In 2005, Google officially introduced the nofollow tag in order to effectively curb the growing proliferation of spam comment advertising links on blogs (forums) and establish a good and orderly operation of the online world.
Baidu encyclopedia's nofollow entry defines it this way: "nofollow is an attribute value of an HTML tag. Its appearance provides a way for website administrators to tell search engines' not to track the link on this page 'or' not to track this specific link '. The meaning of this tag is to tell the search engine that this link is not edited by the author himself, so this link is not a vote of confidence. "
"To put it simply, if there is a link on page A that points to page B, but page A adds rel=" nofollow "to the link, the search engine will not count page A as the backlink of page B. The search engine may reduce or completely cancel the voting weight of the link when it sees the label."
The specific usage of nofollow tag is: write nofollow into the meta tag of a specific page to remind the search engine not to follow all exported links on the visited page; Put nofollow in the hyperlink to tell the search engine not to grab this specific export link.
For search engines, the introduction of nofollow tag is a last resort, because the introduction of nofollow tag goes against the original intention of "the Internet allows the world to communicate freely". However, the increasing proliferation of spam links in blogs, forums (and other websites) has seriously affected the interests of search engines and well-known brand websites, and has failed to correctly guide netizens to visit truly valuable websites, which has seriously damaged the network order.
After Google introduced the nofollow tag, it has been widely used on various websites, especially those websites, forums and blogs (the most famous example is Wikipedia) that rely more on netizens to upload content (or comments) by themselves.
The nofollow tag "tells the search engine 'Do not track the link on this page' or 'Do not track this specific link'" (does not transfer the page weight normally by exporting the link) The SEO value of is first reflected in "webmasters can draw a line with those spam websites through the nofollow tag, and clearly tell the search engine: 'This link has nothing to do with me, not my intention'".
Immediately, more SEO meanings of nofollow tag were found by SEOERs and consciously applied to the optimization work in the station.
The nofollow tag used by SEOER is mainly used for some export links on the web page that must be marked in the form of links, pointing to the outside of the site; It is also used in some websites where it is unnecessary to transfer website links, and some websites have to export links in order to establish a good user experience - such as "About Us", "Contact Us", "Privacy Policy" and other pages without ranking value.
With the frequent and conscious use of nofollow tags by the webmaster (SEOER), the usage of nofollow tags has gradually changed, not only for those "export links that are not edited by the author himself", but also for any export links that are edited by the webmaster (SEOER) himself and do not want to give weight to this link page.
In this way, the meaning of nofollow tag also changes. Now webmasters (SEOERs) use nofollow tag to prompt search engines to "not increase the ranking weight of this linked page due to my link behavior", rather than prompt search engines to "not export the link through the author's own editing, do not follow the link".
At present, it is certain that nofollow tag plays a role in SEO. However, there are different opinions on the efficacy of nofollow tag in SEO. The vast majority of opinions come from the comparative analysis of a small amount of web page data of SEOER, or even just speculation.
Especially for the Chinese mainland webmasters (SEOERs) who are too keen on nofollow tag, the value of Baidu SEO of nofollow tag needs to be further confirmed by more complete, scientific and rigorous test data for a longer period of time - although Baidu has publicly expressed its support for the use of nofollow tag for many times, it is very likely that Baidu has publicly expressed its support for 301 jump, And tried to do the same as the preferred domain of the website, but the result was that the 301 jump could not be correctly identified for more than a year, just a beautiful SEO "mirage".
And I firmly believe that too much use of the nofollow tag must do more harm than good, because "the meaning of this tag is to tell search engines that this link was not edited by the author himself, so this link is not a vote of confidence". If too many exported links from your website to external websites are nofollow tags - especially the links in the body that are obviously edited by yourself, won't the search engine think your website is dishonest like those webmasters who are fooled by nofollow links?
We must not think ourselves smart and underestimate the intelligence of search engines.
In the final analysis, we are too afraid of losing the weight of web pages due to the export of external links from websites. This "only in, not out" mentality of Pixiu is harmful to building brand websites. In fact, high-quality and serious export links can help websites build a good user experience and effectively improve the weight of websites.
Moreover, the excessive emphasis on SEO technical means such as nofollow links reflects the one-sided SEO concept that the domestic SEO industry lacks the necessary understanding of the long-term and arduous nature of website construction.
Indeed, we must pay attention to the necessary SEO technical means, including nofollow links, but we should also realize that it is impossible to truly build an online brand only by technical means.
Zan Hui (ZAC) said: "David, a British SEO bully, asked Matt Cutts (the creator of nofollow tag) what his comments were (about nofollow tag). Matt Cutts answered him with a very illustrative metaphor: nofollow's use of internal links can really affect Google's ranking, but this is only a secondary factor. Just like you have 100 yuan, using nofollow is like carefully studying how to spend the 100 yuan, which is useful for some people. But it is more useful to focus on how to earn 300 yuan more than how to spend the existing 100 yuan. The metaphor is very vivid and also very illustrative. "
In the website operation and promotion, we should not only consider how to spend the existing 100 yuan, but also focus on how to earn another 300 yuan. This is the crux of the matter!
