebastian, in an ideal search > engine world that would be great but I am not so sure pagerank in > infinite. I have also been thinking the way you do for a long time but > now I am not so sure man.
> The way I have been using the nofollow is if I write about a grat > subject on another site but that site is filled with paid links I use > the nofollow because I do not want to pass PR to a bunch of spam sites > selling links BUT this recent idea is driving me nuts. ;-(
> On Feb 15, 10:18 am, Sebastian wrote:
> > Aaron, you shoot yourself in both feet. PageRank hoarding is a sin. PR > > is a sexy fay you should not pass, that's way to rough. Let her flood > > your site, let her come and go as she decides, don't even think of her > > when you deploy links. And please remove the f** nofollow values in > > your rel attributes, that's unethical and counter productive. > > Really :) > > Here is more info:http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=155&page=100 > > Sebastian
> > On Feb 15, 4:02 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > I am wondering is PR is finite? Websites that do not do link building > > > and obtain backlinks in a natural organic way often have very few > > > incoming links which means lower pagerank.
> > > I have a few blogs in the renewable energy area where I find, review > > > and write about companies, people and technology I believe will > > > encourage the growth of alternative energy.
> > > I am generous and link out to others but sinse the site is new and > > > relatively unknown I am not yet getting many links to bring in more > > > pagerank. In other words I am giving more PR out than I am getting.
> > > The question:
> > > I recently started using the nofollow tag on external links with the > > > belief that pagerank is finite and I only have so much to share. Am I > > > shooting myself or those that I link to in the foot? Is this an > > > incorrect assessment of how to pass PR?
> > > I believe this to be a highly relevant question and example of why > > > nofollow tag needs even further explanation.
> > > Thank you if you feel comfortable with answering this Adam Lasnik or > > > others...
Aaron you bring up a good point. A while back when some sort of penalty was being dolled out Adam repeatedly said here and other forums that one factor may be "Over Optimization." To me a site that has all external links nofollowed is ripe to be picked in an algorithim for over optimizations because of the un-naturalness of it. It's a strong signal of two things 1) this guy doesn't trust anyone he's linking to or 2) this guy is trying to hoard page rank. Neither is a signal that should help a site rank for anything.
Back in the day search engines ranked based on the text only, keyword counts etc. People started repeating "free porn" 900 times on a page, then they started looking at the META data people started stuffing them, links were good so people started selling them, in all cases google reacted and penalized the offending sites. Nofollow was introduced as a tool to help eliminate the value that blog comments, message boards, forums, etc where having on the ranking of sites. If you're the site owner and didn't write the content you have a way of saying I cannot vouch for what's there. I would bet that if someone tries to turn that around and use it to IMPROVE their page rank, they'll get busted. Just as using your keywords in sentences is good but repeating them 100 times and abusing the H tags is bad.
Another thing to consider is from the inherent nature of the "web" sites are not meant to be islands but rather connected to the whole internet by both incoming and outgoing links. A site is judged not only by the content and anchor text of incoming links but the topical nature of the sites linking in and the topical sites that you link to. If you have all nofollow links you are missing a key ingredient to telling Google what the site is about.
I don't have any insider knowledge, but given enough time patterns will emerge in the mass of data that they pour over every day, and I wouldn't doubt a signal they will look at is your linking habbits and the use/abuse of the nofollow tag. PR hoarders will be penalized as its a breakdown in the natural flow of the web. It's like the wiki debate, if they don't trust any of their resources then they shouldnt be trusted as one themselves. Of course they've got enough momentum that their probably impervious to any sort of algo change, but smaller sites are.
So where is the line between SEO and SEOO (search engine over- optimization)? I'm not sure, but as Adam also says, "does it pass the smell test?" And saying, "I changed all my links to nofollow so I don't leak page rank" smells like you are trying to game the system and artificially influence googles ranking, which in my experience they frown upon and react.
Personally, I always have nofollow links highlighted in my browser with a bright red box. If I stumble upon a site that has too many, I move on, I wouldn't doubt google takes that stance sometime in the future. I just don't trust the nofollow actions yet, and I think its going to get worse. If you really want a bunch of sites that you link to be not followed for ranking purposes (affiliate links, selling links for traffic only, etc) I'd put those on a redirection hidden behind the robots.txt. That way Google isn't going to follow them at all because they aren't going to see them, and they are not going to be able to hold it against you because there is no possible good that can come from a page that is not crawlable. As far as a site with no eternal links, I'd say that's just as shady as disabling the back button, the site is no longer a part of the web, but only a town where all the streets going to it are one way, and after a while people will notice that no one returns from that town, and no one will go there anymore.
Now I doubt Adam will/can come on here and say that they penalize or don't penalize or give credit for the use of nofollow as commenting on the actual ranking is probably not allowed in the least bit, but these are my two cents :)
> Aaron, you shoot yourself in both feet. PageRank hoarding is a sin. PR > is a sexy fay you should not pass, that's way to rough. Let her flood > your site, let her come and go as she decides, don't even think of her > when you deploy links. And please remove the f** nofollow values in > your rel attributes, that's unethical and counter productive. > Really :) > Here is more info:http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=155&page=100 > Sebastian
> On Feb 15, 4:02 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > I am wondering is PR is finite? Websites that do not do link building > > and obtain backlinks in a natural organic way often have very few > > incoming links which means lower pagerank.
> > I have a few blogs in the renewable energy area where I find, review > > and write about companies, people and technology I believe will > > encourage the growth of alternative energy.
> > I am generous and link out to others but sinse the site is new and > > relatively unknown I am not yet getting many links to bring in more > > pagerank. In other words I am giving more PR out than I am getting.
> > The question:
> > I recently started using the nofollow tag on external links with the > > belief that pagerank is finite and I only have so much to share. Am I > > shooting myself or those that I link to in the foot? Is this an > > incorrect assessment of how to pass PR?
> > I believe this to be a highly relevant question and example of why > > nofollow tag needs even further explanation.
> > Thank you if you feel comfortable with answering this Adam Lasnik or > > others...
In the case of linking to a site plastered with affiliate links and ads, where is the point to write about them in the first place, if you don't like them? Well, given that this site has a page hosting valuable information, wouldn't it be the search engine's job to allow or disallow incoming PageRank at this site? Why should you pre-qualify links for Google's ranking algo? This attitude smells like self- censorship based on fear, and you shouldn't fear Google when you link out.
Applying nofollow crap to affiliate links is a completely other story. I have no problem with Google's position that affiliate links should not carry Googlejuice, but just the human traffic. I say "nofollow crap" because rel=nofollow is IMHO not the suitable instrument to achieve this particular effect, or call it favour to the engines. I use rel=nofollow with affiliate links to save my own ass, although it's Google's job to decide whether a particuilar link should carry weight or not, and although I do think that rel=nofollow is not the right thing to use in this case.
All this thoughts and countless confused discussions are results of the somewhat hapless implementation of this crawler directive, and it's ongoing semantic morphing. Sure, rel=nofollow is a generic mechanism to do a ton of things which all make sense. But it's a geeky tool for search geeks, not a suitable tool for webmasters, editors, or publishers.
Ok, back to PageRank. Think of PR as a statistical approach to emulate Joe A. Surfer's behaviour, where the middel initial stands for Average. PR just tries to follow Joe's footsteps on the Web, sometimes guessing whether Joe will click link A or B, thus deducting both possible click-paths' scores equally. PR is a model of the Web, kinda road map from any point to any point, weighting each and every path/ lane's quality by scoring the destination. And because it's just a model, it's weight as ranking factor is not that important as the toolbar suggests. The PR hysteria reminds me of the Beatles BTW. Sure PR is great, it's sexy and all that, but it doesn't show the (whole) big picture one has to think of when it comes to optimizing contents. Hence optimize for visitors, remember the visitors pull out the plastic, not the bots, create broad and easy to walk paths through your contents all leading to your signup forms. PR will follow the visitors to honor your efforts not only with green pixels. IOW since todays PR is Google's secret sauce, and there are other important link cargos, it just makes not much sense to speculate about PR distribution. PR is addicting and distracting, hence you should ignore it to get your job done.
> Aaron you bring up a good point. A while back when some sort of > penalty was being dolled out Adam repeatedly said here and other > forums that one factor may be "Over Optimization." To me a site that > has all external links nofollowed is ripe to be picked in an > algorithim for over optimizations because of the un-naturalness of > it. It's a strong signal of two things 1) this guy doesn't trust > anyone he's linking to or 2) this guy is trying to hoard page rank. > Neither is a signal that should help a site rank for anything.
> Back in the day search engines ranked based on the text only, keyword > counts etc. People started repeating "free porn" 900 times on a page, > then they started looking at the META data people started stuffing > them, links were good so people started selling them, in all cases > google reacted and penalized the offending sites. Nofollow was > introduced as a tool to help eliminate the value that blog comments, > message boards, forums, etc where having on the ranking of sites. If > you're the site owner and didn't write the content you have a way of > saying I cannot vouch for what's there. I would bet that if someone > tries to turn that around and use it to IMPROVE their page rank, > they'll get busted. Just as using your keywords in sentences is good > but repeating them 100 times and abusing the H tags is bad.
> Another thing to consider is from the inherent nature of the "web" > sites are not meant to be islands but rather connected to the whole > internet by both incoming and outgoing links. A site is judged not > only by the content and anchor text of incoming links but the topical > nature of the sites linking in and the topical sites that you link > to. If you have all nofollow links you are missing a key ingredient > to telling Google what the site is about.
> I don't have any insider knowledge, but given enough time patterns > will emerge in the mass of data that they pour over every day, and I > wouldn't doubt a signal they will look at is your linking habbits and > the use/abuse of the nofollow tag. PR hoarders will be penalized as > its a breakdown in the natural flow of the web. It's like the wiki > debate, if they don't trust any of their resources then they shouldnt > be trusted as one themselves. Of course they've got enough momentum > that their probably impervious to any sort of algo change, but smaller > sites are.
> So where is the line between SEO and SEOO (search engine over- > optimization)? I'm not sure, but as Adam also says, "does it pass the > smell test?" And saying, "I changed all my links to nofollow so I > don't leak page rank" smells like you are trying to game the system > and artificially influence googles ranking, which in my experience > they frown upon and react.
> Personally, I always have nofollow links highlighted in my browser > with a bright red box. If I stumble upon a site that has too many, I > move on, I wouldn't doubt google takes that stance sometime in the > future. I just don't trust the nofollow actions yet, and I think its > going to get worse. If you really want a bunch of sites that you link > to be not followed for ranking purposes (affiliate links, selling > links for traffic only, etc) I'd put those on a redirection hidden > behind the robots.txt. That way Google isn't going to follow them at > all because they aren't going to see them, and they are not going to > be able to hold it against you because there is no possible good that > can come from a page that is not crawlable. As far as a site with no > eternal links, I'd say that's just as shady as disabling the back > button, the site is no longer a part of the web, but only a town where > all the streets going to it are one way, and after a while people will > notice that no one returns from that town, and no one will go there > anymore.
> Now I doubt Adam will/can come on here and say that they penalize or > don't penalize or give credit for the use of nofollow as commenting on > the actual ranking is probably not allowed in the least bit, but these > are my two cents :)
> On Feb 15, 9:18 am, Sebastian wrote:
> > Aaron, you shoot yourself in both feet. PageRank hoarding is a sin. PR > > is a sexy fay you should not pass, that's way to rough. Let her flood > > your site, let her come and go as she decides, don't even think of her > > when you deploy links. And please remove the f** nofollow values in > > your rel attributes, that's unethical and counter productive. > > Really :) > > Here is more info:http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=155&page=100 > > Sebastian
> > On Feb 15, 4:02 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > I am wondering is PR is finite? Websites that do not do link building > > > and obtain backlinks in a natural organic way often have very few > > > incoming links which means lower pagerank.
> > > I have a few blogs in the renewable energy area where I find, review > > > and write about companies, people and technology I believe will > > > encourage the growth of alternative energy.
> > > I am generous and link out to others but sinse the site is new and > > > relatively unknown I am not yet getting many links to bring in more > > > pagerank. In other words I am giving more PR out than I am getting.
> > > The question:
> > > I recently started using the nofollow tag on external links with the > > > belief that pagerank is finite and I only have so much to share. Am I > > > shooting myself or those that I link to in the foot? Is this an > > > incorrect assessment of how to pass PR?
> > > I believe this to be a highly relevant question and example of why > > > nofollow tag needs even further explanation.
> > > Thank you if you feel comfortable with answering this Adam Lasnik or > > > others...
I agree with a lot of what you guys say but let me ask a few more questions:
JLH - If Google punishes sites that hord PR why does Wikipedia (educational), Amazon (affiliate) and other eCommerce sites doing so well in search engines?
If you look at http://solar.rain-barrel.net and any other of my sites you will see that I am doing nothing to game search engines at all but also notice the PR, how much do I have to share? >> Is PR finite? <<
Sebastian - You said" "In the case of linking to a site plastered with affiliate links and ads, where is the point to write about them in the first place, if you don't like them?"
Say I find a farmer/inventor who doesn't have a website but his new wind turbine was written about on a local news site that is littered with paid links and it's "SEO" is linking out with hidden text to viagra spam. I want to write about this man who is offering something unique but the only reference I can find is on this local spammy news site. Wouldn't this be a case when the nofollow tag should be used?
Here is another one: Say I write about a cool company that is looking to market complete solar arrays but when I review the company I find that they have multiple sites and I just do not have time to analyse their intent, wouldn't it be safer to use a nofollow here?
I do not spam or use the nofollow to spam BUT if I understand it correctly what it does is break the connection between you and the possible bad neighborhoods that can have indirect negative impact on a websites "trust" or whatever you want to call it.
One more thought: Did you guys ever think that our debates actually build better algorithms? Are there people in white coats with clip boards taking notes? You guys got all kind of interesting ideas, that's fo' sho', thanks! :)
> In the case of linking to a site plastered with affiliate links and > ads, where is the point to write about them in the first place, if you > don't like them? Well, given that this site has a page hosting > valuable information, wouldn't it be the search engine's job to allow > or disallow incoming PageRank at this site? Why should you pre-qualify > links for Google's ranking algo? This attitude smells like self- > censorship based on fear, and you shouldn't fear Google when you link > out.
> Applying nofollow crap to affiliate links is a completely other story. > I have no problem with Google's position that affiliate links should > not carry Googlejuice, but just the human traffic. I say "nofollow > crap" because rel=nofollow is IMHO not the suitable instrument to > achieve this particular effect, or call it favour to the engines. I > use rel=nofollow with affiliate links to save my own ass, although > it's Google's job to decide whether a particuilar link should carry > weight or not, and although I do think that rel=nofollow is not the > right thing to use in this case.
> All this thoughts and countless confused discussions are results of > the somewhat hapless implementation of this crawler directive, and > it's ongoing semantic morphing. Sure, rel=nofollow is a generic > mechanism to do a ton of things which all make sense. But it's a geeky > tool for search geeks, not a suitable tool for webmasters, editors, or > publishers.
> Ok, back to PageRank. Think of PR as a statistical approach to emulate > Joe A. Surfer's behaviour, where the middel initial stands for > Average. PR just tries to follow Joe's footsteps on the Web, sometimes > guessing whether Joe will click link A or B, thus deducting both > possible click-paths' scores equally. PR is a model of the Web, kinda > road map from any point to any point, weighting each and every path/ > lane's quality by scoring the destination. And because it's just a > model, it's weight as ranking factor is not that important as the > toolbar suggests. The PR hysteria reminds me of the Beatles BTW. Sure > PR is great, it's sexy and all that, but it doesn't show the (whole) > big picture one has to think of when it comes to optimizing contents. > Hence optimize for visitors, remember the visitors pull out the > plastic, not the bots, create broad and easy to walk paths through > your contents all leading to your signup forms. PR will follow the > visitors to honor your efforts not only with green pixels. IOW since > todays PR is Google's secret sauce, and there are other important link > cargos, it just makes not much sense to speculate about PR > distribution. PR is addicting and distracting, hence you should ignore > it to get your job done.
> > Aaron you bring up a good point. A while back when some sort of > > penalty was being dolled out Adam repeatedly said here and other > > forums that one factor may be "Over Optimization." To me a site that > > has all external links nofollowed is ripe to be picked in an > > algorithim for over optimizations because of the un-naturalness of > > it. It's a strong signal of two things 1) this guy doesn't trust > > anyone he's linking to or 2) this guy is trying to hoard page rank. > > Neither is a signal that should help a site rank for anything.
> > Back in the day search engines ranked based on the text only, keyword > > counts etc. People started repeating "free porn" 900 times on a page, > > then they started looking at the META data people started stuffing > > them, links were good so people started selling them, in all cases > > google reacted and penalized the offending sites. Nofollow was > > introduced as a tool to help eliminate the value that blog comments, > > message boards, forums, etc where having on the ranking of sites. If > > you're the site owner and didn't write the content you have a way of > > saying I cannot vouch for what's there. I would bet that if someone > > tries to turn that around and use it to IMPROVE their page rank, > > they'll get busted. Just as using your keywords in sentences is good > > but repeating them 100 times and abusing the H tags is bad.
> > Another thing to consider is from the inherent nature of the "web" > > sites are not meant to be islands but rather connected to the whole > > internet by both incoming and outgoing links. A site is judged not > > only by the content and anchor text of incoming links but the topical > > nature of the sites linking in and the topical sites that you link > > to. If you have all nofollow links you are missing a key ingredient > > to telling Google what the site is about.
> > I don't have any insider knowledge, but given enough time patterns > > will emerge in the mass of data that they pour over every day, and I > > wouldn't doubt a signal they will look at is your linking habbits and > > the use/abuse of the nofollow tag. PR hoarders will be penalized as > > its a breakdown in the natural flow of the web. It's like the wiki > > debate, if they don't trust any of their resources then they shouldnt > > be trusted as one themselves. Of course they've got enough momentum > > that their probably impervious to any sort of algo change, but smaller > > sites are.
> > So where is the line between SEO and SEOO (search engine over- > > optimization)? I'm not sure, but as Adam also says, "does it pass the > > smell test?" And saying, "I changed all my links to nofollow so I > > don't leak page rank" smells like you are trying to game the system > > and artificially influence googles ranking, which in my experience > > they frown upon and react.
> > Personally, I always have nofollow links highlighted in my browser > > with a bright red box. If I stumble upon a site that has too many, I > > move on, I wouldn't doubt google takes that stance sometime in the > > future. I just don't trust the nofollow actions yet, and I think its > > going to get worse. If you really want a bunch of sites that you link > > to be not followed for ranking purposes (affiliate links, selling > > links for traffic only, etc) I'd put those on a redirection hidden > > behind the robots.txt. That way Google isn't going to follow them at > > all because they aren't going to see them, and they are not going to > > be able to hold it against you because there is no possible good that > > can come from a page that is not crawlable. As far as a site with no > > eternal links, I'd say that's just as shady as disabling the back > > button, the site is no longer a part of the web, but only a town where > > all the streets going to it are one way, and after a while people will > > notice that no one returns from that town, and no one will go there > > anymore.
> > Now I doubt Adam will/can come on here and say that they penalize or > > don't penalize or give credit for the use of nofollow as commenting on > > the actual ranking is probably not allowed in the least bit, but these > > are my two cents :)
> > On Feb 15, 9:18 am, Sebastian wrote:
> > > Aaron, you shoot yourself in both feet. PageRank hoarding is a sin. PR > > > is a sexy fay you should not pass, that's way to rough. Let her flood > > > your site, let her come and go as she decides, don't even think of her > > > when you deploy links. And please remove the f** nofollow values in > > > your rel attributes, that's unethical and counter productive. > > > Really :) > > > Here is more info:http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=155&page=100 > > > Sebastian
> > > On Feb 15, 4:02 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:
> > > > I am wondering is PR is finite? Websites that do not do link building > > > > and obtain backlinks in a natural organic way often have very few > > > > incoming links which means lower pagerank.
> > > > I have a few blogs in the renewable energy area where I find, review > > > > and write about companies, people and technology I believe will > > > > encourage the growth of alternative energy.
> > > > I am generous and link out to others but sinse the site is new and > > > > relatively
If you link to linkworthy content you should not use rel=nofollow. If Google doesn't think the linked site is worth indexing, that's fine, but it's not your problem. You've done your job by providing your visitors with external content you honestly think is interesting for the crowd. Trying to guess what Google could think with the intention to castrate a link when Google might dislike the target sounds just not right, and it makes no sense, and Google doesn't encourage you to handle rel=nofollow this way. This goes for both of your examples.
Also, not every site carring tons of ads is a bad neighborhood, think of high ranked sites like SEW for example.
Would you link to my articles (I know you did it already)? Oups, I should have told you that Google (AdSense) pays my hosting fees ... sounds weird, eh?
> I agree with a lot of what you guys say but let me ask a few more > questions:
> JLH - If Google punishes sites that hord PR why does Wikipedia > (educational), Amazon (affiliate) and other eCommerce sites doing so > well in search engines?
> If you look athttp://solar.rain-barrel.netand any other of my sites > you will see that I am doing nothing to game search engines at all but > also notice the PR, how much do I have to share? >> Is PR finite? <<
> Sebastian - You said" "In the case of linking to a site plastered with > affiliate links and > ads, where is the point to write about them in the first place, if you > don't like them?"
> Say I find a farmer/inventor who doesn't have a website but his new > wind turbine was written about on a local news site that is littered > with paid links and it's "SEO" is linking out with hidden text to > viagra spam. I want to write about this man who is offering something > unique but the only reference I can find is on this local spammy news > site. Wouldn't this be a case when the nofollow tag should be used?
> Here is another one: Say I write about a cool company that is looking > to market complete solar arrays but when I review the company I find > that they have multiple sites and I just do not have time to analyse > their intent, wouldn't it be safer to use a nofollow here?
> I do not spam or use the nofollow to spam BUT if I understand it > correctly what it does is break the connection between you and the > possible bad neighborhoods that can have indirect negative impact on a > websites "trust" or whatever you want to call it.
> One more thought: Did you guys ever think that our debates actually > build better algorithms? Are there people in white coats with clip > boards taking notes? You guys got all kind of interesting ideas, > that's fo' sho', thanks! :)
> On Feb 15, 11:53 am, Sebastian wrote:
> > In the case of linking to a site plastered with affiliate links and > > ads, where is the point to write about them in the first place, if you > > don't like them? Well, given that this site has a page hosting > > valuable i
