True, same here.  The problem is though that no one seems to agree on
much of anything, which is maybe not all that odd since the search
engines themselves seem to not agree as to its implementation.  Not
like that is anything new though.  :-()

I can see your point but at the same time, I look at it a little
differently.

For me, it comes down to the term "guideline".  In various
international and industrial standards circles, "Guideline" has a
technical meaning. Without citing a number of references, some of
which don't fully agree as to their usage, a guideline is used to help
improve interoperability of implementations.

In other words, if we both follow the same guidelines, my web site
should interoperate well with your search engine. On the other hand,
if either one of chooses to implement something contrary to the
guideline, the like result is my implementation, my web site, won't do
very well trying to work with your implementation, your search engine.

So, just as we all follow W3C recommendations and actual guideline
documents to try to make our web sites interoperate better with
browsers, with varying levels of success, search engines, Google
specifically have their guidelines.

about all the W3C tag soup and would be more than happy just dealing
with pure content but then our sites wouldn't look very well
considering how browsers work.  Similarly, the W3C doesn't care about
search engines but at the same time, our sites have to interoperate
with search engines so all we can do is follow their guidelines.

This is probably where you have the main problem though, right?  I can
understand why, Google says, "build sites for visitors and not for
search engines", or something to that effect, which would at first
appear to be contradictory.

But, with almost all technical guidelines, it is not the letter of the
text that is the "rule" but instead, the intent behind it.  If the
letter of the text were the rule, it would be a "standard" and not a
"guideline".  It is this that prompted my comment about being in
charge of Google methods of determining webmaster intent.

Just as Google's guidelines say that hidden text is bad, there
actually is types of hidden text that are not.  Similarly, just as
Google says that one should not build pages for search engines but
instead, for visitors, that does not say that one shouldn't try to
make one's pages as search engine friendly at the same time.

Related, I think it easy to notice a page built specifically for
search engines and search engines only but, without looking into the
source or having some tool that makes things apparent, can you tell if
a given page is noindex'ed or a link is nofollow'ed or not?

True, various elements can be and are added to pages to make
communicating intent to search engines more clear but that does not
mean the pages are necessarily built only for search engines.

At the same time, how does a robot.txt file fit in since it is not
actually a page but is there specifically for bots?

True.  I don't think most spammers know enough about search engines to
consider much of any link juice benefit.  Their goal is and always has
been to put their links in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

It seems the most effective means, far and above nofollow, is making
it impossible to automate spamming.

A fair question but, there are cases where it would make sense.  What
if I wrote a page about link farms and wanted reference links to them?

I know that is a limited case but I could probably come up with a
couple more, although not all that many.

Once "technology" is introduced into the wild, all control over it is
essentially lost. I know that doesn't help as it makes it seem
hopeless but at the same time, it doesn't need to be hopeless because
one can use it to one's best advantage or, just not use it at all.

On the other hand, the intent of "don't get involved with link schemes
designed..." needs to be considered as well, besides what the text
actually says.

I guess one distinction could be that link farms and other schemes are
intended to be used to artificially increase ranking, i.e. the links
are there only for the link juice they generate while the use of
nofollow is intended to support linking without the side effect of
passing link juice.

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned throughout all of this though
is that is seems "nofollow", or at least something like it but with a
better name, has been needed for some time as there would seem to have
been a "hole" without it.

"noindex" keeps a page from being indexed, "disallow" keeps a page
from being "visited" but both of those are effective only on the
owning site's side, both of which can be used by a page owner to
indicate their desires concerning a given page.  Without "nofollow" a
linking to site had no possible influence other than passing a
positive vote. With "nofollow", linking to sites now have similar
tools as page owners have.

I any event, for better or worse, we seem to have to deal with
nofollow one way or another and whether or not we use it or not.

Craig