Been running an SEO test on nofollow links for a while and the results are below.
Added a link from a comment at the WordPress SEO Firm page.
There’s a comment with the content:
This is an SEO test, testing nofollow attribute.
SEOstenchbomb
Where the made up word “SEOstenchbomb” is the anchor text of a nofollow link to http://www.morearnings.com/2006/09/10/wordpress-comments-and-rel-nofollow/ (where the link goes wasn’t that important).
Google has told us nofollow links anchor text is not indexed (it’s supposed to be hidden to Google in every way).
A Google search for SEOstenchbomb or “SEOstenchbomb” (with speachmarks is useful for SEO tests sometimes) currently (30th July 2011) shows 8 pages indexed in Google, all 8 pages are from this domain.
This site runs WordPress with the Stallion WordPress SEO Theme which reuses comments, 7 of the pages currently indexed are reused versions of the comment text, pages like http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-tutorial/domain-name-choice?cid=13360 which reuses just the text of the comment (the link code is stripped). Those 7 pages are expected to be indexed, it’s the 8th page that’s important, it’s the page
http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-gold-goes-wordpress.html
Where the nofollow link is located.
If Google is right that the anchor text of nofollow links is not indexed this page should NOT be indexed in Google for the search SEOstenchbomb.
It would therefore appear the anchor text of nofollow links is indexed at least as body text for the page the nofollow links are on.
Note: rel=”nofollow” links deletes link benefit, for every rel=”nofollow” attribute you add to your site it’s costing you the equivalent of linking out to a random site for no benefit in return.
DO NOT USE REL=”NOFOLLOW”
David Law
Website - WordPress SEO
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