Rel follow attribute gets universal approval
At the request of WhiteHat SEO community on April the 1st this year all major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN Live declared their joint support for a newly developed XFN standard.
The new attribute rel=follow is designed to complement the notorious rel=nofollow. However unlike nofollow attribute rel=follow is designed to express not negative but positive relationship between a linking website and a website rel=follow link points to.
I’ll try to explain it in layman’s terms - when using nofollow you instruct a Search Engine not to count this link in their Link Popularity calculations for Google it will be the well known Google PR index. If you put rel=follow on contrary you instruct a Search Engine algorithm to double the positive weight of your link.
To provide greater flexibility and more granular approach it is currently recommended to use follow value in quantity proportionate to the relative importance of a web site you point your link to.
Example 1:
rel="follow"
will simply double the weight of your link
Example 2:
rel="follow" rel="follow"
or alternatively
rel="follow follow"
(note that both versions of implementation are equally valid, note also that no commas needed for the second version) will increase the weight of a link 4 times 1×2x2=4
Let’s take a bit more complex instance
Example 3:
rel="follow" rel="follow" rel="follow" rel="follow" rel="follow" rel="follow" rel="follow" rel="follow" rel="follow" rel="follow"
or alternatively
rel="follow follow follow follow follow follow follow follow follow follow"
here we have follw 10 times which gives the increase of ranking in 1×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2=1024 times compare to the ranking a link would normally pass.
It is also possible to use advanced CSS2 to provide a visual reflection of the quantitative weight of the rel=follow attribute in a way similar to how TagCloud visually reflects relative tag popularity.
The most inspiring of all thing is that according to the new specification to encourage a widspread uptake of the rel=follow standard all Search Engines confirmed the change in their algos that had been altered not to deduct the proportionate weight from the Link Popularity index of a page that uses rel=follow. In other words when you use rel=follow you will be able to pass as much PR as you wish without losing the PR of the page itself (PR Bleeding), at least no more than you would if you were using a normal link without any attributes. So at last WhiteHat SEO is rewarded with a wonderful standard capable of defeating the current link spam epidemic.
Ultimately, this new attribute provides us with extremely flexible tool capable of changing the nature of the internet relationships an enhancing the social network experience. Some sceptics however remarked that it might open yet another door for abuse.
tags: google, google pr, link popularity, msn, seo, whitehat, xfn, yahoo, rel follow, rel tag, white hat
this is a joke right as this is the dumbest thing ive ever heard, late april fools or something?
Comment by bwb — April 7, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
Interesting concept, wonder if it will change things for the better though.
Comment by Bob — April 7, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
Do Follow Tag Introduced…
I missed this news that was announced today, thankfully LZZR had a keen eye on the search engine press releases.
At the request of WhiteHat SEO community on April the 1st this year all major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN Live declared…
Trackback by The Naked SEO Guide from Netpaths — April 7, 2007 @ 7:59 pm
BWB it was posted on April 1st so it wasn’t a late one.
I linked through to it late because I read it late.
I thought it was highly on topic for my readership, and certainly made me laugh more than most of the other posts around the same time.
Comment by Andy Beard — April 8, 2007 @ 11:55 am
Thats great! I don’t think too many people would find this a funny April Fools joke but I loved it. Almost had me going.
Comment by Hornswaggled — April 9, 2007 @ 1:28 pm
A little late with the April Fools but still pretty funny… hmm.. so what if you combine nofollow AND follow? Do the internet tubes overflow with link juice?
Comment by Miami Fl Luxury Real Estate — April 10, 2007 @ 8:13 am
Hi Andy, I’m in sort of a pickle and do not know what is best. I had gone into the Blogger Code to remove the rel=nofollow as I found on the web site with the helps. That may have helped — I am not sure. But, I installed Haloscan at the prodding of a couple of visitors. I lost all my Blogger comments. So far, Haloscan administrators have not answered my question to restore all my Blogger comments.
I really want your best advice. Should I go back to my original Blogger template which I downloaded? There are some helps to install trackbacks and other things I would like to do on http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2007/03/remove-nofollow-attribute-on-comments.html
I need very specific code instructions to carry out any of these things because going into the code makes me nervous and I have very little time because of my regular work. That’s why I liked the site which offered the code. Does Dawd do that for Blogger? I’ve lost track of his site.
Comment by Robyn — April 17, 2007 @ 5:52 am
definately a great april fools joke!
Comment by Matt Ellsworth — April 17, 2007 @ 9:41 am
Hi Robyn - I really have no idea what you are talking about - It’s probably because I am not Any, no seriously, my christian name is NOT Andy, believe me
Comment by LZZR — April 22, 2007 @ 11:46 pm
[…] we are freed from the plague of NOFOLLOW attribute as all major Search Engines recognized the new REL=FOLLOW attribute which makes it a nice SEO trick to use to promote your site! Read more at LZZR SEO Blog. […]
Pingback by LZZR SEO :: Rel Follow trick :: April :: 2007 — July 13, 2007 @ 3:45 pm
[…] email. (You’ll have it, but you don’t have to wait for it.) 4. All links are “follow” (rel=”follow”) . 5. Author’s links are “follow follow” […]
Pingback by You are The Author « Word&Press Mu — July 19, 2007 @ 9:42 am
[…] bright spot was the April’s joke about the “follow” linking. The next step was to publish the article in the news […]
Pingback by Word&Press Mu » Blog Archive » follow, nofollow and the WordPres community — July 20, 2007 @ 7:16 am
[…] open link without nofollow. Although my attempt to mock the whole nofollow concept by inventing a rel=follow attribute proved to be popular enough it nevertheless is too limited to change the picture in any […]
Pingback by LZZR » Why it is good to link to LZZR — August 3, 2007 @ 5:05 am
your post is impossible to read with the highlights - which is probably just as well.
Comment by Suzanne — November 25, 2007 @ 11:44 am