Comments on: PageRank Sculpting with nofollow, the final words

By: Rahul Kumar

Rahul Kumar — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:26:46 +0000

I might be a slight off topic here but Joost , dont you think in its present form the webmaster guideline for the definition of "cloaking" sort of gets quasi qualified in terms of using no follow.In its definition of cloaking , the unidirectional lineage has not been mentioned anywhere.As far as nofollow and pr sculpting is concerned i do think its good for us webmasters but only after some saturation in terms of our linking campaign.Have written an article on this very subject at Page Rank Sculpting and Google Policy. Let me know what you think of it.

By: Seriousrankings » Blog Archive » Pagerank sculpting? Sure.

Seriousrankings » Blog Archive » Pagerank sculpting? Sure. — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:15:41 +0000

[...] Joost deValk. He is smart enough to quote Matt Cutts on this and to come to this conclusion: So: use nofollow, use it wisely, it’s one of the authorized tools in our arsenal as SEO’s. They are his [...]

By: Joost de Valk

Joost de Valk — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:26:21 +0000

@Mary: I've never said it was as easy as just slapping nofollow on a few links :) And might I say that PageRank sculpting are two entirely different things, maybe I have to do a post about the difference and where they meet...

By: Mary McKnight

Mary McKnight — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:13:49 +0000

To boil sculpting down to only the nofollow tag is really not accurate. Real effective sculpting should use a combination of internal link structure changes, nofollow, siloing, redirects, robots.txt and possibly nofollow, noindex (but only very specific circumstances). I, personally would like to see Matt address aggressive sculpting head-on. What are his real thoughts on our ability to juice our own sites to the point where internal landing pages and individual post or product pages carry as much weight as our home pages. Once the volume of high PR pages significantly improves on our sites, will that be considered manipulation and spammy behavior?

By: edwin

edwin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:35:57 +0000

A few weeks ago i did some PR sculpting on my domain,well performed this might increase your PR.
You can easily tag "no follow" to pages with no unique content, f.i.:contact.pages signup:pages etc.
How closer to the index page , the more significant the sculpting will be..

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:24:19 +0000

Well... I'm not a fan of sculpting PR, mostly as so many things can go wrong. I'd rather bleed a little juice than exclude a whole load of good content pages. However in South Africa where Google has all but 100% of the market (most of the folk here don't even know what Ask.com is, and I'm not even going to start on AOL). Are we making our sites for Google... Yes, pretty much the same way as electrical manufacturers make sure all their appliances are 220V compliant.

By: Adam Audette

Adam Audette — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:29:58 +0000

I actually outlined a total of 8 arguments against using nofollow for internal sculpting, the fact that it's too focused on Google is only a minor point. I don't have any "final" answers, just adding another perspective to the debate. Always best to question these types of things in my opinion, a healthy sense of skepticism. Here's my full argument: http://www.audettemedia.com/nofollow

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:29:53 +0000

Can you recommend any good tools to assist with PR sculpting or page analysis? (anything that shows how much PR % goes for each link etc.?)

By: Joost de Valk

Joost de Valk — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:58:22 +0000

@Sean: absolutely! I've never said it was easy :)

@Markus: exactly.

By: Markus Walter

Markus Walter — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:06:12 +0000

Of course the usage of nofollow does make sense. As you said, use it wisely.

By: Sean Ed Hardy

Sean Ed Hardy — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:37:14 +0000

Yeah that's right. But nofollow is just one half of the truth. In my opinion, it's also important to have a great internal link structure to sculp the PageRank - especially if articles link to each other in a topical relevance.

By: Joost de Valk

Joost de Valk — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:31:41 +0000

@Jaan: ow yes it does make sense, but it's just not for the "medium" SEO's. You have to know what you're doing before using it.

By: Jaan Kanellis

Jaan Kanellis — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:52:13 +0000

Sure Joost, I am not implying that in using the nofollow you will be flagged, demoted, banned or punished. Rather I am just stressing the easy to see point that the nofollow is more for Google, NOT you. Once this understood you can start to understand why you should or should not use it on your own website.

Like I have said, it makes sense to nofollow those sign in pages, but beyond that it doesnt make sense to.

By: Joost de Valk

Joost de Valk — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:44:33 +0000

Jaan you're trying to hard to prove a point that just isn't there...In the "You & A" with Matt Cutts, he said this:"Page sculpting, do you need to bother with it?Matt says in most cases you do not, so long as your architecture is set up correctly. It is a better use of time to work to get good links than trying to control flow of internal PageRank. It does not create a red flag if you do."In other words: play with it if you must, we won't punish you for it. And trust me Jaan, play with it I do, and it WORKS.

By: Jaan Kanellis

Jaan Kanellis — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:12:52 +0000

I am confused where does it say anything about PR Sculpting in that quote? Where does it say that using the nofollow on a page will help that document rank better? Where does it say that using the nofollow will help your website rank better?

Just more insinuations when in fact the sole purpose of the nofollow is to make Googlebot life easier, not yours.