I’ll assume you know what the title is about. If you don’t, read this. On a side note, quite how that page has a PR of 7 when it went up only two weeks ago…that’s something to talk about another time.
I just watched the SEOMOZ whiteboard Friday video on nofollow and PageRank sculpting, but didn’t leave it with any conclusions. The answer seems to be in Matt Cutt’s announcement, and this is how I read it:
Google does not like people messing with PageRank and is telling webmasters to stop trying it.
That being the case, as far as I’m concerned stop using nofollows (or any alternative methods) on internal links. You’re giving Google a negative indicator, ie that you don’t vouch for your own content. That can’t be good. To think as a webmaster you can funnel PageRank using another method without Google noticing is probably foolhardy, and certainly arrogant. So I’m not looking into it.
What saddens me about nofollow is it’s abuse – particularly WikiPedia (and other large sites – Wiki is just the top example). WikiPedias’ content is moderated and the external links have not been paid for so the use of nofollow is not in line with Google’s (or other engines) advice on what exactly the tag is for.
