| I know a lot of you are wondering what's the | | | | index this page.” Pages with noindex can still |
| difference between the “nofollow” and | | | | accumulate page rank if a there's a dofollow link |
| “noindex” in the robots.txt file and the ones | | | | pointing to that page. |
| declared on the meta tags. Some search engine | | | | -- Dofollow is the opposite of Nofollow - a link with no |
| optimization specialists claims that there's no difference | | | | “nofollow” attribute assigned means it's a |
| while others believe that one method is less valuable | | | | dofollow link. A term used by webmasters and SEO |
| than the other. | | | | experts. |
| You can ask it out on several webmaster/SEO | | | | To sum it all up: |
| forums, but you'll just get mixed responses. In here, I will | | | | * NoFollow means you're telling the search spider not |
| give you the REAL answer! According to Eric Enge's | | | | to follow a link and also not to pass PR juice to that |
| interview with Google's software engineer Matt Cutts | | | | link. |
| way back in 2007, there are differences in using | | | | * NoIndex means you're telling the search spider not to |
| NoIndex, NoFollow, and Robots.txt. | | | | index your website and not to show it on SERP. |
| In The Robots.txt File | | | | * The site or page in a Nofollow link can still gain PR if |
| Even if you restrict Google's spider from indexing | | | | another site links to it without the nofollow attribute. |
| certain pages of your website, they can still | | | | * Pages with the Noindex tag can still gain PR if |
| accumulate page rank. For example, if you disallow the | | | | another site links to it without a nofollow attribute. |
| crawling of your “About Us” page yet your | | | | * Pages with the Noindex tag can still be visible on |
| homepage links to it, PR juice is still passed on. | | | | SEPR using the information from ODP (DMOZ) or |
| In addition, websites that disallow crawling can still | | | | when another website links to it using |
| accumulate page rank and be visible in search results. | | | | * Nofollow on the meta tag applies to all the links on a |
| Why? If another website links to it, PR juice will be | | | | webpage |
| passed on. Google can sometimes use the information | | | | * Nofollow attribute on a link applies only to that link |
| of a website submitted to ODP (also known as | | | | So whether you use the Robots.txt or the Meta Tag, |
| DMOZ) in order to display it on their results page, or | | | | the results are still the same. The reason why |
| when another website links to it. | | | | Robots.txt is mostly used is because “it is the |
| In The Meta Tag | | | | fundamental method of putting up an electronic no |
| Let's understand what Nofollow and Noindex really | | | | trespassing sign that people have used since 1996,” |
| means. | | | | and it's much easier to declare which pages of your |
| The Nofollow is usually used on outgoing links, when | | | | website not to crawl instead of placing the NoIndex |
| declared in the meta tag, it means “do not follow all | | | | code manually on individual pages' meta tags. |
| links on this page.” With this, you are also telling the | | | | Commonly, SEO services do provide complete |
| spider not to pass PR juice. However, the nofollow on | | | | analysis of a website as well as recommendations. So |
| the meta tag also applies to your links that points to | | | | whenever you are looking for a good search engine |
| the other pages of your website. This also means that | | | | optimization service, never forget to ask for a website |
| you are depriving the flow of PR juice to some of | | | | analysis first, don't just jump in and hire somebody you |
| your pages. | | | | do not know. |
| On the other hand, the Noindex means, “do not | | | | |