Would You Do Anything Google Asked?

[espmartin]

This post is NOT about arguing the facts of Google's
nofollow demands on your outgoing links, but since they do
"ask" (or face their repercussions) us to manually add a non-
standard attribute to satisfy their search engine, I was wondering
how far you would go, as a webmaster who wants to rank high and
have a high PR, in adding search engine specific markup to
your code - if they "asked" you to to satisfy their SE process.

Would you comply with every Google demand?

[SkinnerW]

All Google it trying to do is provide quality search results.

Here is another option for you:

- don't link to junk
- don't link to non-related stuff
- write only content that you competent to talk about...

Than you don't have to worry about "no-follow" or being dropped in SERP's

[OldWelshGuy]

Well said Skinner, and I would add. if you are not proud of your out bound links, don't have them there. Do NOT have them hidden away in the corner/footer etc.

I am happy to comply with google UNTIL their requests impact on my users, at that point I would create holy hell.

[rhyswynne]

Well, most of my income comes from my personal blog. I don't get much in the way of search engine traffic (surprisingly, the "Opinions of a North Welsh man" isn't that searched), so I'm going to keep doing my google-unfriendly stuff until they stop paying me.

[SkinnerW]

Rhys, are you talking about Adsense or your advertisers?

[stacy131]

I find that Google has been quite reasonable. I work very hard for my site and I don't particularly appreciate a liberal approach that allows my competitors to slack off and surpass me by cheating.

[smeagain]

My understanding of Google nofollow policy and "invitation" is:

GOOGLE: We hope the web software community will quickly adopt this attribute and we're pleased that a number of blog software makers have already signed on

Google isn't asking let alone demanding that you to do anything with the nofollow attribute. They are simply making a facility available for any site operator to use. In the case of a Blog or Forum, this would be mutrually beneficial.

For the Blog or Forum owner, this type of unhelpful and spammy link posting would all but die out, providing the policy to impliment nofollw to ALL posted links is clearly stated. Thus making the Blog or Forum a nicer place to visit.

As for Google, it would remove a huge slice of Spammy links that they have decided (correctly IMHO) dilutes the quality of their search results.

Don't forget that as a Blog opperator that relies on posted links, there is no requirement for you to dry up this section of visitors. You only impliment nofollow if it suits your purpose and policy.

For an ordinary site, the nofollow attribute allows spiders to be asked not to follow links to pages that you would rather weren't indexed but needed to link to.
For example contact.htm (why make it easy for SpamBots)

IMO this is a genuine attempt by Google to make the web a better place less spammy links, certain pages not indexed (if required) and of course better quality SERPs

[OldDarkstarAccount]

- write only content that you competent to talk about...

So I have an article about C++ compilers and tutorials. I wanted to create list of helpful resources, links to other sites, links for tutorials and similar stuff. I am not able to much to talk about c++, eventough I have studies some in University. SO I whould not write about c++ because " I am not competent to write about it" ?

If I want to write about a nice trip I had and I would like to review a hotel, I cannot do that because I do not have a degree in Tourism so that I can consider competent to talk about ?

I am sorry Skinner, but I think that on this one you are a bit wrong. If I am a beginner, a noob, rookie ( pick one you like ) I cannot write about a subject ? ....

[SkinnerW]

Dks, I'll try to explain my statement... Matt Cutts brought up an example in his blog when bunch of people were writing article about cancer treatment technology and included statements like "...I never heard about it before...", "...new treatment..." and bunch of other phrases that clearly shows authors have no idea what they are talking about. They wrote these review articles because they got paid to do so and such articles will have no use to people who is actually looking for more info on cancer treatment. These blogs may get high serps and move quality informative sites to deeper pages.

You can write anything you want as long as you not misrepresent the facts and do not recommend something based on rummors or only because you got paid for it...

[OldDarkstarAccount]

Yes, but that is a bit different of not being competent in a domain. Because, as I said, I know very few about tourism, but I can make a review, because its my opinion about a certain subject.

Your example was perfect, but my point is that you do not have to be expert in order to comment on something