Overview of No-Follow Links and How They Affect You

The term 'No-Follow links' has made quite a buzz in the news lately, especially concerning the new Wikipedia policy. Unfortunately, this term has left many confused as to what this type of link does. So let me explain what a no-follow link is and what it means to you.

A no-follow link looks the same and works the same as any other link, to the user that is. The difference is in the html coding. When a webmaster authors a page, the language used is html. This language is read by the browser, then displayed for you. In html, each page item is tagged, similar to how an archeologist tags items taken from a site. The tag tells what, where and how each item is to be used, and that includes links.

A no-follow link has a slightly different tag than a standard link. To a search engine, the no-follow attribute is a big flashing sign that says "This link is not validated by this webmaster. Do not count!". Considering that search engines use the number of links that point to a page when calculating the page rankings, a no-follow attribute can be both a blessing and a curse.

To link spammers, the attribute is a curse. Although traffic as a direct result of the link is still viable, the effort put into spreading the links for page ranking value is wasted. This was the purpose of Wikipedia adding a no-follow attribute to all outgoing links. By neutralizing the present and future spam links, Wikipedia hopes to stop the spam links from being left.

What this means to the public is that search engine results can be more accurate than if spam links were counted. It also has a backlash effect though, due to valid links being given the no-follow attribute.

To a legitimate source, say a Content Producer's page, having a no-follow attribute given to links is a curse. Without the given attribute, a search engine will count the number of links to a given page and rank it. However, if the majority of links are no-follow links, the search engine will rank that page as if there was no external linking to it. To a Content Producer or other business interested in advertising and being found, this can be fatal.