I read on a blog the other day where they were saying the nofollow attributes weren’t working, so after a day of letting it marinate, and feeling a little frisky tonight, I figured I would target a phrase with the nofollow tag and see how things go. Since the no follow is preached by one person in general, going after his name mixed up would be a good test since there are no results:
Tamt Tucts
Help us with the test and put this on your site. Make sure the nofollow remains.
As of right now this is what I get in results:
12 comments ↓
The way it was explained to me, Google actually does follow the link but the nofollow tag tells Google that you don’t actually endorse the link so there is no transfer of PR.
Has anyone else heard this?
Patricia, yes, it’s supposed to not count the link. I recently read an article stating the nofollow tag wasn’t actually doing it’s job, but there was a little discrepancy with it, so I thought a true test would answer the question.
It will be interesting to see the outcome. I’m 99.9999% sure it will work correctly, but maybe there’s a bug.
You hit the nail on the head! Do a search now, and see what you get: Tamt Tucts. Very nice.
hmmm, I might take back that comment. The search I posted above showed that Google is indexing this page. However, if you search for pages that LINK to mattcutts.com and include “tamt tucts,” you get no results - results here.
Yeah Andrew, we’re being indexed, but so far the nofollow tags are working. Of course, the site we’re targeting, he can easily make it not work to make them look good. Maybe I should have tried on a different site.
We’ll give it some more time and see how things go.
Doesn’t this equate to a Google bomb? And I heard awhile back that they adjusted their algo to stop Google bombs, so maybe that’s the explanation (and maybe not).
Well, I think if we actually had thousands of people doing it like the “miserable failure” bomb, then it would fall into that category.
This is merely testing the nofollow attribute. People have been discussing whether or not it actually works lately and this little test would answer that question.
So far, I would say it passes the test!
Check the Google Results
Check the Yahoo Results
Check the MSN Live Results
Check the Ask Results (These guys are slow)
None of them at the time of posting shows Matt’s blog, which I’m linking to. So it could be something that shows up later…maybe after a few more links point to them, but more than likely, the rel=”nofollow” actually works like they say it does.
Right, but if the text in question doesn’t exist on the target page, then maybe (?) they discount it.
Nonetheless, it wouldn’t surprise me if nofollow actually works. I mean, why bother abandoning it once it’s in place.
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. But anything that is on his site will rank well anyway because the site is so strong. So going after something that had zero results was the best way to test it.
yeah… those stupid No Follow tags!
wonder what happen if we all start using to them on our websites and what would happen?
Have a good one.
Does the text “Tamt Tucts” appear on Matts site? I think a more accurate test would be using a word that did since Google Bombing is no longer that effective??
I think the interesting part, google makes this job unknown so we dont know exactly what is happening.. if google is counting or not.. is nofollow links work for someting or not.. so there is always a hope
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