{"id":7967,"date":"2009-11-12T12:45:59","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T18:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/?p=7967"},"modified":"2009-11-12T20:08:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T02:08:00","slug":"politically-motivated-nofollows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/2009\/politically-motivated-nofollows\/","title":{"rendered":"Politically Motivated Nofollows at RC?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my readers told me RC started no-following links to certain sites. He detected this after I mentioned the possibility of nofollowing links to “www.blogactionday.org” while still participating. When you link someone, using Nofollow<\/a> will cause Google to not count that link toward the blogs or sites authority. (The linking practices of “www.blogactionday.org” that group got me so steamed I deleted my posts discussing that day!)<\/p>\n

Anyway, when the reader told me he noticed this, I though… really? But as it happens, I use Firefox and have an extension that highlights “nofollow” links in pink. Other links show normally. I visited RC today.<\/a> Here’s what I saw: <\/p>\n

\"Figure<\/a>
Figure 1: RC Nofollows editorial links.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n(The pink, nofollowed links are to Andrew Bolt<\/a> and Prison Planet<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Here’s another RC post with pink no followed links:
\n

\"Figure<\/a>
Figure 2: More nofollowed links.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Ok. So I know you are thinking “That b*****d, Gavin!! He’s trying to make sure Google doesn’t think my site is super awesome! He’s killing my search rank!” <\/p>\n

Well, he’s not killing your search rank. Or my search rank. He’s just not giving us any link love. <\/p>\n

And before you spew out too much venom, take a look at Lubos’s blog: <\/a>
\n

\"Figure<\/a>
Figure 2: Lubos nofollows most external links.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

I haven’t made a thorough study, but looks like Lubos nofollows nearly all<\/em> his external links even those of sites I think he likes. Beats me why. I’m pretty sure this decision on Lubos’s part doesn’t improve Google’s estimation of his<\/I> blog, (or if it does, it barely does.) However, his no-following those links ensures that Google won’t count his outgoing links toward the ranks of bloggers he actually likes and approves of<\/em>. Very odd. <\/p>\n

Not only very odd, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Lubos’s behavior had a greater negative effect on ranks in his own rank and that of his link neighborhood than RC’s decision to nofollow those links. After all, if Lubos doesn’t link Anthony Watts, Google doesn’t “count” that toward Anthony’s reputation. Then, when Anthony, who links a lot, gives a link, his link has less authority than it would have if Lubos had given him followed links. <\/p>\n

The effect of Lubos’ behavior may even be worse than that. Here’s something Matt Cutts<\/a> of Google said back in June:<\/p>\n

Q: Okay, but doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t this encourage me to link out less? Should I turn off comments on my blog?
\nA: I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recommend closing comments in an attempt to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hoard\u00e2\u20ac\u009d your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since Lubos nofollows links to good, non-spammy sites, he may fail to trigger the part of Google’s system that gives him ++ points for linking to non-spammy sites. If so, Lubos is kicking himself in the shins. <\/p>\n

Does all this political nofollowing matter a lot? Not really. It’s not as if SEO and link rank is going to affect the traffic at a climate blog very much. Most of the traffic seems to be driven by WUWT<\/a> and climate depot.<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, it’s interesting to see the politics played out with nofollow. <\/p>\n

Update:<\/h4>\n

Note: To show how politicized the nofollow decision can be, in a post primarily about a peer reviewed paper that included both Roger Pielke Jr. and Roger Pielke Sr. as co-authors, Gavin<\/a> nofollowed the links to Roger Jr.’s<\/a> and Roger. Sr.’s<\/a> blogs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my readers told me RC started no-following links to certain sites. He detected this after I mentioned the possibility of nofollowing links to “www.blogactionday.org” while still participating. When you link someone, using Nofollow will cause Google to not count that link toward the blogs or sites authority. (The linking practices of “www.blogactionday.org” that … Continue reading Politically Motivated Nofollows at RC?!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[303,212,211,144],"class_list":["post-7967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-gavin","tag-linking","tag-nofollow","tag-real-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}