rel-nofollow: Difference between revisions
| Line 76: | Line 76: | ||
* '''Definition'''. nofollow indicates a behavior rather than a relationship from which the behavior should be inferred as appropriate for the useragent. rel values should be nouns that indicates what the resource being referenced is in relation to the source. | * '''Definition'''. nofollow indicates a behavior rather than a relationship from which the behavior should be inferred as appropriate for the useragent. rel values should be nouns that indicates what the resource being referenced is in relation to the source. | ||
* '''Name'''. nofollow is a bad name | * '''Name'''. nofollow is a bad name. | ||
** overloading. does not mean the same as robots exclusion standards (robots.txt, meta robots) nofollow. | ** overloading. does not mean the same as robots exclusion standards (robots.txt, meta robots) nofollow. | ||
** does not mean what it says. does not mean "do not follow this link", rather it means " do not add weight from this link". [http://www.w3.org/mid/opsk3cccj9lo81gp@quark Asbjørn Ulsberg] | ** does not mean what it says. does not mean "do not follow this link", rather it means " do not add weight from this link". [http://www.w3.org/mid/opsk3cccj9lo81gp@quark Asbjørn Ulsberg] | ||
| Line 86: | Line 86: | ||
*** unendorsed - [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2005Jan/0057.html Lachlan Hunt] | *** unendorsed - [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2005Jan/0057.html Lachlan Hunt] | ||
*** unrelated - [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2005Jan/0049.html Jens Meiert] | *** unrelated - [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2005Jan/0049.html Jens Meiert] | ||
*** untrusted | *** untrusted | ||
*** nonauth - [http://www.mnot.net/blog/2003/12/29/comment_spam_and_google Mark Baker] | *** nonauth - [http://www.mnot.net/blog/2003/12/29/comment_spam_and_google Mark Baker] | ||
*** norank - [http://www.digitalburg.com/ Ben Pierce] | *** norank - [http://www.digitalburg.com/ Ben Pierce] | ||
| Line 94: | Line 94: | ||
=== additional lists of issues === | === additional lists of issues === | ||
Additional lists of issues raised against rel="nofollow" can be found at the following site(s): | Additional lists of issues raised against rel="nofollow" can be found at the following site(s): | ||
* http://www.nonofollow.net/ | * http://www.nonofollow.net/ | ||
Matt Cutts Says No to Nofollow On Internal Links: | Matt Cutts Says No to Nofollow On Internal Links: | ||
* http://www.techzene.com/seo/rel-nofollow-seo-disadvantages/ | * http://www.techzene.com/seo/rel-nofollow-seo-disadvantages/ | ||
Revision as of 01:11, 14 May 2011
<entry-title>rel="nofollow"</entry-title>
Specification 2005-01-10
Editors
Concept
Copyright
This specification is (C) 2005-2024 by the authors. However, the authors intend to submit (or already have submitted, see details in the spec) this specification to a standards body with a liberal copyright/licensing policy such as the GMPG, IETF, and/or W3C. Anyone wishing to contribute should read their copyright principles, policies and licenses (e.g. the GMPG Principles) and agree to them, including licensing of all contributions under all required licenses (e.g. CC-by 1.0 and later), before contributing.
- Tantek: I release all my contributions to this specification into the public domain and I encourage the other authors to do so as well.
- Kevin Marks: I release all my contributions to this specification into the public domain and I encourage the other authors to do so as well.
- When all authors/editors have done so, we can remove the MicroFormatCopyrightStatement template reference and replace it with the MicroFormatPublicDomainContributionStatement.
Patents
This specification is subject to a royalty free patent policy, e.g. per the W3C Patent Policy, and IETF RFC3667 & RFC3668.
Abstract
RelNoFollow is an elemental microformat, one of several microformat open standards. By adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines). Typical use cases include links created by 3rd party commenters on blogs, or links the author wishes to point to, but avoid endorsing. For more specific endorsement (or lack thereof) semantics, see VoteLinks.
XMDP profile
The following is an XMDP profile for the rel-nofollow specification.
URLs
This profile is hosted as a separate XMDP file on microformats.org:
Usage
Profiles are referenced in (X)HTML files in the <HEAD> tag, e.g.:
<head profile='http://microformats.org/profile/rel-nofollow'>
Profile
<dl class="profile">
<dt id="rel">rel</dt>
<dd><p>
<a rel="help" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#adef-rel">
HTML4 definition of the 'rel' attribute.</a>
Here is an additional value as defined in the
<a rel="help start" href="http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-nofollow">
rel-nofollow specification</a>
.</p>
<dl>
<dt id="nofollow">nofollow</dt>
<dd>Indicates that the referred resource was not necessarily linked to
by the author of the page, and thus said reference should not afford
the referred resource any additional weight or ranking by user agents.
</dd>
</dl>
</dd>
</dl>
examples in the wild
This section is informative. Note: There are numerous uses of rel-nofollow in the wild, this is very much an incomplete list. If your site marked up with rel-nofollow, feel free to add it to the top of this list. Once the list grows too big, we'll make a separate wiki page (rel-nofollow-examples-in-wild).
- FunAdvice supports using the rel-nofollow tag to prevent users posting content simply for the search engine benefit, to improve the quality of the advice giving community.
normative references
informative references
- VoteLinks can be used by an author to explicitly state their support for or against, or neutrality toward the destination of a link. Implementers implementing rel="nofollow" and VoteLinks should similarly not afford any additional weight or ranking to links with either
rev="vote-abstain"orrev="vote-against". - Contributed from http://developers.technorati.com/wiki/RelNoFollow
open issues
These are open issues that have been raised about rel="nofollow" that have been raised in various forums, in particular, on the public W3C www-html mailing list. Once the list grows too big, we'll make a separate wiki page (rel-nofollow-issues). The issues have been grouped into four areas.
- Definition. nofollow indicates a behavior rather than a relationship from which the behavior should be inferred as appropriate for the useragent. rel values should be nouns that indicates what the resource being referenced is in relation to the source.
- Name. nofollow is a bad name.
- overloading. does not mean the same as robots exclusion standards (robots.txt, meta robots) nofollow.
- does not mean what it says. does not mean "do not follow this link", rather it means " do not add weight from this link". Asbjørn Ulsberg
- not a noun. see above.
- suggested alternatives:
- noendorse - Micah Dubinko
- none
- noweight
- unendorsed - Lachlan Hunt
- unrelated - Jens Meiert
- untrusted
- nonauth - Mark Baker
- norank - Ben Pierce
- Efficacy. nofollow will not affect spamming behavior.
- Collateral Damage. If tools automatically add nofollow to all 3rd party links, then many legitimate non-spam links will be ignored or given reduced weight, and thus the destination of such links will be unfortunate casualties.
additional lists of issues
Additional lists of issues raised against rel="nofollow" can be found at the following site(s):
Matt Cutts Says No to Nofollow On Internal Links: