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If you’re just joining us, I have been running an experiment over the last few weeks evaluating some rumours that Google is punishing blogs that employ a do-follow plugin with lower positions in the search engine results. I don’t mind telling you that it’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride as my target article surfed the ranking waves from day to day, but the end result is not quite what I expected. You may want to read the first two articles, “No Follow, Do Follow, What?” and “No Follow Do Follow Update”, before continuing on here.
Here are the Cole’s Notes, taken almost exactly from my own notes:
The target search phrase for this experiment is “Netvibes Ginger”, in quotes for exact match, without quotes for broad.
Tuesday: “I Haz Ginger, and it is Cool” is ranking at #77 in the Google SERPs
Wednesday and Thursday applied some Social Marketing strategies to the article.
Friday: Article has dropped to #90… ? Apply some more SM strategies….
Sunday: article has cratered in the SERPs, crawling in at #160 for broad match, and #86 for exact. (All previous rankings reported were for broad match) To quote (my son): WTF?
Tuesday night: return techne-eikon to a no-follow blog by disabling the do-follow plugin.
Wednesday, around noon: I Haz Ginger is ranking at #25 for exact match, and #23 on broad match.
Monday: More gains, rising to #13 broad match, and #16 exact.
Wednesday: Restarted do-follow plugin (this would be Wednesday, February 13)
Which brings us to today, slightly more than a week later, Thursday, February 21, 2008: The target article is ranking at #22 for the broad search “Netvibes Ginger” (sans quotes), and #23 exact (with quotes).
If my results are even remotely typical, it doesn’t look like Google is using the presence of a do-follow plugin as a factor in it’s Search Engine results. That’s good news for those of us who wish to reward commentors with a link back to their site. At this point, I will freely admit that I wanted Google to fail this little test of mine. Based on the early results, I even expected it. I tend to distrust mega corporations like Google, Microsoft, and the like. As I proceeded with the experiment, my head filled with scathing vilifications and pithy comments as I shredded the evil corporation for punishing your average, everyday nice guy blogger. But that’s not the way it is, so my poisoned pen must remain in its drawer, at least for today.
All that aside, I am actually happy to know that do-follow bloggers are not going to suffer for having the do-follow plugin on their blogs. I had already determined that once the experiment was over, t-e would remain a do-follow blog irrespective of the results, as I completely agree with the ideals behind the movement. So there it is, then: with a complete lack of fanfare I must declare that, to the best of my knowledge, Google does not allow the presence of a do-follow plugin to affect its search engine results.
Here are some more resources for no-follow and do-follow for you to, er, follow:
Andy Beard’s comprehensive list of do-follow and no-follow plugins for a variety of platforms. No matter which way you swing, Andy’s got the good for you.
Michelle MacPhearson recreates an interesting experiment testing whether or not no-follow links provide any link juice. She also provides some excellent links on the topic, a must read for anyone interested in getting better rankings in the SERPs.
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 3:35 pmand is filed under Link Love, Web 2.0, Wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Love the posts…your expression of hatred for corporations tickles my funny bone. Tee hee.
Anyhow, I\'m super glad of the results. The immediate drop was kind of disappointing…guessing the immediate promotion in the SERPS was from your post being new. Search engines like updated and respected sites a lot.
I\'ve noticed that when I do a new update, my site hits number one for \"vestrite\"…otherwise, some weird realty site hits number one.
Keep Alive.
Sincerely,
Devin T.
Love the posts…your expression of hatred for corporations tickles my funny bone. Tee hee.
Anyhow, I’m super glad of the results. The immediate drop was kind of disappointing…guessing the immediate promotion in the SERPS was from your post being new. Search engines like updated and respected sites a lot.
I’ve noticed that when I do a new update, my site hits number one for “vestrite”…otherwise, some weird realty site hits number one.
Keep Alive.
Sincerely,
Devin T.
I\'m also very glad your test seems to have failed!
I also use DoFollow, and often times it is less to simply reward commenters, but I tend to get comments from other relevant blogs, and I really don\'t use the blogroll unless something has been exceptional.
It would really be hard to check accurately since as you open up your site with do-follow, everything else being the same, you will be sending less pagerank out from your posts to the other pages on the site, since the out links from the comments will take a part. It stands to reason there may be a drop.
But the point is during this time not to make everything else the same. You can make up the pagerank leaks.
While I am far from being an expert in things pagerank, my understanding was that PR is not like water in a cup that dribbles away. If I have this correctly, sharing PR doesn\'t actually cause you to \"lose\" any PR, because it is just a number in a formula. However, I have heard similar things before. I\'ll have to look into it
I’m also very glad your test seems to have failed!
I also use DoFollow, and often times it is less to simply reward commenters, but I tend to get comments from other relevant blogs, and I really don’t use the blogroll unless something has been exceptional.
It would really be hard to check accurately since as you open up your site with do-follow, everything else being the same, you will be sending less pagerank out from your posts to the other pages on the site, since the out links from the comments will take a part. It stands to reason there may be a drop.
But the point is during this time not to make everything else the same. You can make up the pagerank leaks.
While I am far from being an expert in things pagerank, my understanding was that PR is not like water in a cup that dribbles away. If I have this correctly, sharing PR doesn’t actually cause you to “lose” any PR, because it is just a number in a formula. However, I have heard similar things before. I’ll have to look into it
Very interesting.
I had my pagerank removed for no apparent reason and I thought it might be due to the nofollow tag. Apparently not.
Not that I was planning on removing it. But it is nice to know.
Olivier
Very interesting.
I had my pagerank removed for no apparent reason and I thought it might be due to the nofollow tag. Apparently not.
Not that I was planning on removing it. But it is nice to know.
Olivier
Google hate bloggers, dofollowing or nofollowing will be the same, they will slap you just for make money online.
I\'m not sure that I agree with your statement, Mr. Javo, for a couple of reasons. First, Google\'s rapid indexing of blogs, second Google\'s acquisition of feedburner, and subsequent addition of adsense to our feedburner feeds, and third, good authority blogs often have better info than \"official\" sites, especially in regards to breaking news. I do, however, firmly believe that G would like to better control the blogosphere. I won\'t go into the reasons why today, but it makes a certain amount of sense, given some of the companies that G has bought. Cheers, Marc Just my 2 cents, and certainly potential topics for future posts. Cheers, Marc
Google hate bloggers, dofollowing or nofollowing will be the same, they will slap you just for make money online.
I’m not sure that I agree with your statement, Mr. Javo, for a couple of reasons. First, Google’s rapid indexing of blogs, second Google’s acquisition of feedburner, and subsequent addition of adsense to our feedburner feeds, and third, good authority blogs often have better info than “official” sites, especially in regards to breaking news.
I do, however, firmly believe that G would like to better control the blogosphere. I won’t go into the reasons why today, but it makes a certain amount of sense, given some of the companies that G has bought.
Cheers, Marc
Just my 2 cents, and certainly potential topics for future posts.
Cheers, Marc
Interesting idea. As I am participating to seocontest2008 with my site http://seocontest2008.seoserviceconsultant.com I am very interested about factors influencing the Google SERP (search engine results position).
I understood about Google way of ranking pages, that the ratio of incoming links per outgoing links is directly increasing the rank of your page. If you increase the munber of outgoing links without changing the number of incoming links, your page will drop on Google SERP.
This explaines why removing the \"nofollow\" tags produced a drop in SERP: automatically the page had more outgoing links.
IMHO Google will rank higher on a subject (for a keyword, of of course having relevant content) that page, which has the most of other pages on the subject pointing to it.
To get your site higher, you have to keep your site A. without any outgoing link (except nofollow links), then have a couple of sites B1, B2, …. B5 etc. pointing only to your site A., and many sites C1, C2, C3, C4…C64 pointing to your sites B1, B2….B5 etc.
Then have another group of sites, blogs, social bookmarking pages, forums etc. D1, D2, ……. D1024 etc. pointing to your sites C1, C2…..C64 etc.
You can alway grow the levels of your linking sites, just keep them having quality and relevant content.
Interesting idea. As I am participating to seocontest2008 with my site http://seocontest2008.seoserviceconsultant.com I am very interested about factors influencing the Google SERP (search engine results position).
I understood about Google way of ranking pages, that the ratio of incoming links per outgoing links is directly increasing the rank of your page. If you increase the munber of outgoing links without changing the number of incoming links, your page will drop on Google SERP.
This explaines why removing the “nofollow” tags produced a drop in SERP: automatically the page had more outgoing links.
IMHO Google will rank higher on a subject (for a keyword, of of course having relevant content) that page, which has the most of other pages on the subject pointing to it.
To get your site higher, you have to keep your site A. without any outgoing link (except nofollow links), then have a couple of sites B1, B2, …. B5 etc. pointing only to your site A., and many sites C1, C2, C3, C4…C64 pointing to your sites B1, B2….B5 etc.
Then have another group of sites, blogs, social bookmarking pages, forums etc. D1, D2, ……. D1024 etc. pointing to your sites C1, C2…..C64 etc.
You can alway grow the levels of your linking sites, just keep them having quality and relevant content.
My belief is that Google will not penalize sites for simply having a dofollow Wordpress plug-in on them. They may, however, penalize websites and blogs that do not use the nofollow tag on paid links or links to spam sites. It\'s up to the webmaster or blogger to decide whether a link merits dofollow or nofollow and act accordingly.
My belief is that Google will not penalize sites for simply having a dofollow Wordpress plug-in on them. They may, however, penalize websites and blogs that do not use the nofollow tag on paid links or links to spam sites. It’s up to the webmaster or blogger to decide whether a link merits dofollow or nofollow and act accordingly.