Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?
-
I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/
Does anyone have any experience of this?
-
Impact of nofollow links from a technical perspective
Matt Cutts is a distinguished engineer at Google, and as per him; the simple answer is: No, too many nofollow links have no effect on your website’s PageRank. These links were created to ensure that generating direct traffic to a website could be used as much as needed without compromising the overall quality of the website’s SEO. Therefore, from a technical perspective, the PageRank algorithm will ignore any and all nofollow links. These links are automatically dropped from the link graph as the web crawlers index the web. However, there are exceptional cases where nofollow links will have an effect on the website ranking.
Special cases where too many nofollow links have an impact
It is possible to use nofollow links to spam websites on the internet trying to generate traffic for whatever product you are promoting. This tactic was once used on blogs where a spammer would post outrageous or absurd comments so as to attract attention and generate traffic. This is deception and manipulation, and where it is done on a large scale, Google will take notice. If many people report you for using nofollow links to spam, Google reserves the right to take action with intent of stopping you. In such cases, they will downgrade the PageRank the offending website gets.
-
I've done 2 link cleaning exercises and disavow requests so far but haven't removed those. I can see they are bad links but they're actually from decent, relevant sites in most instances which is why I haven't touched them yet.
What do you think is most damaging, run-of-site links or keyword link text?
-
Having checked your link profile it is very spammy. 25% of your backlinks are for the term "speed dating", 9% for "singles holidays", and thats just a start.
But that is not all. You have alot of domains sending many links back to your site for the same keyword. Sitewide links can cause penalties, and will need to be cleaned up.
I recommend using ahrefs \ majestic to find those links and dissavow \ get them to change to no follow etc.
A few examples of sites causing you problems are (but there are many others):
-
In the sense you're talking about, yes. Google won't count those nofollowed links against you.
-
Usually nofollow links don't hurt your website. But there are some extreme cases in which they could.
For more info check this video by Matt Cutts from Google -> Can nofollow links hurt my site's ranking?
-
You don't want to nofollow every outbound link from your site but even if 99% of them are nofollowed, it won't hurt your rankings and I wouldn't consider that to be holding back your recovery.
-
So if you can't have too many nofollow links to upset Google, does Google respect the nofollow 100%?
-
NoFollows on links in your blog that point off the site are not hurting you.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using "nofollow" internally can help with crawl budget?
Hello everyone. I was reading this article on semrush.com, published the last year, and I'd like to know your thoughts about it: https://www.semrush.com/blog/does-google-crawl-relnofollow-at-all/ Is that really the case? I thought that Google crawls and "follows" nofollowed tagged links even though doesn't pass any PR to the destination link. If instead Google really doesn't crawl internal links tagged as "nofollow", can that really help with crawl budget?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?
OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Google Flux in Rankings Or Something More Serious
Hi all, Two weeks ago i noticed that one of our pages which normally ranks in the top 5 of search results dropped out of the top 50 results. I checked to make sure there were no Google penalties and checked to make sure the page was crawlable. Everything seemed fine and after a few hours our page went back into the number one position. I assumed it was a Google Flux. This number one ranking lasted about a week, today I see my page has dropped out of the top 50 yet again and hasn't come back up. again there are no penalties and there doesn't seem to be issues with the page. I'm hoping it comes back up to the top by tomorrow. What could be causing such a big dip multiple times?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
How to recover google rank after changing the domain name?
I just started doing SEO for a new client. The case is a bit unique as they build a new website and for some reason lunched in under another domain name. Old name is foodstepsinasia.com and new one is foodstepsinasiatravel.com OLD one is a respected webites with 35 in MOZ page authority and with +15000 incomming link (104 root domains) NEW one is curently on 0 The programmer has just that build the new website has set it up so that when people write or find the old domain name it redirect to the front page of the new website with the new domain name. this caused that my friends lost a lot of their rankings was so I believ it was a very bad solution. But I also think I can get most of the old rankings back, but my question is what to do now to get as much back of the rankings as fast as possible?? A) I believe I must change the domain name back to foodstepsinasia.com on the new website ? O B) Should I on the old website try finding the url of the pages with most page authority and recreate these urls on the new website or should i redict them to a page with related content? Looking forward to feedback from someone who have experience with similar cases. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Internal Links - Dofollow or Nofollow and why?
Hey there Mozzers, I am a question about internal links. If I am writing a article about something and want to link to another one of my articles inside my blog, do i have to make that link nofollow or dofollow? If possible tell me why also. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
H3 Tags - Should I Link to my content Articles- ? And do I have to many H3 tags/ Links as it is ?
Hello All, On my ecommerce landing pages, I currently have links to my products as H3 Tags. I also have useful guides displayed on the page with links useful articles we have written (they currently go to my news section). I am wondering if I should put those article links as additional H3 tags as well for added seo benefit or do I have to many tags as it is ?. A link to my Landing Page I am talking about is - http://goo.gl/h838RW Screenshot of my h1-h6 tags - http://imgur.com/hLtX0n7 I enclose screenshot my guides and also of my H1-H6 tags. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Why am I not ranking in Google, but I am in Yahoo and Bing?
The website in question is: www.stbarthexclusives.com Our keywords are currently ranking for both Bing and Yahoo, but we're not appearing anywhere on Google. The website is being crawled successfully, but we still don't have any results. I hoping somebody can point me in the general right direction to fix/correct this problem. Additionally, there's a decent amount of "rel=canonical tags" on the website. If that helps your evaluation. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Endora0 -
Duplicate internal links on page, any benefit to nofollow
Link spam is naturally a hot topic amongst SEO's, particularly post Penguin. While digging around forums etc, I watched a video blog from Matt Cutts posted a while ago that suggests that Google only pays attention to the first instance of a link on the page As most websites will have multiple instances of a links (header, footer and body text), is it beneficial to nofollow the additional instances of the link? Also as the first instance of a link will in most cases be within the header nav, does that then make the content link text critical or can good on page optimisation be pulled from the title attribute? I would appreciate the experiences and thoughts Mozzers thoughts on this thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustinTaylor880
