Interpretation By The Individual Search Engines
While all engines that use the nofollow value exclude links that use it from their ranking calculation, the details about the exact interpretation of it vary from search engine to search engine.
- Google states that their engine takes "nofollow" literally and does not "follow" the link at all. However, experiments conducted by SEOs show conflicting results. These studies reveal that Google does follow the link, but it does not index the linked-to page, unless it was in Google's index already for other reasons (such as other, non-nofollow links that point to the page).
- Yahoo! follows it, but excludes it from their ranking calculation.
- Bing respects "nofollow" as regards not counting the link in their ranking, but it is not proven whether or not Bing follows the link.
- Ask.com also respects the attribute.
| rel="nofollow" Action | Yahoo! | Bing | Ask.com | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uses the link for ranking | No | No | No | ? |
| Follows the link | Yes | Yes | ? | No |
| Indexes the "linked to" page | No | Yes | No | No |
| Shows the existence of the link | Only for a previously indexed page | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| In results pages for anchor text | Only for a previously indexed page | Yes | Only for a previously indexed page | Yes |
Read more about this topic: Nofollow
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